Michael Brown’s father says family still in mourning, asks for peace on

But unlike last summer, when police responded to even peaceful protests with batons, tear gas and rubber bullets in the aftermath of rioting and arson that tore apart the St. Louis suburb of 21,000 people, this time officers watched quietly but did not respond.

The Justice Department this year issued a scathing report on Ferguson’s policing and municipal court practices that cited widespread racial discrimination and exploitation. They could be better. “No stupidity, so we can just have some kind of peace”.

Michael Brown Sr. along with family and friends stop to pray at a memorial to Brown’s son.

That means helping families and young people, he said, “whatever I can do to empower us as a people”.

Bell says he knows frustrations remain, especially among young black residents who feel alienated from the police — a problem he says isn’t unique to Ferguson. “It’s going to take some time. No. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but this city is moving in the right direction, and I think anyone who’s being objective and fair can see that”.

One key effort at reform – the recruitment of minority officers – is largely failing, she admitted.

That is because Brown’s body lay facedown in the street for around four and a half hours after the shooting, until it was taken away. The city has started a program to pay for black police candidates to go through the police academy, but has struggled to find any takers, she said.

Fuller, 44, rejects what she calls a media notion that the Ferguson police “have been racist, that we’re imply, that we focused black individuals”.

A large crowd of protesters earlier gathered outside the Ferguson Police Department toe-to-toe with a line of officers, screaming profanities.

The Ferguson Farmer’s Market across town was hopping again.

“It used to be aggression, zero tolerance”, said Chandler. She had regular customers, many of them seniors who shopped at the “church woman’s store” for their Sunday finest. “It allowed us to finally open up our ears to listen to some of them… the ones that really had a goal to being out there”.

The restrained response by Ferguson police served as an illustration of what city leaders said are their efforts to improve relations between the still majority-white police force and the city’s population, which is two-thirds black.

Morris says she was comforted by a letter written by a scholar at a junior excessive that had “adopted” her. “If there isn’t any rain, there is no rainbow”, the woman wrote.