The chief is the sixth official to resign in the week following the report that clears Darren Wilson but indicts his former department of racist practices. And just after that, two Ferguson officers were shot. Things are still hot.

ABC News

Two police officers were shot during overnight protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis County Police Department said.

A St. Louis County officer, 41, was struck in the shoulder, while a Webster Groves police officer, 32, was struck in the face, said county police chief John Belmar, who spoke to media members outside of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

“These police officers were standing there, and they were shot just because they were police officers,” Belmar said.

The officers are listed in serious condition, police said.

Belmar said at least three shots were fired from an undetermined location north or northwest of the Ferguson Police Department building.

“We have seen in law enforcement that this is a very, very, very dangerous environment for the officers to work in regarding the amount of gunfire that we have experienced up there,” Belmar said.

Embattled Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson resigns

MSNBC

Embattled Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson announced his resignation on Wednesday afternoon — a week after a blistering Justice Department report revealed his department regularly engaged in racially biased policing.

The police leader’s resignation is the latest shake up in a story that first gained national attention more than six months ago, when former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed black teen Michael Brown Jr. The federal report also uncovered a shocking police and court system that unfairly targeted black residents with use of force and arrests to bolster the city’s budget.

“I’m confident the city will pull through these trying times,” Jackson told NBC News shortly after the city announced his resignation. “The people are committed to Ferguson.”

Jackson’s resignation will take effect on March 19.

“It is with profound sadness that I am announcing I am stepping down from my position as chief of police for the city of Ferguson Missouri,” Jackson wrote in a resignation letter first published by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this great city and to serve with all of you. I will continue to assist the city in anyway I

Hours after the announcement, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles II said that, for months, city leaders including Jackson had discussed the “best way forward” and how they could “lessen the frustrations during the unrest, how we could try to bring this community together to move this city forward.” He added that Jackson voluntarily resigned.

State. Rep. Courtney Curtis, whose district includes Ferguson, noted that “It’s a nice next step after the resignation of the city manager, but it’s still not enough. Anything short of the mayor’s resignation to change the tone and deal with the city is not enough.”

Curtis added that “Leadership truly sets the tone and to say that people did all of this without the mayor knowing does not make sense. And as of right now, the mayor still controls the council and that gives him control over the city manager.”

Jackson’s decision to step down comes one day after John Shaw, the city’s most powerful official who oversaw the city’s finances, submitted his resignation to the Ferguson City Council. Shaw was blasted in the DOJ’s report as a cog in a machine that used the targeted arrest and fining of African-American residents to boost the city’s revenue.

The report, released in conjunction with a scathing speech by Holder, who described the scheme as toxic and dangerous, also lead to the resignation of two police officers who were initially placed on administrative leave. The city’s clerk of courts was also fired. In addition, a municipal judge named by the federal report as contributing to the state-wide system of exploiting black residents for revenue-generating purposes also resigned. 

The DOJ, which launched the investigation in the wake of Brown’s death, found that city leaders created a toxic environment poised to explode in a city that has a large black population but an almost entirely white police force. Among the report’s many revelations were racist emails sent by police and court officials via official email addresses.

One of the two police officers who were officially rebuked for sending racist emails — Capt. Rick Henke and Sgt. William Mudd — resigned a day after the release of the report. Sgt. Mudd had been Wilson’s supervisor. Mary Ann Twitty, clerk of the Municipal Court, was fired just hours after Holder announced the Justice Department’s findings.

The heads could continue to roll. Calls continue for the resignation of Mayor James Knowles III, who in the days after the shooting of Brown and subsequent protests said that the city did not have a race problem. He later walked back the comments. 

“It’s not enough to have the chief step down. The culture is still there, the culture has been there. Just because that person leaves doesn’t mean the culture leaves,” Curtis said. “While I don’t want to say disband the police department, we have to take extreme measures to disband the culture. As resistant as they’ve been since August, I think it’s goingto take more than one resignation to disband that culture.”

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who has openly criticized Jackson, the mayor and Gov. Jay Nixon, said in a statement that “A fish rots from the head down.” 

“The DOJ report revealed that the instructions came from the top. Make up the rules. Make sure your friends are exempt. Arrest and fine all the black people. Now two of the three heads of this embarrassment have left,” Nadal said. “Your move, Mayor.” 

Jackson has been a lightening rod from the outset of the crisis in Ferguson. Though he handed over the investigation into Brown’s killing almost immediately, he was the face of a department that residents and protesters said has been nothing short of brutal in interactions with blacks generally and with protesters spe
cifically.

The police chief also initially said Wilson wasn’t aware that Brown was a suspect at the time he confronted the teen and a friend. Later, the same day, Jackson changed his story and said that Wilson was indeed aware of the incident at the store.

Civil rights and civil liberties groups criticized the department for not following its own policy in terms of filing proper documentation of use-of-force incidents. The Ferguson Police Department has yet to release a full report on Browns shooting. He offered a months-late apology to Brown’s family and peaceful protesters caught in the cross-fire of rubber bullets and tear gas from police. And under his watch, police officers, including a supervisor, sent along racist jokes that included references to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, as well as one that referenced the abortion of a black child as a form of crime control.

Ahead of the announcement of Jackson’s resignation, Jeff Small, a Ferguson spokesman said the city is taking the fallout from the DOJ’s report seriously.

“I think all along the mayor, certainly many times, has said on television and in print articles that based on the DOJ’s report … ‘they are taking this very seriously,’” Small said. “We are looking to do our own internal investigations. Obviously they pointed out some problems that are very serious and we are concerned. We are going to make changes as they are needed.”

Many black residents, local politicians and protesters say the entire local police and court systems need to be overhauled, following Holder’s call for “wholesale” change.

“I think it is extremely positive to see that all of the changes that have happened in Ferguson are starting to happen. They’re happening piece by piece, but it’s starting to happen,” Adolphus Pruitt, head of the St. Louis NAACP branch said. “The question is when this is over with, will the pieces add up to the wholesale change that’s needed or will it be only a piecemeal response to the report.”

The 103-page DOJ report, the culmination of a months-long investigation found the city police department cultivated a culture of racial hostility that included unreasonable searches and seizures, racial slurs, unjust stops and the excessive use of force against black residents. The Ferguson municipal court system was denounced for fining policies that used exorbitant fines and fees levied against black residents to fill the city’s coffers and bolster the municipal budget.

Jackson has faced criticism and repeated calls for his removal after his handling of the shooting’s aftermath, when Ferguson was wracked by protests and unrest. Rumors of his resignation and the dismantling of the police department have hovered over the city for months.

The chief previously denied any knowledge of a behind-the-scenes effort to negotiate his ouster, amid reports last October of a possible backdoor deal being brokered between local, state and federal officials that would include his resignation as part of a plan to overhaul the department.

In late November, a St. Louis grand jury declined to indict Wilson. And just last week, the Department of Justice, in an investigation separate from that focused on the police department as a whole, found no evidence to disprove Wilson’s claims that he killed the teen in self-defense.

However, the DOJ’s investigation of the entire Ferguson police department has validated claims by many black residents who say they’ve essentially been terrorized by local cops, that they were routinely arrested and detained without cause, and that the courts were complicate in oppressing poor black residents. Community organizers say the federal report validated what black residents have long said, but without major reforms, the status quo might remain.

“These things have been going on, they knew the Department of Justice was going to uncover these things when they did their investigation,” said Patricia Bynes, a Democratic Committeewoman in Ferguson who has been critical of city leaders. “Yet, no one prior to the release of the report stepped down, resigned. If anything prior to this the message coming from the city was, we haven’t done anything wrong and we’re not going to budge.”

Bynes has called the latest shake-up “a first step.” 

“It could be something positive because who is to say the person who comes behind them is the same way or worse,” Bynes said. “It’s a positive first step but it’s what the follow up will be. And it’s up to the community at this point to keep the pressure on.”