{"id":3317,"date":"2014-08-14T13:59:35","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3317"},"modified":"2014-08-14T13:59:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:59:35","slug":"st-louis-county-police-to-be-relieved-of-duty-in-ferguson-says-mo-gov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/st-louis-county-police-to-be-relieved-of-duty-in-ferguson-says-mo-gov\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis County Police to be relieved of duty in Ferguson, says Mo. gov."},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Gregg Levine<\/a>, Al Jazeera America
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

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[Updated 2:10 P.M. EDT]<\/strong>\u00a0Appearing at a St. Louis church Thursday, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said there would be an \u201coperational shift\u201d in the way police handled protests in Ferguson. The area suburb has seen four nights of\u00a0community protests and aggressive police response since Saturday when 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will see a different tone,\u201d said Nixon.<\/p>\n

The governor appeared with Sen. Clair McCaskill, D-Mo., who told the audience inside the church that St. Louis County should \u201cdemilitarize the police response.\u201d McCaskill later said,\u00a0\u201cThe police response has been part of the problem,\u201d according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McCaskill also said it was her understanding that the St. Louis County police would no longer be involved the Ferguson response, but did not elaborate.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Missouri State Representative\u00a0Lacy Clay told Bloomberg News that Gov. Nixon had called to say that he was \u00a0\u201con his way to St. Louis now to announce he\u2019s taking \u2026 St. Louis County police out of the situation.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Clay, Nixon said he might ask the FBI to step in. Clay had called this week for intervention by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, saying he did not expect there to be justice for the shooting victim and his family \u201cif the St. Louis County police and prosecutor have a say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clay told Bloomberg that Nixon had finally realized the St. Louis Couny police were \u201cnot going to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department opened an investigation into the Brown shooting on Monday, according to White House spokesman.<\/p>\n

The FBI is an investigative unit; there has been no word on what group will replace the St. Louis Country police on the streets of Ferguson.<\/p>\n

“Given the track record of the last couple days, any outside accountability and oversight of the Ferguson police is a positive development,” said Lee Rowland, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed suit Thursday in St. Louis County to make public copies of police reports surrounding the Brown shooting. The ACLU said such incident reports are open records, and withholding them is a violation under Missouri law.<\/p>\n

Criticism has increased through the week, leveled at both the actions of the police in Ferguson and the apparent inaction of elected officials at the county and state level.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Obama: ‘No excuse’<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Speaking from Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Thursday, President Barack Obama said he had been briefed on the situation in Ferguson and had already asked the Department of Justice and the FBI to \u201cindependently investigate the death of Michael Brown.\u201d The president said he had spoken with Governor Nixon to express his concern over the events of the last five days.<\/p>\n

Obama added that it was \u201cimportant to remember how this started.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost a young man under tragic circumstances,\u201d said Obama.<\/p>\n

The president specifically referenced the actions of the police in Ferguson. \u201cThere is no excuse for police to use excessive force,\u201d Obama said, \u201cor to throw people in jail\u201d for exercising their 1st\u00a0\u00a0amendment rights.<\/p>\n

Referencing the Wednesday detentions in Ferguson of reporters from the Washington Post and Huffington Post, Obama also said “police should not be bullying or arresting journalists” who were simply doing their jobs and reporting on area events.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should hold ourselves to a higher standard,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Gregg Levine, Al Jazeera America click here for original article [Updated 2:10 P.M. EDT]\u00a0Appearing at a St. Louis church Thursday, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said there would be an \u201coperational shift\u201d in the way police handled protests in Ferguson. The area suburb has seen four nights of\u00a0community protests and aggressive police response since Saturday when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3320,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317\/revisions\/3320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}