Advertisement

Michael Brown's Family Suing Cop and Ferguson

Michael Brown's Family Suing Cop and Ferguson

Michael Brown's family are to sue Ferguson, Missouri, and the former policeman who shot dead their son.

Lawyers said during a news conference in the St Louis suburb they are to launch a civil wrongful death lawsuit over the fatal shooting in August last year.

Flanked by the teen's parents, Michael Brown Sr and Lesley McSpadden, attorneys did not say when the case would be filed.

The announcement comes a day after the US Justice Department said there was no evidence to bring civil rights charges against former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson.

Federal officials also released the results of a second inquiry which found "substantial evidence of racial bias" in the local police department .

Lawyer Anthony Gray said: "Wilson did not have to shoot and kill Mike Brown Jr in broad daylight in the manner that he did.

"The choice to use deadly force was unreasonable and unnecessary."

The officer said the unarmed teen hit him in the face and reached for his gun during a tussle after he told him to stop jaywalking.

Darren Wilson was cleared by a grand jury in November and later resigned from the department.

In the protests against police brutality that swept the nation after the shooting, "hands up don't shoot" became a rallying cry.

But the Justice Department findings said witness accounts that the teen had his hands up were "inaccurate" and "inconsistent".

The other investigation found black people in Ferguson were subjected to excessive police force, baseless traffic stops and citations for minor infractions such as jaywalking.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said the findings demanded "immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action".

The report said city officials routinely urged police to generate revenue through enforcement actions against the town's mostly black population.

Black people were 68% less likely to have their cases dismissed by a municipal court judge.

The inquiry found that racist emails had also been sent among Ferguson police officials, including ones mocking President Barack Obama.

Another joked about an abortion by an African-American woman being a means of crime control.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said two police department employees had been put on administrative leave and a third was fired.