Clay: Trump presidency won't impact Ferguson settlement

ST. LOUIS -- The election of Donald Trump as president should have no effect on the settlement agreement between the city of Ferguson and the U.S. Department of Justice, Democratic U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay of St. Louis said.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Clay spoke Thursday at a St. Louis forum on criminal justice reform.

"Remember, it will still be career professionals in the civil-rights division" responsible for enforcing the consent decree, he said. He said they are lawyers who work for the government and are not subject to replacement by a new president.

The city of Ferguson and the Justice Department reached a settlement in March requiring significant reforms in the police and courts, including body cameras for police and diversity training for officers. The Justice Department investigation was spurred by unrest that followed the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August 2014.

A St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department declined to charge Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot Brown, who was black and unarmed. But the protests led to scrutiny of Ferguson's police and courts and findings of racial bias against blacks.

Within days of a scathing Justice Department report in March 2015, Ferguson's police chief, city manager and municipal judge resigned. The Justice Department filed a suit that led to the settlement earlier this year.

Clay said it would be "rather difficult" to alter the agreement, "especially if you have the parties agreeing."

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III, also speaking at the forum, said the city would not try to renegotiate with a Justice Department after Trump takes over in January.

"I believe wholeheartedly that this is a model that other cities should implement," Knowles, a Republican, said. "I think if we tried to renegotiate something, that would tear the community apart again. Moving forward, we'll stick with it."

Some in the crowd were more skeptical of what could happen to the agreement under Trump.

"It took people in the street for days and days protesting in Ferguson to bring the eye of the DOJ," said Michael-John Voss, co-founder of the not-for-profit law group ArchCity Defenders.

"That eye is going to be closed," he said, especially if Trump chooses former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as U.S. attorney general.

St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson said Giuliani-style policing would not be coming to the St. Louis area.

"Stop-and-frisk without probable cause is not something that law enforcement should be engaged in," he said.

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com