article_snippet: (CNN)The Ferguson Police Department has demonstrated a pattern of racial discrimination, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
article_snippet: St. Louis Alderman Antonio French said the police department's behavior amounted to "taxation by citation.
article_snippet: St. Louis Alderman Antonio French told CNN the arrests affected not just Ferguson residents but also residents of nearby communities who pass through Ferguson en route to other locales in the area.
article_snippet: the Justice Department:
article_snippet: The statistics sound damning, but former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks, who dealt with the Justice Department during St. Louis Alderman Antonio French five-year tenure as chief, said, "The numbers can be deceiving because the population is overwhelmingly black.
article_snippet: Parks served as chief in LA from 1997 to 2002, and after the Justice Department determined in 2000 that the LAPD had engaged "in a pattern or practice of excessive force, false arrests and unreasonable searches and seizures," he had to overhaul the Justice Department, combating corruption and even jailing former police officers.
article_snippet: Attorney General Eric Holder wanted to bring civil rights cases against Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown in August, and Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012 -- but neither case panned out.
article_snippet: the report may be Attorney General Eric Holder's way to "extract a pound of flesh, if you will, from the Ferguson Police Department.
article_snippet: (Also Wednesday, the Ferguson Police Department closed the Ferguson Police Department investigation into Wilson, declining to bring criminal charges against Wilson.)
article_snippet: When Ferguson was a kid, St. Louis police walked the streets and handed kids Cardinals baseball cards, so Ferguson's seen real community-oriented policing.
article_snippet: You don't want to tell his kids St. Louis police are bad.
article_snippet: But St. Louis police?
article_snippet: But the report on the police department could provide a silver lining.
article_snippet: We are encouraged that the DOJ will hold the Ferguson Police Department accountable for the pattern of racial bias and profiling they found in they handling of interactions with people of color," a statement saying they were disappointed that Wilson would not face federal charges in their son's death said.
article_snippet: It is We hope that through this action, true change will come not only in Ferguson, but around the country.