article_snippet: Cecil Smith is the police chief in Sanford, Florida, another community rocked by racial tensions and poor police-community relations after the high-profile shooting of a black teenager -- the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin.
article_snippet: -- another community remains deeply scarred by the events last year, after the August shooting death of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown by a white Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson, and the November decision by the St. Louis County Grand Jury not to charge Wilson, who later resigned.
article_snippet: Occasionally violent protests and sometimes heavy-handed responses by police deepened divisions and distrust.
article_snippet: -- The police department was already groaning under the epic weight of months of nearly constant protest and last week's release of a damning Department of Justice report that found evidence of discriminatory conduct on the part of a white Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson officials.
article_snippet: While no police officers were involved in the Trayvon Martin shooting, anger over no police officers perceived failure to arrest the teenager's killer, George Zimmerman, pushed relations in the community to a boiling point, eventually resulting in the firing of Chief Bill Lee.
article_snippet: Zimmerman eventually was arrested, and a jury acquitted Zimmerman.
article_snippet: There's going to be a lot of hostility in Ferguson for a long time," Ferguson said.
article_snippet: You want to find the best candidate to be police chief," said attorney Benjamin Crump, who has represented the families of both Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.  