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the justice department confirmed what residents of ferguson, missouri have long claimed, that the ferguson police department routinely disregards the rights of the people it is supposed to protect, especially those who are african-american. the department of justice found while african-americans make up only 67% of ferguson's population, 85% of people pulled over 90% of people issued tickets and 93% of people arrested were african-american. 88% of physical force was used against african-americans. and when police dogs have been ordered to bite they have bitten african-americans exclusively including an unarmed 16-year-old boy suspected of stealing a car who was dragged from his closet by his legs by a police dog and tased three times while the dog was still biting
our memory and history for two key reasons. one is about that struggle for the vote, but that has been a long struggle here in selma. it's really about that misuse of police power and kind of the whole country looking at it and saying this is obscene. this is not american this is not what we stand for. and although the individual officer in ferguson was not found culpable for federal charges, nonetheless, that report suggests that there's a set of patterns and practices in that police department which are similarly the sort of thing that this should not be america. who should be responsible for addressing that? >> we all are. it's bigger than ferguson. in my family i have three african-american stepsons and when my husband when they turned 16 years old, he had to take them to the police department and tell them where they lived and to quit pulling them over because they were african-american in a majority white neighborhood. so our family understands this.
>> senator mccaskill, thank you for joining us. i know you're part of a historic delegation here particularly for democrats who are here in selma today, why is it necessary to be here? >> first of all, it's important to celebrate a pivotal moment in our history, which bloody sunday was in terms of our country really standing for what our constitutional principles said. secondly, our voting rights are under attack again. in my state the missouri legislature has passed legislation to make it more difficult to vote. making sure that it is easy to express your opinion about the government in. the united states of america. you have to remain vigilant. and obviously, i'm very focused on the report that came out from the department of justice on ferguson this week because that represents another bat thal we have to fight for equal justice under the law. >> this moment is burned into
so history has crashed into the present in terms of what's going on in ferguson. >> let me ask you about the three ferguson employees who sent racist e-mails who were fired or resigned and that includes a top court clerk. is that enough? >> it's not only not enough it's almost ludicrous. so we have an unarmed teenage boy who is dead and the person responsible for his death has not, in fact, faced any consequences consequences. someone forwards an e-mail and he is fired. frankly the entire department needs to be dismantled. ferguson is no worse or any better than any municipalities in the u.s. unless we are thinking about how we can systemically change from the top to the bottom then firing one or two people won't address the institutional racism that is obviously there's a breeding ground right there. >> i want to go back to melissa
it's not just that they are being racially profiled. it's racial profiling that's funding the towns that they live in. there's a a very serious revenue incentive there when you have a town of 21,000 people that budgets perspectively collect 2 2.7 million in fines and fees from their municipal courts. and i would say this is not just about ferguson. it would be a mistake to focus the attention solely on ferguson. >> i want you to say more about that in terms of what you know of the region. are these abuses limited to ferguson or how widespread are they? >> i mean let's not pretend. this is a region wide problem, it's an american problem, frankly. this is happening in georgia, it's happening in mississippi, it's happening in alabama, it's happening in california. we have effectively criminalized being black and being poor in
america and the reason the courts can get away with that and the policing can go on in that fashion is because unfortunately in america we don't listen to what poor people tell us and what communities of color tell us. that's got to change, and i would hope we won't continue to look at the doj report just about ferguson. we substitute whatever name of the town we live in and take seriously the allegations that are made there. >> when you read the report and listening to mr. harvey, this is stunning, really stunning. i want to ask you how do we get to this place where revenue generation trumps public safety? >> profit has always been more important than personhood in this country. the note of black people as commodities has been a key driver of revenue. all of this makes good economic sense. this is sound economic policy. we don't want to admit it we don't want to talk about it that way, but corporate metrics that
there to protect and serve. that is in many ways, the lesson of selma. the lesson of selma was precisely that you had had to use all available human resources, people power, to challenge authority at every level of society. i hope that the president himself steps outside of his official position and recognizes that can't be rhetoric about people being inspired. they could help to exacerbate inequality. they could be inspired to become lawyers and defend corporations that systemically in some cases create structures that are polluting environments or are not actually as we heard earlier from the center of democracy encouraging full employment. so there's a lot at stake in terms of the lessons that we take from this moment in selma. i also want to add that the story of selma as a metaphor for america does match ferguson as a metaphor for america because the systemic abuse that we see
coming out of ferguson through the doj report is matched around the country, whether we look at the percentage of whites serving on police forces over african-american residents, whether we look at the racism that exists in the mouths of officers. 20 officers were disciplined for referring to black people as animals just a few years ago. we also know that mettic us are driving policing. so outside of miami, we know that people there, the entire population was essentially systemically subject to racial profiling just like in the case of new york. >> and as we'll learn later on reasons for ferguson police department. right now we're going back to selma, alabama and melissa harris-perry who joins us live from the staging ground for the 1965 march. she's joined by two pivotal figures, diane nash and bob moses. >> dorian bob moses here with
it's not that the police on their own unleashed anger and rage and violence. it's an entire system. the ferguson, you can only call it a scheme which was to raise additional revenue for the city by accessively ticketing citizens and targeting african-americans for that system. >> dorian i want to bring in you and the panel as well. >> thank you, melissa and joy. i want to take a step back and ask a big question that is why are the police at the heart of so many key moments in civil rights history? >> because they are on the front lines of racial and social control of america. by that i mean poor people. when we're talking about the african-american experience, there's no moment in u.s. history where police officers were not on the front lines of regulating freedom and opportunity in this country. absolute fact. let me connect you back to selma because it's fascinating in the report they u point out that not only do they have systemic bias
that's the context. >> yolanda, how was the movement trying to change the system that was just described and what was the fight against racial discrimination about in that moment? >> it was about a number of things. i think we often look back in the '60s and think it begin there is. but we can go back 150 years prior to that and african-americans have consistently been trying to basically shake loose their chains. so at the moment that we're seeing whether it's selma or ferguson, folks are trying to get free. e folks are trying to fundamentally be considered equal citizens of this country. i essentially see this as people trying to change not only legislation, voting rights but people are also working about a heart condition. you have to change how people are perceiveing other people. how they are looking at them, whether or not they can feel that they are, in fact, equal to them. so there's a heart condition that's a part of this change as well as the legislative and political piece. those all go hand in hand.