The Ferguson Report: Place Holder.

I would have liked to have covered the Department of Justice (DoJ) report into Ferguson, Missouri but carrying Obama's war against ISIL is taking up a lot of my time. However there are a couple of important things I didn't mention yesterday.

I should probably start by pointing out that the report was released on Wednesday March 4th (4/3/15) which was just three days before the 50th anniversary of the Selma march which took place on Saturday March 7th (7/3/15). This was purely intentional and should have acted as a warning sign of the reports clear political bias.

One of the reports main findings was that despite having a population of around 21,000 Ferguson issued but failed to execute 9,000 arrest warrants in 2013 a figure which rose to 16,000 in 2014 following the Micheal Brown shooting and DoJ becoming involved. The report obviously concentrated on emotive case studies rather then hard facts so didn't offer a breakdown of why these warrants had been issued and to whom. Therefore it is theoretically possible that all 25,000 warrants were issued to one really prolific offender.

However it is more likely that the majority of them were issued after a person had been summoned to Court for a misdemeanour offence - such as a traffic violation - but then failed to appear in Court. That failure to appear represents a separate criminal offence of contempt of Court which is considered such a serious offence it can result in indefinite detention - basically life in prison. After all if the accused don't turn up in Court then a legal system that is based entirely around an accused being given the right to defend themselves in Court falls to pieces.

So what the report found was that Ferguson's black residents hold an almost complete contempt for the legal system to the point where they don't seem to think that the law applies to them. This attitude got worse after the DoJ began its investigation and will obviously cloud their interaction with any aspect of the legal system including the police and their interactions with a wider laws based society.

The report also found that largely these felony arrest warrants were not being enforced by the police in Ferguson. Quite how a population where 16,000 people could be quite properly arrested and jailed but haven't been can claim they are being persecuted by the police is completely beyond me.

So the DoJ report actually found that there is a ingrained culture of lawlessness amongst Ferguson's black residents and that the cities police and Courts are far too tolerant of that culture. The fact that US Attorney General has looked at that evidence and concluded that Ferguson's black residents are being racially oppressed by law enforcement is why the report is considered nothing but Holder's personal opinion. That is why it needs to be considered by an independent body such as a Court before it is recognised and acted upon.

One thing that will further reduce Holder's credibility during the process is that fact that he has already tendered his resignation as Attorney General and that resignation has been accepted by all parties. Specifically on August 17th (17/8/14) Holder ordered a federal autopsy of Micheal Brown implying that Ferguson's autopsy had been carried out incorrectly as part of a cover-up.

That federal autopsy was completed in the week beginning September 22nd (22/9/14) and it completely agreed with the findings of the Ferguson autopsy. Three days later on September 25th (25/9/14) Eric Holder tendered his resignation.

Unfortunately Holder has decided that he will remain in post until his replacement was confirmed by Congress. Sadly US President Obama has nominated Loretta Lynch as his replacement. Due to her personal friendship with Holder and her involvement with Al Sharpton during the deeply flawed Eric Garner investigation Lynch has proved herself to unsuitable to hold such a high public office and therefore is extremely unlikely to ever be confirmed by Congress.

Therefore I think it's time for Holder's resignation to come into effect and for the DoJ to be run by acting head while Obama has a little think about his decision to nominate Lynch.

16:20 on 13/3/15 (UK date).