Threats made against witnesses who backed the account of police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown should be investigated by the Justice Department, according to Jeff Roorda, a spokesman for the St. Louis Police Officers Association.
"It's very real and it's scary when you're trying to find the truth and trying to reach justice," Roorda said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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The black teen's fatal shooting by the white cop sparked race riots in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, and triggered a Justice Department investigation.
The Justice Department found racism in the Ferguson police force, but also found six of the most credible witnesses in the shooting incident were afraid to testify in support of Wilson. One witness said signs posted in the neighborhood warned "snitches get stitches."
Roorda, a former member of the Missouri state House of Representatives, said with those vital witnesses terrified of retribution, "then how do we get to the truth of the matter?"
He said several "deplorable" racist emails the Justice Department found had been exchanged by police department employees — and those individuals deserved their speedy dismissal.
But Roorda said while the report did rightly zero in on some management and enforcement problems within the Ferguson force, "I never really saw in the Justice Department report how that connects to an environment of racial bias."
"We have three individual employees who acted badly and we have some structural problems of the court that probably unduly disadvantaged black residents there and in the surrounding communities," he said.
"I don't see the connection to a racial — a racially-motivated operation."
Roorda believes Attorney General Eric Holder wants to "dismantle" and rebuild the Ferguson police force.
"That community will probably have a black mayor in the next election and a black police chief next time there's a vacancy there and more representation on the city council of African-Americans," he said.
"So the electoral process is going to work its way through these things and now you're going to take control out of the hands of people that are going to be duly elected."
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