Michael Brown

Though the U.S. Justice Department declined to prosecute officer Darren Wilson, it issued a scathing 102-page report on Wednesday highlighting racial bias in the Ferguson police department and a system of using law enforcement to extract money from African American residents

For more than three months, the grand jury — made up of seven men and five women, nine white and three black — heard evidence into the shooting. They met 25 times and heard from 60 witnesses.

FERGUSON, Missouri – Violent protests and looting erupted in the U.S. town of Ferguson on Monday after a grand jury chose not to press charges against a white officer who shot dead a black teen.

Five current and one former member of the Ferguson police force face pending federal lawsuits claiming they used excessive force. The lawsuits, as well as more than a half-dozen internal investigations, include claims that individual officers separately hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking his family mailbox, pistol-whipped children and used a stun gun on a mentally ill man who died as a result.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered a review of federal programs that supplied nearly half a billion dollars in military equipment to municipal police departments last year, amid criticism of the heavily armed response by local law enforcement agencies to protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

They typically begin with an incident of racially tinged police abuse. Outraged members of the black community organize protests, the police overreact, and the protests become more violent and threatening.

Riot police, backed up by reinforcements in armored vehicles, hurled smoke and tear gas canisters and slowly moved in to break up the crowd, which local media said numbered around 200. Seven people were arrested.

FERGUSON, Missouri – The governor of the U.S. state of Missouri declared a state of emergency and curfew Saturday following race-tinged violence in the suburb where an officer shot dead an unarmed black teenager.

Since the death on Saturday of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, shot dead by a police officer, Ferguson has exploded into a seething morass of urban riots. But it is the police response to the unrest that has unsettled many across the United States.