It was into this system that lawyers intervened—seeking to expose structural illegality and reclaim the system for justice rather than revenue. In this project, different types of lawyers, on the inside and outside of the movement, played four essential roles. First, lawyers played a critical information gathering and dissemination role, shaping the public debate, advocating local reforms, and educating affected communities.305 In Ferguson, the ArchCity Defenders—a nonprofit focused on housing and homelessness that began providing free defense to housing clients trapped by failure-to-pay warrants—initiated a court watch program that provided important documentation of the systemic nature of Ferguson’s rights violations.306 That group’s White Paper, issued the week after Brown’s death, galvanized BLM activists who demanded immediate municipal reform and won, in short order, the rescission of some fees and the city’s loathsome failure-to-comply ordinance.307 The ArchCity White Paper also provided much of the documentary evidence of law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse that formed the backbone of the Ferguson DOJ report. Outside of Ferguson, lawyers associated with BLM, particularly Law for Black Lives and the Black Movement Law Project, hosted a series of discussions to publicize and dissect inequalities in the criminal justice system.308 Second, in the wake of the uprising, lawyers from progressive organizations defended activists and protestors. National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attorneys acted as legal observers, provided rights training, and offered representation for jailed protestors in Ferguson and other cities.309 A coalition of fifty organizations, including BLM and the National Conference of Black Lawyers, filed a lawsuit against the FBI and DHS challenging the surveillance of BLM activists.310 In addition, lawyers from the ACLU filed suit against the police department in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the NLG sued the city of Berkeley, California for the use of excessive force in responding to BLM protesters Third, the Obama DOJ launched a series of investigations against police departments in cities with records of abuse.312 In September 2014, the DOJ launched an investigation into the Ferguson Police Department that resulted in the 2015 Ferguson report and a “pattern and practices” lawsuit leading to a consent decree under which the city now operates.313 In 2015, again responding to police killings of unarmed black men, the DOJ initiated investigations of the police departments in Baltimore (which entered a consent decree) and Chicago (which did not); by the beginning of 2017, the DOJ was enforcing twenty police department consent decrees and had four ongoing investigations.314 However, in March 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a sweeping review of twenty police department consent decrees, calling into question their future.315 Fourth, private lawyers brought individual lawsuits on behalf of the families of victims of police violence. The family of Michael Brown entered a settlement with Ferguson for three million dollars—the limits of the department’s insurance policy.316 The Brown family was represented by Florida-based Benjamin Crump, a private civil rights attorney who had also represented the family of Trayvon Martin.317 The family of Eric Garner retained Jonathan C. Moore, who negotiated a settlement with the city of New York for nearly six million without filing a lawsuit.318 These private suits have been buttressed by DOJ investigations. For example, in Ferguson, although the DOJ did not conclude that the police acted illegally in shooting Michael Brown, the department’s consent decree to address the illegal conduct described above was in place when Brown’s family agreed to settle with the police department and the DOJ’s account of Ferguson’s illegal practices lent weight to Brown’s settlement position.319 Finally, class actions against police departments and cities to shut down “debtors’ prisons” have been brought by Equal Justice Under Law, which sued Ferguson and Jennings, Missouri, along with Jackson, Mississippi, for using “their local courts, jails, and police forces to generate millions of dollars in profit off the backs of their most impoverished residents.”320 In collaboration with legal clinics at the St. Louis University School of Law and the University of Mississippi, Equal Justice won settlements shutting down debt practices in Jackson and securing $4.7 million for class members in Jennings.321 Combined, these legal efforts, alongside ongoing grassroots mobilization, have achieved substantive reforms in specific localities, while protecting activists against reprisal. Some cities, like New York, have reduced the use of stop-and-frisk, while Ferguson and other cities have restructured policing practices and curtailed the imposition of lowlevel fines and fees. African American communities have claimed political power in places like Ferguson, while BLM has put criminal justice reform onto the national political agenda.
It was into this system that lawyers intervened—seeking to expose structural illegality and reclaim the system for justice rather than revenue. In this project, different types of lawyers, on the inside and outside of the movement, played four essential roles. First, lawyers played a critical information gathering and dissemination role, shaping the public debate, advocating local reforms, and educating affected communities Ferguson, the ArchCity Defenders—a nonprofit focused on housing and homelessness that began providing free defense to housing clients trapped by failure-to-pay warrants—initiated a court watch program that provided important documentation of the systemic nature of Ferguson’s rights violations.306 That group’s White Paper, issued the week after Brown’s death, galvanized BLM activists who demanded immediate municipal reform and won, in short order, the rescission of some fees and the city’s loathsome failure-to-comply ordinance econd, in the wake of the uprising, lawyers from progressive organizations defended activists and protestors. National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attorneys acted as legal observers, provided rights training, and offered representation for jailed protestors in Ferguson and other cities In addition, lawyers from the ACLU filed suit against the police department in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the NLG sued the city of Berkeley, California for the use of excessive force in responding to BLM protesters Fourth, private lawyers brought individual lawsuits on behalf of the families of victims of police violence. The family of Michael Brown entered a settlement with Ferguson for three million dollars—the limits of the department’s insurance policy These private suits have been buttressed by DOJ investigations. For example, in Ferguson, although the DOJ did not conclude that the police acted illegally in shooting Michael Brown, the department’s consent decree to address the illegal conduct described above was in place when Brown’s family agreed to settle with the police department and the DOJ’s account of Ferguson’s illegal practices lent weight to Brown’s settlement position 319 Finally, class actions against police departments and cities to shut down “debtors’ prisons” have been brought by Equal Justice Under Law, which sued Ferguson and Jennings, Missouri, along with Jackson, Mississippi, for using “their local courts, jails, and police forces to generate millions of dollars in profit off the backs of their most impoverished residents.”320 In collaboration with legal clinics at the St. Louis University School of Law and the University of Mississippi, Equal Justice won settlements shutting down debt practices in Jackson and securing $4.7 million for class members in Jennings.321 Combined, these legal efforts, alongside ongoing grassroots mobilization, have achieved substantive reforms in specific localities, while protecting activists against reprisal. Some cities, like New York, have reduced the use of stop-and-frisk, while Ferguson and other cities have restructured policing practices and curtailed the imposition of lowlevel fines and fees. African American communities have claimed political power in places like Ferguson, while BLM has put criminal justice reform onto the national political agenda.