[I] can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease. Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation pract… - Eric Holder

The promise I made when I went to Ferguson and at the time that we launched our investigation was not that we would arrive at a particular outcome, but rather that we would pursue the facts, wherever they led. Our investigation has been both fair and rigorous from the start. It has proceeded independently of the local investigation that concluded in November. And it has been thorough: as part of a wide-ranging examination of the evidence, federal investigators interviewed and re-interviewed eyewitnesses and other individuals claiming to have relevant information and independently canvassed more than 300 residences to locate and interview additional witnesses.

As these discussions have unfolded, I have repeatedly seen that – although the concerns we are focused on today may be particularly acute in Ferguson – they are not confined to any one city, state, or geographic region. They implicate questions about fairness and trust that are national in scope. And they point not to insurmountable divides between people of different perspectives, but to the shared values – and the common desire for peace, for security, and for public safety – that binds together police as well as protestors.

Between October 2012 and October 2014, despite making up only 67 percent of the population, African Americans accounted for a little over 85 percent of all traffic stops by the Ferguson Police Department. African Americans were twice as likely as white residents to be searched during a routine traffic stop, even though they were 26 percent less likely to carry contraband. Between October 2012 and July 2014, 35 black individuals – and zero white individuals – received five or more citations at the same time. During the same period, African Americans accounted for fully 85 percent of the total charges brought by the Ferguson Police Department. African Americans made up over 90 percent of those charged with a highly-discretionary offense described as “Manner of Walking Along Roadway.” And the use of dogs by Ferguson police appears to have been exclusively reserved for African Americans; in every case in which Ferguson police records recorded the race of a person bit by a police dog, that person was African American.