By Sara Sidner
CNN
(CNN) — [Breaking news update, posted at 4:36 p.m. ET]
Embattled Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigned Wednesday, a Ferguson City Hall source said. The resignation is effective immediately and comes one week after a scathing Department of Justice report exposed problems in the city’s policing tactics. Ferguson City Manager John Shaw stepped down Tuesday following the release of the critical report that mentioned both men by name.
[Previous story, posted at 4:10 p.m. ET]
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson will resign on Wednesday, a source in the Ferguson, Missouri, City Hall told CNN.
In the past, the police chief has said he’d considered resigning, but stayed put up to now.
Ferguson City Manager John Shaw stepped down Tuesday, following a scathing Department of Justice report that exposed problems in the city’s policing tactics. The report mentioned both men by name.
Jackson did not respond Wednesday to repeated requests from CNN for comment.
The Justice Department’s report faulted Ferguson’s officers for seeing residents as “sources of revenue,” a practice that disproportionately targeted African-Americans.
The investigators also found evidence of racist jokes being sent around by Ferguson police and court officials.
Two police officers resigned last week and the city’s top court clerk was fired in connection with racist emails, city spokesman Jeff Small said on Friday.
Last week Jackson declined to comment on details in the report.
“I need to have time to really analyze this report so I can comment on it,” Jackson told CNN Thursday.
When asked what he planned to do about the report’s findings, the chief said he would “take action as necessary.”
Asked whether that meant he would remain at the department, Jackson repeated himself: “I’m gonna take action where necessary.”
When Jackson became Ferguson’s police chief in 2010, it was supposed to be a relatively easy way to cap his career in law enforcement.
After some 30 years with the St. Louis County Police Department, serving as commander of a drug task force and SWAT team supervisor, being a police chief of a smaller department should have been less stressful.
The shooting of Michael Brown last year changed everything.
Brown, an African-American teen, was unarmed when he was shot by a white Ferguson police officer. The incident exposed feelings of distrust between Ferguson’s black community and its police department, which is overwhelmingly white.
Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown, won’t face any criminal charges for the shooting. In November, a grand jury decided not to indict him. Last week the Justice Department said Wilson’s actions “do not constitute prosecutable violations” of federal civil rights law. He resigned from the department in November, citing security concerns.
But that hasn’t stopped criticism of the department from local residents and top federal officials.
Even before the Justice Department report was finished, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said it was “pretty clear that the need for wholesale change in that department is appropriate.”
Over the past six months, Jackson has defended his officers and vowed to work with the community.
“I intend to see this thing through. And I’ve been working with a lot of community members to work on some progressive changes that will bring the community together and to open up dialogue and getting us all talking about serious issues and actually creating solutions to problems,” he told CNN in November.
CNN’s Jason Carroll and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
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