Ferguson drops charges against man after 5 years; he says they cost him his job and home

By Robert Patrick St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Robert Patrick

4 hrs ago

FERGUSON

Fred Watson won a small victory in what has been a long battle Monday. ¶ More than five years have passed since the Navy veteran was held at gunpoint by a Ferguson police officer before being arrested, having his car towed and being jailed. ¶ More than two years have passed since Watson was featured, without being named, in a Justice Department report that blasted police in Ferguson for targeting African-Americans, making unconstitutional stops and arrests, and treating the city’s police and court system like an ATM.

On Monday, all nine municipal charges against Watson were quietly dropped.

The Ferguson prosecutor did not notify Watson nor his lawyers with the nonprofit ArchCity Defenders law firm and offered no explanation, said lawyer Blake Strode.

The prosecutor, Lee Clayton Goodman, told the Post-Dispatch that Watson’s case fell within the guidelines set out in Ferguson’s consent decree with the Justice Department, in which the city agreed to dismiss certain municipal court cases.

After being charged, Watson lost his security clearance, then his six-figure job with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, then his home.

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After 5 years, Ferguson drops charges against black man cited as victim of biased policing

By Derek Hawkins September 13 at 5:41 AM

When the Department of Justice investigated the Ferguson, Mo., police department in the wake of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by an officer, it uncovered widespread racial bias and constitutional violations in the years leading up to his death. Officers had systematically targeted African Americans in stops and arrests, the department’s 2015 report found, and generated revenue from them by aggressively enforcing small violations of the city’s code.

In one particularly alarming example, investigators described a 32-year-old black man who was sitting in his parked car after a game of pickup basketball in the summer of 2012 when an officer approached and demanded his identification. When the man asked why, the officer ordered him out of the car at gunpoint, then arrested him and charged him with a range of minor municipal violations. The charges included failure to wear a seat belt, even though his car was parked.

The man in question was Fred Watson, a Navy veteran and father who was working as a cybersecurity contractor with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. His encounter with the officer stirred public outrage, and his case came to epitomize, along with Brown’s death, the police department’s well-documented hostility to African Americans.

Now, almost five years after Watson’s arrest, Ferguson prosecutors have abruptly dropped all the charges against him.

The decision came in a one-page filing Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Prosecutors didn’t offer an explanation, and Watson’s lawyers said they weren’t even notified of the move.

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