ferguson, mo. New chief says he felt called to help

Associated Press

FERGUSON, Mo.

Ferguson’s new police chief was ready to wrap up a long career with retirement and life as a “beach bum.” Instead, he felt called to help turn around a department that has come under intense scrutiny since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.

Delrish Moss, 51, was sworn in Monday as Ferguson’s first permanent black police chief, just weeks after a federal judge approved the St. Louis County town’s agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that seeks to resolve racial bias in the criminal justice system.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Moss spent his entire 32-year career in Miami, where he grew up.

“My plan was to retire in September and actually spend a lot of time just hanging out on the beach, be a beach bum, because I’ve had responsibility all my life,” Moss said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But there was something about Ferguson that sort of harkened back to the days in Miami when I was a kid living in a riot-torn neighborhood and when I was a young police officer dealing with civil unrest.

“There was something that called to me and said, ‘You have to get up. You can’t sit on the couch. You’ve got to get out there and offer your perspective,’” Moss said.

Brown’s death Aug. 9, 2014, at the hands of officer Darren Wilson thrust the otherwise nondescript suburb into the spotlight and was a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement. The grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Wilson of wrongdoing, and he resigned in November 2014. But the shooting prompted months of protests.