FBI investigator: We are not the officer-involved shooting review board

What can we expect from the federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Mike Brown?

December 10, 2014 8:15PM ET

by The Fault Lines Digital Team

When St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced that a grand jury didn’t believe there was enough evidence to pursue charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, many thought that any chance for justice for the Brown family had evaporated.

In fact, there are two venues for them to pursue some accountability for the loss of their son.

They can file a civil suit alleging that Wilson or the Ferguson Police Department is to blame for the wrongful death of Mike Brown. Or they can pursue federal civil rights charges, which would assert that Wilson was violating Brown’s civil rights in his capacity as a police officer, or in legalese “under the color of the law.” An investigation ordered by outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice is currently underway looking into the possibility of a civil rights violation in Brown’s death.

Jeffrey S. Sallet is the national chief of public corruption and civil rights for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Basically, he heads the section of the FBI devoted to investigating corruption by any public officials (law enforcement officers and elected representatives) that violate a person’s civil rights. He also oversees international human rights violations, like instances of genocide or other war crimes.

Fault Lines sat down with Sallet to learn more about what is involved in a civil rights investigation. While he would not speak directly about the Ferguson case, he was able to talk more broadly about how the feds work to re-examine facts and search for truth.

An edited version of the conversation appears below.

What is a civil rights violation as it pertains to law enforcement?

The civil rights violation as it pertains to law enforcement would be a color of law violation that would be willfully depriving someone of their rights under official duty of color of law. So it doesn't have to be a police officer. It can be any type of public official—state, local or federal official—that is using their position to willfully deprive someone of their rights.

So for example, excessive force by a police officer would be the deprivation of the civil rights of the person that they were using the excessive force on. There are a myriad of violations that would fall under color of law. Any type of sexual activity, trying to use your position as a law enforcement officer to gain sexual favor, or any other types of abuses such as planting evidence or fabricating a crime scene or lying to get somebody convicted, would all be violations under color of law related to law enforcement.

Al Sharpton (far right), flanked by Michael Brown Sr. and the family's attorney Anthony Gray, speaks at a news conference the day after the announcement of the grand jury verdict in the shooting of Mike Brown.

Sebastian Walker for Al Jazeera America

There is a national conversation now about young black males being killed in officer-involved shootings. In a lot of the communities where recent shootings have happened, people have lost faith in law enforcement. Do you see the point of FBI investigations as, in a way, safeguarding justice?

Without minimizing the concerns of the community, because they are legitimate concerns, there are all types of color of law violations, and all types of things that we look at. And because the police officer was white and the subject was African American or vice versa, that's not a factor. We look at the totality.

We do not conduct investigations because people yell at us. We do not conduct investigations because the media is asking us to. We don't conduct investigations because a specific group asked us to. We conduct investigations to get to the truth. Our job is to be fact finders. Simple and that’s it. Our job is to uphold justice, to be a neutral party. We are not the advocate for the victim. We are not the advocate for the subject. And I think it is really important to stress that.

The reason that the American public have faith in our investigations, is for that exact reason. There's many times that we conduct an investigation into civil rights and the conclusion is that someone's civil rights were not violated. Or that the case is not prosecuted. But what we do is we conduct an independent and thorough meticulous investigation. And we cover all the bases. So we are not leaving any ambiguity out there.

Who makes the call when there is a federal investigation into an officer-involved shooting? Who decides that this is going to go federal?

There are a lot of factors that go into whether something goes federal. The FBI and the Department of Justice do not need to be involved in every single officer shooting case. And one of the things I want to stress is that the execution of deadly force, or any force by a police officer, does not equate to a color of law violation. There have to be aggravating factors, which is the willful deprivation of rights, meaning it's excessive.

I'll give you this example: The local D.A.'s office or the local prosecutor's office will conduct a shooting investigation and determine what those facts are. If we are watching that investigation, determine there are additional steps that can be taken or that justice is not being served or hasn't been served, we can take a second look at it. But it's not an automatic that because a police shooting has occurred that we'll look into it.

So how do you decide which ones to observe?

If there is information or an allegation that there was a potential deprivation of rights—so there's an allegation of excessive force. Say a person was injured during the course of an arrest, they may complain directly through an attorney to the FBI, they may complain themselves to the FBI. There could be a non-governmental organization such as the NAACP that would complain to the FBI that there was a violation of this individual's civil rights.

There are a lot of factors that go into us making that assessment. Is this information direct? So was it directly from the person whose rights were violated? Did they have a history of complaining? Do they have a history of violence? There's a whole bunch of factors that would be taken into it. Is there video? Was a video presented or an audio? Are there credible eyewitnesses?

There are numerous things that would lead us to open an assessment or to look at it as a potential civil rights violation. Again, there are hundreds of thousands of instances of use of force by police officers throughout the country on an annual basis.

Hundreds of thousands?

Giving you the exact number would be tough. But on a daily basis, when people are executing their duties, there are uses of force. We're not talking about lethal force. There's less than lethal force. There could be a rough arrest. Police officers conduct hundreds of thousands of arrests a year. So the question comes down to: Is that arrest in excess of what would be expected?

And I want to be very careful to stress that very few of those arrests are subject to a federal civil rights investigation. So there are plenty of people, they complain, they don't like how they were arrested, that doesn't mean that that's a federal civil rights investigation.

Can you give us a sense of how common it is that it does get to the point that [the FBI] goes forward with an investigation? How many of these types of investigations take place on an annual basis, for example?

Officer involved shooting specifically, no. I think generally, color of law, we have approximately 500 open investigations across the country right now. And those are not necessarily law enforcement. Any public official that uses their position to willfully deprive somebody of their rights. So, for example, you have a mayor of a city that was trading sexual favors to get something done, that could be a violation of their civil rights.

Sallet (left) speaks with Fault Lines correspondent Sebastian Walker.

Joel Van Haren for Al Jazeera America

Is it very rare that the FBI launches that kind of investigation?

I would characterize it as rare because there has to be an aggravating factor for us to be looking at it. We are not the officer shooting review board for every law enforcement agency in the country. State and local law enforcement are very capable of investigating their own shootings and determining whether there was a proper execution of force. Sometimes and quite often a proper execution of force can lead to fatal consequences. It happens. That again does not mean that it rises to the level of a civil rights violation. We look at serious violations of the federal law. And the mere execution of deadly force does not equate to that.

Do you of have to tread carefully with the local law enforcement when federal investigators come in?

The answer to that question is we certainly are absolutely delicate. Anytime there is a police shooting, that's a situation which is a very delicate area for us to navigate. And the reason I say that to you is that anybody who takes a job and swears to protect the safety of the public, and raises their right hand to do that and uphold the Constitution of the United States and the roles of their state, the last thing they want to do is take somebody’s life. That's not what their intention is when they join their agency. So anytime there's a police shooting, the police officer and the police department are going to have emotional tie to what happened.

Also, we're working with agencies the vast majority of which are extremely competent and extremely ethical. There might be tools in our toolbox that that local and state agency didn't have. So that's one of the other reasons that we're there. It's not necessarily that the police department did a bad job. That's usually not the case.

How difficult is it to stay independent of the findings of the local authorities’ investigations of a police officer. Does that impact your investigation in any way?

We usually do not conduct parallel investigations. Our common path is to watch and observe and then conduct our investigation with the information that has come from the state investigation or the local investigation. Other people's conclusions are not something that we take into consideration when it comes to our investigation. We view the facts as the facts. So if we're conducting an interview we want to conduct that interview free of any bias.

The reason that we have the reputation that we have, and we have the trust of the American public, is because we are a neutral party, we engage in this in a completely unbiased manner, and conduct a fair and impartial investigation and look at all the facts. Potentially that could mean re-interviewing every single person that was interviewed by the state if that's what it takes. Having, for example, medical examiners’ reports redone.There are all different factors of evidence assessment that we as a federal government could do that would be independent of what the state had done.

What would you say about the independence that the Bureau has from the rest of the law enforcement community to be able to reach conclusions that are neutral and objective?

We are independent finders of facts. That's what we do. We have demonstrated that for decade after decade, investigation after investigation. It is one of the top priorities of the FBI to investigate and protect people's civil rights. And the American public have confidence in us. It's a great responsibility, and one that we take very very seriously in everything that we do.

In "Ferguson: Race and Justice in the U.S.," Fault Lines returns to the city where Mike Brown was shot and killed to investigate how and why black communities feel targeted by law enforcement—and if those sworn to protect operate with impunity. The film airs on Al Jazeera America Monday, December 15, at 9 p.m. Eastern time. It will air again that evening at 9 p.m. Pacific time and again Saturday, December 20, at 7 p.m. Eastern and 7 p.m. Pacific.