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Laurie Skrivan / St. Louis Post-Dispatch / AP
Ferguson has become a rallying cry for people of color who have long believed systemic racism is a real part of American life. That belief was given credence after a data-heavy investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice showed that the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, targeted African-American residents with petty charges and fines in order to raise revenue for the city. In the wake of the Department of Justice’s findings, Police Chief Tom Jackson, who was accused of being an architect of that system, resigned. Now a relative newcomer has stepped in to lead and reform the city’s police force.
Al Eickhoff is technically the acting police chief, a stopgap figure, in place only until a permanent hire is made, but the city hasn’t brought in a search firm for its nationwide search. So for the time being, Eickhoff is Ferguson’s best hope for immediate change. He was initially hired as the department’s second-in-command by Jackson and was on the job less than a week before 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by a Ferguson officer. Eickhoff spoke with Al Jazeera America’s Duarte Geraldino about his job and vision for a new Ferguson. Here is a partial transcript of that interview.
Al Eickhoff: I actually started in August, five days before the Michael Brown shooting. I began my career with Ferguson on a Monday, and on a Saturday we had the shooting incident.
Was there anything in your training that prepared you for that night and what followed?
Actually, there was. Before I came here, I spent 32 years with St. Louis County Police Department. And out of that 32 years, 15 years was in special weapons/tactical unit. I was 10 years as officer in the unit and five years as a supervisor. So I’m used to handling protests. I’m also used to handling maybe small [to] large disturbances. We went through some abortion protests. I was not prepared to handle something of this magnitude and something that lasted this long and is still going on.
You were hired by the old chief. How do you let people know you’re different?
Chief Jackson made changes in his years … He’s brought a lot of professionalism to his department. A lot of his programs I’m going to keep in place. Some I will tweak.
He thought that you would be able to continue what he started?
Yes.
Al Eickhoff
acting Ferguson police chief
How do you continue what he started and at the same time make it different so that people believe that officers aren’t going to target African-American residents in Ferguson?
’Cause my officers now have body cameras, we have car cameras, they’ll be held accountable for how they talk to people. You know, that is the biggest thing I tell people. “You got a problem? You come and talk to me. If you don’t like the way you were talked to, come see me.”
In all my roll calls, I tell my officers the same thing. “If you stop that car and you treat that person as your mother, your father, your sister, your brother and you talk to ’em accordingly, you’re not gonna have problems.” You know, it’s a lot easier to go to a car and be nice, and then if you have to go downhill, you take it downhill. But if you go up to the car with an attitude and speak bad right off the bat, you can’t recover from that. So treat ’em with respect, treat ’em nice. Now, like I was telling ’em, “Sometimes Mom and Dad gotta go to jail. You take ’em to jail. But you treat ’em respectfully. You treat ’em nice.”
Were you surprised by the DOJ report?
Yes, but I can’t go into it. We are still discussing with them.
But it did surprise you?
Yes, it did.
What surprised you? Were the practices unique to Ferguson?
I can’t go into it.
Are officers here in Ferguson nervous for their own lives?
They’re afraid. You’re looking at a crowd of 50 to 300 to 500 people, and it just takes one person to have a pistol and turn it from peace to violence. It’s always in your mind, “Who’s got the gun?” And there’s no way to prevent it.
What do you say to your officers to encourage them to continue doing their jobs and not resign like the chief did?
Well, the, the chief’s resignation was a total separate act … which I won’t get into. The officers don’t resign, because they love their job. They’re police officers. They’re here to see it through the end. You know, whether the morale’s low or the morale’s high, they’re here to do their job. And they show up every day. Since all this has started, we’ve only had two officers that have left the department. Everybody else has stayed. Through all this, of eight months of protests and anger and the physical abuse and all this, they have stayed. Because they will be the first to tell you that the Ferguson residents are good people.
Al Eickhoff
With so much going on, how difficult will it be to find a new chief?
That I don’t know. It could be very difficult, very difficult. You know, I mean, again, you come in here, you’re gonna know that you’ve got a full plate ahead of you. And it’s got — you’ve got to know that it’s gonna be a challenge.
Had you known this was going to happen, would you have taken this job before all this took place? Before that week, before Michael Brown was shot, if you knew that all this would transpire, would you have still taken the job?
Um, boy, that’s tough. I would say no, because it’s been a lot of work. The other part says yes, because it’s a challenge. A new chief will say, “I have my ideas,” and he’ll try his policies and changes, and I think he’ll make it work. My job is to do some of those things and try to mend bridges.
Why aren’t you permanent chief?
I don’t know if I want it. It’s a lot of responsibility. Great if you succeed, but what if you fail?
What if the new management of the city says they want you in this position?
If they came to me and said, “You know what? We like what you’ve done. We want you to continue,” then I would probably consider it. The other half of me too is, like, they may find someone who’s got a lotta education, maybe he came from a city that’s already went through this, so that gives him a lot of qualifications above me. Then I’ll assist him and implement his policies. I’m not afraid to say there’s better qualified people.
Every day you wake up, what’s the most difficult part of your job?
Leaving at night.
Explain.
Well, when you leave at night, you worry about the officers. You worry about your sergeants, your lieutenants. A lot of these disturbances happen at nighttime because that’s when it’s the darkest and they can do their stuff in the background — you can’t see what’s going on. Perfect example was the shooting. Shots fired, late at night from a distance. You know, unfortunately, that was two municipal officers [one from St. Louis County, one from nearby Webster Grove]. They came to my department to help me. Could just as easily been my officers, you know, if there was only five on the line. So you worry about the officers, their safety. That’s what I worry about.
What does six months, a year out from now look like for the city of Ferguson?
Different changes, different approaches from the officers, more interaction with the community. One of the big things that I’m about is getting the officers out of their cars and getting ’em on the street. I think you need more foot patrols. I’ve always been a big proponent of community-oriented policing. You know, if you’re driving down and there’s school in session, go in and have lunch with the kids at school. We’re looking at the Police Explorer program for our department, bringing in the young kids and showing ’em what police work’s all about, spending time with ’em. We gotta get some youth leagues together, involved. I’d like to expand my bike patrol, get my officers on bikes. And they need to be in the business areas. They need to be in the communities. They need to be in the apartment complexes.
There is talk that maybe the police department itself should cease to exist, should dissolve. And if that were to happen, the county could conceivably start policing the city of Ferguson?
Yes.
As someone who worked for the county, what does that world look like if Ferguson ceased to have its own police department?
Well, St. Louis County’s a very professional department, very good department. But what I think you lose with that is that residents and the businesses like the smaller department. They like knowing that their officers are gonna be the same officers every day.
You were at the county for decades. During that time, a couple of municipalities gave up their police departments. When that happened, did you then hire the officers from that small police department that went under? Or did they just disappear someplace?
If St. Louis County enters into a contract with the police department, they do, do try to absorb a lot of the officers to their department. Some of ’em do not get absorbed, for whatever reason. Whether something in the history, something else has happened with their complaints — some of ’em do not get absorbed, but they do try to take as many officers as they can.
And quite a few officers from Ferguson, if that were to happen, would likely go to the county [and continue policing Ferguson]?
[Nods.]
Do you foresee the number of tickets being issued here in the city of Ferguson going down?
Oh, yes. They’re already down.
By how much?
I couldn’t even tell you. I don’t have that stat. But I know they’re down. Because I told the officers that sometimes, pulling someone over — the issue can be handled just as easily by saying, “Sir, you were this. Hey, I just wanted to let you know about it.” Sometimes people don’t know what’s going on the back of their car. We’ve changed things around to compliance violations now. If your brake lights aren’t working, your headlights are out, whatever, you get it fixed, you come by the station. The officer reviews your car, signs off on it, no fine, no court costs.
Everyone feels like you are America’s police chief. The country is watching. What should they know about you?
We are trying. We’re trying to fix the problem. Get the community, city manager, business together. People like to make the comment we have to get back to the world we were in. No. We have to learn, change and make a stronger, better community. We just have to get all this behind us and get this going on in the future.
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