JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri’s legislative session began with hundreds of protesters shutting down the Senate, demanding changes to state law in response to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer.
It ended Friday with the Senate again shut down – this time because of its own partisan divisions- and without action on a Ferguson-inspired bill that would have rewritten the laws police using deadly force.
All told, more than 60 Ferguson-related measures were introduced this session. Though a measure, propelled by concerns in Ferguson, passed limiting the powers and revenues of municipal courts, as did one rewriting the state’s student transfer laws that some said would aid families in the St. Louis suburb, some legislators said they had failed to pass anything meaningful in response to Brown’s death.
“We don’t have one piece of legislation that anyone here in this body can go home and say, hey, we did this for Ferguson,” Rep. Clem Smith, D-Velda Village Hills, said. “As it was this summer … it still is today. Nothing has changed.”
Brown, a black 18-year-old, was fatally shot Aug. 9 by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson – an event that touched off widespread protests in the St. Louis area and around the country. But a grand jury declined to charge Wilson and a U.S. Justice Department report determined Wilson acted in self-defense.