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Ferguson's White Police Must Hire African-American Officers - Resident

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Ferguson's, Missouri, mostly white police must hire more African-American officers amid ongoing protests over a police officer killing of an unarmed African-American teenager, local resident Sherman Hawkins told RIA Novosti

FERGUSON, MO, AUGUST 20 (RIA Novosti) – Ferguson's, Missouri, mostly white police must hire more African-American officers amid ongoing protests over a police officer killing of an unarmed African-American teenager, local resident Sherman Hawkins told RIA Novosti.

“Here, it’s police against the blacks. We don’t have enough black cops and that needs to change. They only harass a certain type of people. I believe that police are part of the Klans,” said Hawkins, referring to the hooded white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan.

“Hopefully they will lock up the officer responsible for the killing and that will ease tensions here. That’s what everybody wants, justice. The good thing is that white people are involved in this too, and they see it as unjust. They’re protesting right along with the blacks,” he said.

Ferguson, a mostly African-American suburb of St Louis with some 21,000 residents, has been rocked by protests since the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen, as he walked with a friend on a residential street in the afternoon on August 9.

African-American residents, about 65 percent of the local population, often complain about harassment at the hands of a police force that is 94 percent white.

Missouri National Guard troops have been deployed to tackle the violence, which has grown fiercer as peaceful protesters were joined by looters from California and New York, police said. Law enforcement officers have been criticized for using tear gas, rubber bullets and other heavy-handed measures.

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