Andre Anderson: Black Interim Ferguson Police Chief Brought In Nearly One Year After Michael Brown Death

The Ferguson Police Department has hired a black interim police chief, Andre Anderson. He’s brought on board as the dust barely settles almost a whole year following the Michael Brown shooting.

CBS News reports that the city of Ferguson now has a new interim police chief. He was previously a commander of the Glendale Police Department in Arizona. Ferguson Police Chief, Tom Jackson, resigned in March, then Alan Eickhoff was named as the interim police chief.

Officials will announce the new interim Ferguson Police Chief at a press conference scheduled at 9 a.m. local time, reports KMOV in St. Louis.

As the black police chief, Anderson’s arrival is on the heels of that of interim city manager, Ed Beasley; he’s also from Glendale and served as the city manager there.

Anderson was interested in becoming a police chief in a small Arizona town two years ago. During the hiring process, stated he had a “very diverse background in working with different diversity and different groups.” On Tuesday, he learned that he was hired as an interim police chief for the Ferguson Police Department.

The Ferugson police went through a series of changes after 18-year-old African-American, Michael Brown, was killed by Darren Wilson — a white police officer. He was cleared by a grand jury of any indictments in the slayings.

Although Wilson faced no charges in Brown’s death, he resigned from the police force and the Department of Justice was forced to evaluate how African-Americans are treated in the city. The results yielded a highly critical opinion of Ferguson’s police department for “bias against African-American citizens, and said the city often acted as if it saw them as sources of revenue,” according to the report.

While with the police department in Glendale, Anderson’s duties “included leading the Criminal Investigations Division, supervising detectives from Homicide, Fraud and Computer Forensics, Family Violence as well as other undercover operations to include joint task force agents assigned to the DEA, FBI and U.S. Marshals,” the City of Ferguson’s press release states.

Among other accomplishments of Andre Anderson’s, the African-American interim police chief for Ferguson is a United States Army Veteran, has a Master’s Degree in Education and Leadership, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Public Safety Administration. He’s a graduate of the FBI National Academy, Northwestern Police and Staff Command School, and West Point’s Leadership in Police Organizations Command School. He served as the Region Six Vice President of the National Organization of Black Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and as the co-chair for the National Civil Rights Committee.

[Photo Credit: Glendale Police Department via KMOV]