Who watches the watchmen? Since the riots started in Ferguson, Missouri, many have decried the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown and brutal crowd-control tactics at the protests following his death (see "Gunning for trouble", page 26), The uproar has turned into a call for better surveillance of the police, How might that be done? The US Department of Justice has the power to investigate and overhaul problematic police departments, Ferguson has not yet been investigated, but it's a likely candidate. "Police misconduct is not usually just caused by one ratten apple. It is caused by a rotten barrel," says Stephen Rushin at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. "A lot of people would argue that you're seeing that in Ferguson."
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