Over 100 Ann Arbor community members attended the 2nd Annual Memorial Social Justice Symposium Tuesday evening, hosted by the Ann Arbor Independent Community Police Oversight Commission at New Hope Baptist Church. Chief of Police Andre Anderson told the community about the history of protest and recounted his experience reforming the Ferguson Police Department following the killing of Michael Brown — an unarmed Black teenager killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.
Brown’s death drew national attention, serving as a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement and sparking a wave of protests against police brutality across Ferguson and the nation.
Anderson served for six-months as Ferguson’s interim police chief from July 2015 to Jan. 2016. During his presentation, Anderson illustrated Ferguson’s policing issue by citing the amount of citations and summonses given by police in the four years leading up to the 2014 protests — a number more than four times the city’s population…