Container-in-chief Once more, Obama tries to quell public rage after the non-indictment of a police officer.

For the second time in ten days, the Obama administration is scrambling to contain tensions and anger unleashed by a local grand jury’s decision not to charge a white police officer in connection with the death of a black suspect.

Within hours of the announcement Wednesday that a grand jury in New York had decided not to return an indictment in the July death of Eric Garner soon after being put in a chokehold by police, both President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder publicly promised a concerted response by the federal government to growing public outrage over police tactics.


The Justice Department will initiate a federal civil rights investigation into Garner’s death, Holder said Wednesday evening. “Our prosecutors will conduct an independent, thorough, fair and expeditious investigation. In addition to performing our own investigative work, the department will conduct a complete review of the material gathered during the local investigation,” he said.

( Also on POLITICO: Opinion: Truth trumps hype in Ferguson)

Holder also pleaded with those angered by the New York grand jury’s decision not to resort to the violence and looting that broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, last week in response to a similar decision not to indict the white police officer who shot black teenager Michael Brown.

“I know many will plan to voice their disappointment publicly through protests. This is the right — this is the right — of all Americans. But as I have said before, throughout our history, the most successful movements have been those that adhered to the principles of nonviolence,” the attorney general said, urging demonstrators to “remain peaceful.”

The probe will be conducted by the department’s civil rights division and the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office — headed up by Obama’s nominee to replace Holder, Loretta Lynch. Her office has jurisdiction over New York’s Staten Island, where Garner lived and died following the confrontation with police.

Earlier Wednesday, Obama promised a broader effort to restore confidence in law enforcement.

“We’re not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and a strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and law enforcement,” Obama said less than three hours after the grand jury’s decision was announced, speaking more broadly about his administration’s efforts to improve relations between law enforcement agencies and the communities they police. “When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that’s a problem. And it’s my job … to help solve it.”

Just last Monday, Obama went to the White House briefing room to call for calm just as looting and fires broke out in Ferguson.

This week, the president seemed more frustrated and impatient in his remarks, delivered at the start of a previously scheduled speech at the White House Tribal Nations Conference at the Capital Hilton.

While he spoke last week of “the need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make,” his statement Wednesday contained no such call for understanding of the legal process in New York.

Instead, Obama conveyed a sense of urgency.

“This is an issue that we’ve been dealing with for too long and it’s time for us to make more progress than we’ve made. And I’m not interested in talk; I’m interested in action,” he said. “I am absolutely committed as president of the United States to making sure that we have a country in which everybody believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law.”

Obama’s aides were also fast to call attention to his remarks on Garner’s death, posting video and text of the statement within an hour on the White House website.

The administration, the president added, is determined to keep “investigating cases where we are concerned about the impartiality and accountability that’s taking place.”

The Justice Department’s civil rights investigation into the death of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin began in 2012 and remains ongoing. In November 2013, Holder said it would be completed “relatively soon,” but conveyed in September of this year that the probe was still continuing.

“That matter is ongoing. There are active steps that we are still in the process of taking,” Holder said. “There are witnesses who we want to speak to as a result of some recent developments.”

The department is also in the midst of a civil rights investigation into the August killing of Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Holder has said he is committed to resolving that probe before he leaves his post. He’s vowed to stay on the job until his successor is confirmed and has said he expects that to happen in February.

“Right now, unfortunately, we are seeing too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly,” Obama said Wednesday. “And in some cases, those may be misperceptions; but in some cases, that’s a reality.”