Council reaches ‘mutual separation agreement’ with John Shaw, who was cited in report for his role in aggressive revenue-raising via traffic tickets

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The city manager of Ferguson, Missouri, was removed from his job on Tuesday evening as the fallout grew from a damning report by the US Justice Department on the town’s administration.



John Shaw, who remained hidden from public view through months of upheaval after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old, signed “a mutual separation agreement” that was approved unanimously by the city council.

Shaw, 39, said in a statement that with a “with a heavy heart” he had decided “it is in the community’s best interest that I step aside” from his $120,000-a-year job as chief executive.

“I believe that with our coming municipal election it is the appropriate time for the city to experience change in its city manager,” said Shaw, who was appointed in 2007.

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Shaw on Tuesday became the fifth city official put out of a job following last week’s publication of the Justice Department’s report on its inquiry into Ferguson’s courts and policing system, which was triggered by the unrest following Brown’s death.

Last week two senior police commanders resigned, and the court clerk was fired, over racist emails uncovered by the federal investigators. On Monday Ronald J Brockmeyer resigned as Ferguson’s municipal judge. The Justice Department’s report accused Brockmeyer of fixing traffic tickets for associates while implementing an aggressive court fees policy.

Shaw was singled out by investigators as a driving force behind the controversial strategy, which has seen the city sued in a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of running a modern-day “debtors’ prison”. The report found emails in which Shaw responded to news of record-breaking court revenues with messages such as “Wonderful!” and “Awesome!”

His relative obscurity belied his position as a more authoritative figure than James Knowles III, Ferguson’s part-time mayor, who has appeared frequently before the media since the death of Michael Brown on 9 August last year.

Brown’s shooting by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, set off successive nights of intense protests that were cracked down on by heavily armed police. A night of rioting and arson followed a decision by a grand jury not to charge Wilson with a crime in November.

Despite Knowles’s prominence, Shaw held power over city departments including the police, and had the authority to hire and dismiss senior officials. Yet he never once spoke publicly about the unrest that shook the St Louis suburb and placed it in the international spotlight.

The Justice Department last week concluded the city’s criminal justice system was aggressively driven by the aim of raising revenues, blighted by racial bias and had contributed to a breakdown in relations between the city’s overwhelmingly white authorities and its 22,000 residents, two-thirds of whom are black.

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, blamed Ferguson’s police for creating a “toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment” that had been set off “like a powder keg” by Wilson’s shooting of Brown.

Shaw – who was himself found by investigators to have forwarded an email perpetuating stereotypes of Latinos – defended his record against associations with racism in his statement on Tuesday.

“I must state clearly that my office has never instructed the police department to target African Americans, nor falsify charges to administer fines, nor heap abuses on the backs of the poor. Any inferences of that kind from the report are simply false,” he said.

Little was publicly known about Shaw despite his influential position. He lives in Ferguson with his wife, Natalia. Prior to taking the city manager job he worked as assistant to the city administrator in Shrewsbury, another St Louis suburb. Figures released by the city under open records laws showed Shaw’s salary had risen by 18% from $101,000 since 2012.

A statement issued by city authorities said Shaw’s responsibilities would be shared by other officials until a replacement was found.

“We appreciate John’s service and commitment to the City of Ferguson for the past eight years,” said Knowles in a statement. “The city council and John Shaw feel as though it is the appropriate time for the city to move forward as it begins its search for a new city manager”.