Vox Sentences: Ferguson's police chief is out. Will that change anything?

1. Cleaning house

Police Chief Thomas Jackson holds a press conference on the death of Michael Brown on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• According to a New York Times report, Ferguson, Missouri police chief Thomas Jackson will resign.

  [NYT / John Eligon]

• Jackson was widely criticized for his handling of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown last August; for example, he released Wilson's name at the same time as a video allegedly depicting Brown shoplifting, only to later clarify that the theft had nothing to do with why Wilson stopped Brown on the street.

  [MSNBC / Trymaine Lee]

• Jackson later expressed regret both in how the department handled Brown's death and in its militarized response to protests, but many activists thought it was too little, too late.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• His resignation comes in the aftermath of a Justice Department report finding racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department and accusing it of raising revenue by targeting black residents for minor infractions.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• "The report repeatedly named Jackson as one of the people culpable of turning the city's police force into a fundraising operation. Jackson regularly bragged about breaking court revenue records in emails to city officials, who typically cheered him on."

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Jackson's resignation follows that of city manager John Shaw, also cited in the Justice Department report, as well as that of municipal judge Ronald J. Brockmeyer (who was accused of "ticket-fixing and instituting unconstitutional fees"), and the firings of the municipal court clerk, and two police supervisors for sending racist emails.

  [NYT / John Eligon]

• The Missouri Supreme Court has taken the "extraordinary measure" of reassigning all Ferguson municipal court cases to another court, in light of the report.

  [St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Jennifer Mann]

• The City of Ferguson needs to either come to a deal with the Justice Department or face a lawsuit; Mayor James Knowles has said he's interested in settling.

  [Reuters / Carey Gillam]

2. "Numerous wounds"

Zaur Dadayev at the Basmanny district court on March 8, 2015 in Moscow. (Sergey Bobylev/Kommersant Photo via Getty Images)

• Andrei Babushkin, a member of the Russian Human Rights Commission, told media outlets that Zaur Dadayev (one of the five men charged in the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov) had wounds on his body when Babushkin visited him in prison, a sign he had been tortured into confessing.

  [LA Times / Carol Williams]

• Babushkin: "There are reasons that lead us to believe Zaur Dadayev confessed under torture … We cannot confirm that he was tortured as we are not investigators but we did find numerous wounds on his body."

  [AFP / Fran Blandy]

• Dadayev claims he was placed in shackles for two days with a bag over his head; "They were yelling the whole time, ‘you killed Nemtsov?’ I was answering no. When I was detained, I was with a friend, my former subordinate Ruslan Yusupov, and they said that if I agreed they would let him go. I agreed."

  [The Guardian / Alec Luhn]

• Early reports from government sources suggested that Dadayev, a Muslim veteran of the Chechen security services, shot Nemtsov in retaliation for the politician's support of the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, but that claim was widely regarded as a cover to eliminate suspicion he was killed for criticizing the Kremlin.

  [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

• The group of Babushkin, the human rights activist who visited Dadayev, "operates under the auspices of the Kremlin, but many of its members are respected activists with decades-long careers in human rights work in Russia"; he's legit, in other words.

  [AP]

• Russian authorities warned Babushkin and fellow activist Eva Merkacheva that they "could face charges of trying to hinder the investigation of a crime, which carries a possible jail sentence of up to six months" because they spoke up.

  [NYT / Neil MacFarquhar]

3. High-stakes testing

Deutsche Bank's New York offices, left, on June 7, 2012. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

• The American units of Deutsche Bank and Santander failed the Federal Reserve's annual "stress test"; Bank of America only passed provisionally, and Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley had to change their planned payments to shareholders to pass.

  [NYT / Peter Eavis]

• The tests, begun in 2009, assess whether the banks could keep lending during a severe economic downturn.

  [WSJ / Victoria McGrane and Ryan Tracy]

• Failing the test "prevents the US entities of the foreign banks from distributing capital to their parent companies … any bank with chronic problems … could eventually face enforcement actions up to and including a cease-and-desist order."

  [FT / Tom Braithwaite, Ben McLannahan, and Barney Jopson]

• Then again, a financial rule taking effect next year will force foreign banks to put more capital in their US affiliates anyway, so the bar on distributing capital in the opposite direction might not be a particularly big deal.

  [Bloomberg / Dakin Campbell, Michael Moore, and Hugh Son]

• In the past, failures have lead to banks halting efforts to compensate shareholders through dividend payments and stock buybacks, but Santander said it hasn't been barred from paying dividends.

  [BBC]

• Matt Levine: the best way to think of the tests is not as true tests but as another way for regulators to force banks to keep more capital on hand.

  [Bloomberg View / Matt Levine]

• Stanford economist and tougher bank-regulation advocate Anat Admati: banks shouldn't be paying dividends or buying back stock anyway, because that creates an incentive for them to borrow more and place themselves at greater risk.

  [Quartz / Shelly Banjo and Melvin Backman]

• In other Wall Street news, a report from the New York State Comptroller's office found that the average Wall Street bonus was $172,860 last year. That's mean, not median, but still.

  [Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

4. Misc.

• Introducing the Disney MagicBand, the Disney World wristband that lets you reserve rides, check into hotels, and even order food before getting to your restaurant.

  [Wired / Cliff Kuang]

• Hawaii's economic dilemma: "Tourism, the state’s main economic engine, creates many low-end jobs that, at best, allow locals to tread water, while many of the profits end up leaving the islands."

  [Honolulu Civil Beat / Eric Pape]

• Two comedians in New York have constructed a museum within their apartment devoted entirely to the Nancy Kerrigan-Tanya Harding figure skating rivalry.

  [CBC]

• Chen Dingding makes the argument that China's government is not at risk of collapse — even if the economy slows down dramatically.

  [The National Interest / Chen Dingding]

5. Verbatim

• "[Name redacted] stated he stole the goat because he thought he would ask a girl to the prom by saying 'would you goat with me to the prom.'"

  [Milton, GA police report via Washington Post / Elahe Izadi]

• "Maybe a better question is why aren’t YOU at this police station."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "If the U.S. had continued at a high rate of productivity growth, maintained the share of income going to the bottom 90%, and continued to raise female labor-force participation, median household incomes today would be twice as high—or an extra $50,000 annually."

  [WSJ / Jason Furman]

• "Ultimately, Kjoller and Lumsdaine took guilty pleas and were sentenced to 18 months and two years in prison respectively for an act of civil disobedience they named 'The Harriet Tubman-Sarah Connor Brigade.'"

  [The Atlantic / Ingrid Burrington]

• "Right now I am face-to-face with Mars in a way I have never been, and never will be again."

  [Universe Today / Anthony Chaikin]

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