By The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Speaking at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta — the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that he will soon unveil long-planned Justice Department guidance aimed at ending racial profiling.
Holder traveled to Atlanta to meet with law enforcement and community leaders for the first in a series of regional meetings around the country. The president asked Holder to set up the meetings in the wake of clashes between protesters and police in Ferguson, Missouri.
“In the coming days, I will announce updated Justice Department guidance regarding profiling by federal law enforcement. This will institute rigorous new standards — and robust safeguards — to help end racial profiling, once and for all,” Holder said. “This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing.”
Tensions between police and the community in Ferguson boiled over into violent confrontations in August after a white police officer shot a Black teenager. Protests turned violent again last week after a grand jury declined to indict officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Holder’s meeting in Atlanta included a closed roundtable discussion with law enforcement and community leaders followed by a public interfaith service and community forum.
The meeting came on the heels of President Barack Obama’s request to federal agencies Monday for recommendations to ensure the U.S. isn’t building a “militarized culture” within police departments. The White House also announced it wants more police to wear cameras that capture their interactions with civilians. The cameras are part of a $263 million spending package to help police departments improve their community relations.
The selection of King’s church as the site for the meeting was significant. The most successful and enduring movements for change adhere to the principles of non-aggression and nonviolence that King preached, Holder said.
“As this congregation knows better than most, peaceful protest has long been a hallmark, and a legacy, of past struggles for progress,” he said. “This is what Dr. King taught us, half a century ago, in his eloquent words from the Ebenezer pulpit and in the vision he shared from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”
While the grand jury has made its decision, the Justice Department continues its investigation into the death of Brown and into allegations of unconstitutional policing patterns or practices by the Ferguson Police Department, Holder said to loud applause.
Holder also told the crowd that the meetings he’s convening around the country are just the beginning and that he wants to start a frank dialogue and then translate that into concrete action and results.
Holder’s comments were well-received by the audience. When a group of people interrupted his speech with chants and was escorted out, Holder applauded their “genuine expression of concern and involvement” and got a standing ovation from the crowd.
Several dozen protesters chanted and waved signs referencing Ferguson outside the doors of church.
Holder, who plans to leave the position once a successor is confirmed, has identified civil rights as a cornerstone priority for the Justice Department and speaks frequently about what he calls inequities in the treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system. He has targeted sentences for nonviolent drug crimes that he says are overly harsh and disproportionately affect Black defendants and has promoted alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders.
Last year, as part of the Justice Department’s “Smart on Crime” initiative, he instructed federal prosecutors to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences — punishments that he said were contributing to overcrowded prisons. The Justice Department has also broadened the criteria for inmates seeking clemency in hopes of encouraging potentially thousands more inmates to apply, and Holder backed changes in federal sentencing guideline ranges that could result in tens of thousands of drug prisoners becoming eligible for early release.
Holder also has publicly discussed the need to ease tensions between police departments and minority communities. The Justice Department has also targeted flawed police departments, initiating roughly 20 investigations of local police agencies — including Ferguson — in the past five years. A new pilot program announced weeks after the Ferguson shooting will study racial bias in American cities and recommend ways to reduce the problem.
He has spoken about race in sometimes personal terms, recalling after the Ferguson shooting instances in which as a younger man he was stopped or confronted by police without cause. He has also said he understands mistrust of law enforcement in minority communities.

PHILADELPHIA— Bill Cosby resigned Monday as a trustee of Temple University following a string of allegations that accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting women over many years.
The 77-year-old entertainer has been a high-profile cheerleader for his beloved alma mater in Philadelphia and a board member since 1982.
“I have always been proud of my association with Temple University. I have always wanted to do what would be in the best interests of the university and its students. As a result, I have tendered my resignation from the Temple University Board of Trustees,” Mr. Cosby said in a statement released by the university.
Board chairman Patrick O’Connor, who accepted Mr. Cosby’s resignation, told the Associated Press that Mr. Cosby doesn’t want to be a distraction to the board.
“The Board of Trustees accepts Dr. Cosby’s resignation from the board and thanks him for his service to the university,” the university said in its release.
O’Connor had defended Mr. Cosby in a 2005 civil suit filed by a former Temple basketball employee who accused Mr. Cosby of molesting her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion a year earlier. Mr. Cosby and the woman later settled the lawsuit for undisclosed terms.
More than a dozen other women have come forward since the lawsuit was filed to make similar claims, including several who have gone public this month.
Mr. Cosby has strongly denied wrongdoing and has never been criminally charged.
“He didn’t comment on the allegations (Monday),” Mr. O’Connor said. “They were from (as long as) 50 years ago.”
Cosby, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, is one of Temple’s most famous alumni and has been a frequent commencement speaker.
Several other colleges have also severed their ties with him amid this month as more women went public to say he had molested them.

By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the Staten Island neighborhood where a Black father of six died after police put him in a banned chokehold while arresting him for illegal cigarette sales, a painted tribute on a wall reads “His name was Eric Garner. Father, son and friend….”
Garner lived and died in Tompkinsville, a neighborhood tucked on the north shore of New York’s least populated borough, Staten Island, which is braced for a grand jury’s decision whether to indict the New York Police Department officer who put Garner, 43, in the chokehold.
Residents of the rapidly changing neighborhood, a diversifying corner of the city’s whitest borough, said they would be angry if the grand jury decides not to charge the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who is white. But none expected violence similar to what was seen in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, after a grand jury decided not to charge a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black teen.
A memorial of white flowers and hand-written notes marks the spot on a sidewalk where Garner died on July 17  as police officers piled on top of him and used a chokehold, which is banned by the department’s patrol manual, as they tried to arrest him on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes. The incident was captured in a video widely viewed on the Internet.
Workers nearby noted that an August protest march through the neighborhood passed without police making a single arrest.
Ahead of that march, merchants had consulted each other about shutting down for the day, said Curtis Hurst, a manager at a furniture and appliance store. This time around, there have been no such talks, he said.
“I don’t foresee anybody making the decision to close,” Hurst said. Drawing a comparison with Ferguson, he added: “The violent protests they had there won’t carry over here.”
The grand jury’s decision could come any day. Pantaleo testified to the panel on Nov. 21 for two hours, said his attorney, Stuart London, who believes the officer was the last witness to testify.
The case sparked debate about police use of force, with officials at both the local police union and New York Civil Liberties Union complaining that officers were not sufficiently trained on how to safely restrain people.
USE OF FORCE
Staten Island is different from New York City’s other four boroughs. It is the only one not served by the subway, which gives it a more isolated feeling. More than three-quarters of the island’s population is white, a sharp difference from the rest of the city, where less than half the population is white, according to U.S. Census data.
It is also wealthier, on average, with just 11 percent of the population living below the poverty level, compared with 20 percent throughout the city.
But Staten Island’s north shore has become more diverse in recent years, residents said, and note that it is now home to a large population of Sri Lankan immigrants.
“This is a remarkably diverse, well-educated and very tight-knit community,” said Leticia Remauro, who chairs the local community board. “This is an area where generations of people have grown up and where new transplants from around the city have decided to call home.”
In a dozen recent interviews, opinions in Tompkinsville broke down along racial lines as to whether Garner’s death reflected a racial animosity.
Gregory Myers, 37, who is Black and had been friends with Garner, said he was numb as he awaited the grand jury’s decision, particularly following the Missouri decision not to charge Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the shooting of Michael Brown.
“It doesn’t matter what I feel because it will be like ‘They did it again,'” Myers said. “It’s a routine.”
Mark Davis, 31, who moved to the neighborhood nine years ago, said Garner’s death was not emblematic of race relations in the neighborhood.
“I don’t think there’s racial animosity here,” said Davis, who is white. “This lacks the elements that made Ferguson explosive.”
(Additional reporting by Eric Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Trott)

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An aide to a Republican congressman resigned Monday after her Facebook post criticizing President Barack Obama’s daughters touched off a backlash.
Elizabeth Lauten, communications director to Rep. Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, said Malia Obama, 16, and Sasha, 13, should have shown more “class” at a turkey-pardoning ceremony last week at the White House.
Lauten wrote that the girls should “respect the part you play,” and added: “Then again your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model department.’”
Lauten later apologized for the comments and deleted the original post, which drew harsh criticism across social media.
Jessica Carter, chief of staff for Fincher, said Monday that Lauten resigned. Carter had no additional comment on a personnel matter.
After the post became the topic of conversation on a variety websites, Lauten issued an apology, saying “many hours of prayer,” conversations with her family and a re-reading of her words made her reconsider the post.
“When I first posted on Facebook I reacted to an article and I quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager,” Lauten told the Commercial Appeal of Memphis in an email. “Please know, those judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart. Furthermore, I’d like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt and offended with my words.
Fincher represents most of rural West Tennessee and parts of East Memphis.