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Ferguson drops 2012 charges against Navy veteran

St. Louis Public Radio | By Rachel Lippmann,
Rachel Lippmann
Published September 13, 2017 at 3:46 PM CDT
The city of Ferguson has dropped charges against Navy veteran Fred Watson.
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The city of Ferguson has dropped charges against Navy veteran Fred Watson.

The city of Ferguson has decided it will no longer prosecute Fred Watson.

Ferguson’s municipal prosecutor officially dropped the charges Monday against Watson, a Navy veteran who was arrested in 2012 while sitting in his parked car after a basketball game. Ferguson charged him with several ordinance violations, including failure to wear a seatbelt.

Federally mandated reforms to Ferguson’s municipal court required prosecutor Lee Clayton Goodman to drop the charges, he said.

Those reforms took effect in April 2016. Goodman said the delay was simply a matter of working through the legal process.

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Watson, who is African-American, filed a civil rights lawsuit in July. A spokeswoman for his attorneys said that the lawsuit should still go forward because the now-dropped charges had a significant impact on Watson’s life.

Follow Rachel on Twitter: @rlippmann

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Rachel Lippmann
Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.
See stories by Rachel Lippmann
Rachel Lippmann
Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.