NEWSCASTER:New Jersey, a state under siege—

JELANI COBB:Questions about the Newark police go back decades.

NEWSCASTER:This is the west side, where it all began Sunday morning—

JELANI COBB:In the summer of 1967, two white cops beat up a black cab driver, and the city exploded.

NEWSCASTER:Race riots rock New Jersey’s largest city for five consecutive days and nights.

JELANI COBB:Newark cops, state police and the National Guard were accused of using unjustified force to put down the riots.

NEWSCASTER:Sniper fire from open windows, scores of police, troopers, guardsmen and civilians are wounded.

JELANI COBB:By the time it was over, a white cop, a white fireman and 24 black civilians were dead.

Back then, there was nothing the federal government could do to fix a troubled police department.

NEWSCASTER:Our top story this morning comes from Los Angeles following—

JELANI COBB:That changed in the early 1990s after four white cops were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.

NEWSCASTER:--in the wake of violence spawned by acquittals in the Rodney King beating trial—

NEWSCASTER:--a city under smoke, a city that’s face to face under siege—

JELANI COBB:The Justice Department was given the power to investigate local police departments, and if necessary, impose reforms.

NEWSCASTER:The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division says the Newark Police Department needs a major overhaul—

JELANI COBB:Newark is one of 34 departments since then the DoJ has ordered to make reforms.

PROTESTER:Stop police brutality! Stop police brutality!

NEWSCASTER:--police corruption that has permeated the department—

JELANI COBB:The investigation here began after years of complaints about police misconduct from local activists and the ACLU. The Justice Department issued a 49-page report.

PAUL FISHMAN, U.S. Attorney:What we found was that there were far too many uses of force that were excessive, they weren’t appropriately documented, and then they certainly weren’t investigated well at the end of the day.

As a result of the many, many, many complaints that we saw over a six-year period, there was only one complaint of unjustified use of force that was sustained by the police department.

And so one of the things that we’re going to do now is retrain the police entirely, getting training on force, getting training on—on stops and arrests, having the police department in Newark think differently about how it does its job and how it relates to the people that it serves.