Attorney General Eric Holder will be going to Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday to meet with federal agents and community leaders there, President Obama said in a news conference Monday.
The Justice Department is conducting its own investigation into the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen who was shot by a police officer and whose death has sparked a week of protests.
Asked if he could be doing more himself — including going to the St. Louis suburb — Obama said he did not want to appear to be tipping the scale of justice one way or the other.
"I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events before investigations are completed," he said.
But Obama did mention efforts to work with communities "that feel left behind," including the My Brother's Keeper initiative.
"Part of the ongoing challenge of perfecting our union has involved dealing with communities that feel left behind, who as a consequence of tragic histories often find themselves isolated, often find themselves without hope, without economic prospects," the president said. "Part of my job that I can do, I think without any potential conflict, is to get at those root causes."
Obama noted that getting to those roots has been a challenge for centuries, but in the short term, he said he wanted to ensure that justice was carried out fairly in Ferguson.
"It's clear that the vast majority of people are peacefully protesting," he said. "What's also clear is that a small minority of people are not." But he said there is "no excuse for excessive force by police" or action that denies people's right to freedom of speech or assembly.
In regards to Gov. Jay Nixon's decision to call in the National Guard (which will be overseen by the state Highway Patrol), Obama said that he would be watching in the next several days "to assess whether in fact it's helping rather than hindering progress."
As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported last week, the attorney general has also condemned "extreme displays of force" by local police.
Civil rights lawyers who used to work for the Justice Department tell Johnson that at some point Justice may announce a bigger civil investigation of local police behavior and the relatively low number of African-Americans in the force. "Those are ripe targets for investigation by DOJ moving forward," Johnson says on All Things Considered.
But with Brown's case, Johnson reports, the Justice Department has a "limited role" because murder is not generally prosecuted in the federal system.
"So the only jurisdictional hope that the attorney general has here is to find out whether the police officer who shot Michael Brown violated his civil rights," Johnson tells NPR's Audie Cornish. "In order to make that case, federal prosecutors would have to prove the officer, Darren Wilson, intended to use way more force than a reasonable person would in the same situation."
Meanwhile, protests continue in Ferguson. And Obama has called for calm once again.
"Let's seek to heal rather than wound each other," he said.
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