BLACK residents of Ferguson are disproportionately subject to excessive police force, baseless traffic stops and tickets for petty offences, the US Justice Department said yesterday.

The suburb of St Louis, Missouri, hit the headlines last August when white police officer Darren Wilson shot dead unarmed black man Michael Brown, sparking months of unrest.

A state grand jury declined to prosecute Mr Wilson, prompting violent street protests.

Significant changes to Ferguson’s police department could follow the Justice Department’s new report into the matter.

City officials said that they were studying the report, which is based on interviews with police leaders and residents and reviews of more than 35,000 pages of police records and analysis of data on stops, searches and arrests.

It says that black drivers are far more likely to be searched than white drivers even though they are less likely to be found with contraband.

Nearly all people kept at the city jail for more than two days are black and of the cases in which the police department recorded instances of use of force the overwhelming majority involved force used against black people.

The report alleges a culture of distrust between the police and community fuelled by the reliance on fines for revenues.

Brown family lawyer Benjamin Crump said that the report’s findings confirmed “what Michael Brown’s family has believed all along.

“And that is that the tragic killing of an unarmed 18-year-old black teenager was part of a systemic pattern of inappropriate policing of African-American citizens in the Ferguson community.”