Family of Missouri man killed by police awarded $3 million

The family of an unarmed mentally ill man who died after being shot with a Taser four times by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer in 2011 was awarded $3 million by a federal jury last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reported.

Jason Moore had been running in traffic naked and shouting "I am Jesus" and "God is good" when police were called to the scene, the newspaper reported on Saturday. Officer Brian Kaminski then shot Moore with a Taser.

Ferguson, a blue-collar, largely black suburb of St. Louis, gained international notoriety in 2014 after police shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen-ager who was suspected of shoplifting.

Brown's death sparked months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and around the United States, fueled by subsequent police killings of unarmed black men in several other cities. It also spurred the "Black Lives Matter" movement that has cast a spotlight on long-troubled relations between police and minority residents in many cities.

In Moore's case, the jury ruled on Friday that Kaminski, who now works for another police department, used excessive force and that the city failed to properly monitor, discipline and supervise police, the newspaper said. But the jury did not find that Kaminski acted with malice, the newspaper said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Paul Simao)