NEW YORK 

The city of Ferguson, where a fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teen last summer sparked weeks of protests, on Wednesday selected a black interim police chief.

Andre Anderson, a U.S. Army veteran who previously served in Arizona, will lead Ferguson, Missouri, police for the next six months, the city announced in a press statement.

“The city of Ferguson and our police department have endured a tremendous amount of distrust during the past nine months,” said Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III.

“We understand that it will take time to once again gain the trust of everyone", he added

Ferguson became a focal point of a national debate on race relations and police brutality following the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson last August.

The incident ignited fierce street protests and elicited an initially heavy-handed police crackdown on protesters.

The previous police chief, Thomas Jackson, resigned in March following a scathing Justice Department report that found patterns of racial discrimination in the city's policing tactics.

The report cited city officials' alleged roles in encouraging the force to use systematic patterns of racial bias in its policing practices against minorities.

Ferguson is roughly two-thirds black, but its police force is nearly all white.