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Ferguson, Missouri, police fostered a "highly toxic environment" of racism and misconduct that turned the city into a "powder keg" that was ready to explode after the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last year, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday even though the officer who shot Brown was determined to have committed no crime.

In a lengthy explanation of the Justice Department's two investigations in Ferguson of police in general and of former Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Brown in August specifically Holder agreed with a local grand jury that declined to indict Wilson, stressing that "the facts do not support the filing of criminal charges."

"Michael Brown's death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson," Holder said.

A visibly disturbed Holder said "it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson," which he described as "defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings and spurred by illegal and misguided practices."

Those illegal practices included constitutional violations and excessive and dangerous use of force disproportionately targeted against African Americans, Holder said.

St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who was widely criticized by activists and critics of local law enforcement, told reporters later, "I don't feel any need to be vindicated," saying it was Wilson who was vindicated by the physical evidence and the consistency of witnesses' statements.

"Those who say that, well, charges should be filed just so we can have a trial we don't operate that way in this country," McCulloch said.

McCulloch said he had not had a chance to read the second report, documenting misconduct by Ferguson police. But "we've all got a long way to go to restore and to build that trust in the community."

In his remarks, Holder said the systemic problems in Ferguson went far beyond just the police department. A trove of work emails from not only police but also other city officials revealed "racist comments or gender discrimination, demonstrating grotesque views and images of African Americans in which they were seen as the 'other,' called 'transient' by public officials and characterized as lacking personal responsibility," he said.

The Justice Department report further denounced the emails as unequivocally derogatory, dehumanizing and demonstrative of impermissible bias." It found that none of the officers or court clerk employees who wrote them was ever disciplined. Senior Justice Department officials said some of them, in fact, were still employed by Ferguson.

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Holder Slams Ferguson Cops for Racist, Money-Grubbing Practices