Authorities have released a series of emails within city offices in Ferguson, Mo., that reveal a shocking amount of racism in the wake of an investigation stemming from the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was killed by a white police officer sparking nationwide protests.

The emails featured jokes that compared minorities who received welfare to mixed-breed dogs, and also ridiculed Muslims, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

It was part of an investigation by the Justice Department into the city of Ferguson, which found that there was widespread discrimination in the city and that officials there ran it as a for-profit system, targeting African-Americans both in the police department and in the court system.

Ferguson gained national attention when Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, killed Brown, who was unarmed, resulting in protests around the nation and demands for action by the federal government.

The Justice Department looked into the matter and released a report that slammed Ferguson after finding “substantial evidence of racial bias among police and court staff,” according to the report.

The emails were sent by Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty to police Capt. Rick Henke and Sgt. William Mudd between 2008 and 2011, and they featured numerous racist jokes. Twitty was later fired because of those emails, and Mudd and Henke eventually resigned.

One email, titled “insensitive one liners,” featured jokes about Muslims stoning their wives and welfare recipients being called lazy people who didn’t know who their fathers were. Another showed a picture of black women engaging in what appears to be a tribal dance in Africa, with the comment, “Michelle Obama’s high-school reunion.”

A grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson in November. The Justice Department also decided not to pursue civil rights violations.

The report withheld the names of non-city employees.