In news that can only be described as disappointing but unsurprising, the Trump administration has announced it will dismiss consent decrees designed to spur police reform in several cities around the country.
According to AP, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Department announced on Wednesday that it has initiated court filings asking judges to dismiss the consent decrees for several police departments, including in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis. Additionally, the department will retract the findings of the investigations that led to decrees being issued in the first place. The DOJ is also ending ongoing investigations into police departments in Phoenix, Memphis, New Jersey, and several other cities
The fact that this announcement comes just days before the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder should not be lost on anyone.
“It’s our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception, and not the norm,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the current leader of the division, said on Wednesday.
Consent decrees are approved by a federal judge and have often been used to spur police reform in cities where misconduct, bias, and poor policing have proven to be endemic. Once a consent decree is reached and approved by a judge, it allows for federal oversight to ensure that the affected police departments are following through on the reforms agreed upon in the decree. It should be noted that federal judges still have to approve the dismissals, and the DOJ has to make a case for why the consent decrees should be thrown out.
The thing that gets me is that it takes a substantial amount of time and investigation for a consent decree to be issued in the first place. While a consent decree was issued in Louisville after the police-related death of Breonna Taylor, it came four years after her death and had yet to be approved by a judge before the DOJ’s announcement. Similarly, George Floyd’s murder triggered an investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, which also entered a consent decree three years after his death.
So it’s not like consent decrees were just being handed out left and right without a degree of process, evidence, or rigor. These investigations didn’t occur for no reason. At best, people had their rights violated, and at worst, people actually died. These reforms were designed to improve both community safety and hopefully, police relations in the affected cities.
Source: DOJ Withdrawing Consent Decrees in Major Blow to Police Reform
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