DOJ Withdrawing Consent Decrees in Major Blow to Police Reform

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. 

Of course, this is the Trump administration we’re talking about. They don’t want to solve problems; they simply want to pretend they don’t exist. If Black people get screwed in the process, even better. 

Kristen Clarke, the former head of the Civil Rights Division under the Biden administration, sent a statement to AP critical of the move. She defended the quality of the investigations, saying they were “led by career attorneys, based on data, body camera footage and information provided by officers themselves.”

“To wholesale ignore and disregard these systemic violations, laid bare in well-documented and detailed public reports, shows patent disregard for our federal civil rights and the Constitution,” Clarke added. 

This move is consistent with steps the Trump administration took in its first term when it restricted the department’s ability to investigate police killings and potential civil rights violations. It wasn’t until 2021 when former Attorney General Merrick Garland lifted those restrictions that these more recent consent decrees could be reached. 

While the federal government is doing its damndest to turn back the clocks, leaders in several cities currently under consent decrees have stated that this move doesn’t change their commitment to police reform. In a press conference on Wednesday addressing the DOJ’s move, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara reaffirmed their commitment to the reforms established in the consent decree. 

“We will comply with every sentence of every paragraph of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year,” Frey said. “We will make sure that we are moving forward with every sentence of every paragraph of both the settlement around the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, as well as the consent decree.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg made a similar statement at a news conference on Wednesday. 

“We are moving ahead rapidly to continue implementing police reform that ensures constitutional policing while providing transparency and accountability to the public. I made a promise to our community, and we are keeping that promise,” Greenberg told reporters. 

It’s a nice sentiment, but actions speak louder than words. While the Louisville Mayor issued the statement, court documents show that the Louisville Metro Government didn’t oppose the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the consent decree, which could actually help the DOJ’s case. 

Only time will tell if these cities will actually continue to honor their commitments or simply slide back into their old ways. 

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