(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday that it is moving to drop police reform agreements, known as consent decrees, that the Biden-era department reached with the cities of Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis. The court-enforceable agreements were born out of probes launched after the 2020 police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
The agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville, which were intended to address allegations of systemic unconstitutional policing and civil rights violations, were both held up in federal court and have faced several delays, with the DOJ requesting various extensions to file documents requested by the federal judges in each case.
Attorney Ben Crump, who represents the families of Taylor and Floyd, said in a statement on Wednesday that the decision is a “slap in the face.”
“These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering, and advocacy,” Crump said, adding that these moves will “deepen the divide between law enforcement and the people.”
Addressing reporters in a press conference on Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey criticized the Trump administration’s move and noted that the city is “serious” about its commitment to police reform.
Frey also questioned the timing of the announcement.
“The Trump administration is a mess,” Frey said, referencing the various delays requested by the White House in federal court. “It is predictable that they would move for a dismissal the very same week that George Floyd was murdered five years ago. What this shows is that all Donald Trump really cares about is political theater.”
Frey said that the federal judge in this case will now decide whether to dismiss the agreement, but said the “bottom line” is that “we’re doing it anyway.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon responded to Minneapolis’s opposition to the DOJ moving to drop the consent decree while speaking with reporters on Wednesday. She said she finds it “very interesting” that Minneapolis is publicly opposing the DOJ’s move to drop the consent decree.
“I don’t know why a city would want federal government leaning over it,” Dhillon said.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg also spoke out in a Wednesday press conference.
“The DOJ is moving to dismiss its case with prejudice, meaning that the case will be permanently closed. We believe the court will grant this motion,” he said. “While this is not the outcome we hoped for when we stood right here in December and announced the decree, it is an outcome that we have planned for. We as a city are committed to reform.”
Greenberg said that he “made a promise to our community, and we are keeping that promise” and added that he would move forward with community engagement sessions that would provide feedback in assigning an independent monitor to ensure that reforms are implemented.
Dhillon on Wednesday addressed the Justice Department’s move to drop the agreements, claiming Biden administration officials relied on “faulty legal theories” and “cherry-picked” statistics in order to accuse departments of widespread misconduct.
She claimed consent decrees can increase bureaucracy for police, which she said makes recruiting and retaining officers more difficult.
“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, and certainly not something that we’re seeking to increase in our time here,” Dhillon told reporters in an off-camera briefing.
Dhillon denied that the timing of today’s announcement was in any way related to the five-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd on Sunday, May 25, noting it was solely tied to court-mandated deadlines that required the department to state its position on the separate pending consent decrees with Minneapolis and Louisville.
She also argued that bringing individual prosecutions against cops who engaged in wrongdoing was more effective in addressing misconduct — rather than years-long reform agreements that required extensive manpower to supervise and implement.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is also planning to close its investigations into police departments in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; and the Louisiana State Police, according to the announcement.
Additionally, the department said it will be “retracting” findings released during the Biden administration against departments alleged to have engaged in widespread misconduct against citizens.
“Overboard police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda,” Dhillon said in a statement announcing the moves. “Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”
The NAACP criticized the DOJ’s decision to back away from police reform agreements and investigations into alleged police misconduct.
“It’s been five years, and police reform legislation still hasn’t passed in Congress, and police departments still haven’t been held accountable,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday.
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