Officials and experts blasted Justice Department plans to abandon police reform settlements as political theater that will undermine public safety and social justice efforts on America’s streets while possibly setting the stage for future lawsuits against police departments nationwide.
On Wednesday, the DOJ announced it would initiate dismissal of lawsuits against and consent-decree negotiations with police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville in a move decried by community activists and cheered by some policing officials.
However, consent decrees applied to law enforcement have largely helped communities in which they’ve been implemented, said Michael Lawlor, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.
“Where these have been imposed, in almost every case the end result was better policing, less crime and fewer lawsuits against cities and towns,” said Lawlor, a former Connecticut state representative. “The bottom line is these actually help, and not hurt, police departments.”
In law enforcement, the legally binding agreements, approved by all parties, typically stem from Justice Department investigations into widespread patterns of misconduct. The signed agreements must be approved by a federal judge to take effect.
The DOJ on Wednesday said it would halt lawsuits and police reform settlement negotiations initiated during President Joe Biden’s administration after two incidents in 2020 that drew worldwide attention and outrage, including the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the killing of Breonna Taylor by police executing a no-knock warrant in Louisville.
In a May 21 press release, the department said those efforts were based on what it described as erroneous associations of statistical disparities with intentional discrimination.
“These sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so,” the DOJ release said.
The Justice Department also said it would close investigations and retract findings of wrongdoing against police departments in Phoenix; Memphis, Tennessee; Trenton, New Jersey; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; and the Louisiana State Police.
Lawlor said the city of New Haven was subject to a consent decree when he served as a state representative after a federal investigation found the city’s police department had a pattern of racially profiling Latinos.
“The end result was a rebooted police department, more professionalized and with higher morale,” Lawlor said. “Everybody’s a winner — but it took a tragedy to force the issue.”
He called the announcement unfortunate but not surprising given the Trump administration’s record on criminal justice thus far, even down to the timing of the announcement just days before the five-year anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
“I’m sure that’s not a coincidence,” Lawlor said. “As with a lot of things they’re doing, it’s performance art. But at the end of the day, everybody loses.”
‘Everyone’s fears just came true’
Community leaders and activists reacted to the DOJ’s plans with a mix of devastation and determination to carry on.
In Memphis, it remained unclear whether the Justice Department’s moves might affect a $550 million civil lawsuit filed against the city by the family of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx employee who died after being pepper-sprayed, punched and kicked by five Memphis police officers during a traffic stop. Three of those former officers were acquitted earlier this month.
“This decision is a slap in the face to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tyre Nichols, and to every community that has endured the trauma of police violence and the false promises of accountability,” said Ben Crump, the noted civil rights attorney representing Nichols’ family, in a press release. “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.”
Louisville Metro Councilwoman Shameka Parrish-Wright, a leader in the 2020 protests over Taylor’s killing who unsuccessfully challenged Greenberg for the mayor’s seat in 2022, expressed disappointment.
“For me, everyone’s fears just came true,” she told The Courier Journal in Louisville. “… The work will continue in other forms. The people of Louisville deserve accountability and transparency on every level.”
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey said he was “appalled and deeply disappointed by the Trump administration’s decision to abandon Louisville’s consent decree and undermine years of hard work by our community, law enforcement, and city officials.”
Chanelle Helm, an organizer for Black Lives Matter Louisville, said instituting systemic change is never easy.
“Most of us never had faith that law enforcement at any level in Louisville, in Kentucky, in the U.S. was going to see justice and do right by Black folks,” Helm said. “Largely, we always know that civil rights were never applied to us, and we would always have to fight for them. In this moment, we’re just hoping people who have been terrorized by LMPD know that we got each other and that we’re building spaces for each other to take time for ourselves. This is not the end.”
Minneapolis, Louisville officials say move won’t sway efforts
Lawlor, of the University of New Haven, said whether with or without federal participation, local communities can still move forward on their own and adopt whatever policies they want.
“The problems have been identified,” he said. “Communities can deal with them or not.”
Both Minneapolis and Louisville have indicated they intend to do so.
In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey said the city will stand by the court-ordered reforms. Crime is down, he said, and police are already rolling out new use-of-force measures, improving community engagement and ensuring their work is transparent and accountable.
Frey called the timing of the announcement “entirely predictable,” charging the Trump administration of playing politics with the issue. Minneapolis, he said, is “serious about reform when the White House is not.”
“What this shows is that all Donald Trump really cares about is political theater,” Frey said. Whether the federal judge decides to dismiss the case or not, he said, “I can speak to what we are doing. Here is the bottom line: We’re doing it anyway.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara echoed Frey’s sentiments, saying the department has been through “an unbelievable amount of change and trauma” in the five years since Floyd’s death, as have the city’s residents.
“I think they know things needed to change here,” O’Hara said. “The men and women who remain here are deeply committed to getting this right. They are not about to turn their backs on their fellow officers or the residents of this community.”
“Consent decrees improve relations between police departments and communities and build necessary trust,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. “Dismissing them does the opposite, and doing so comes as no surprise from a president who has torn up other federal consent decrees and has encouraged police to mistreat people they are sworn to protect. This dismissal, as predictable and shameful as it is, does not erase DOJ’s historic finding that Minneapolis engaged in a pattern of racially discriminatory, unlawful, and unconstitutional policing.”
Ellison said the DOJ’s move doesn’t negate the progress made thus far, including an agreement between the city and the state’s department of human rights, “which aligns closely with the DOJ’s consent decree.”
“We will continue to improve policing and community relations in Minnesota without the federal government’s help,” he said.
Likewise, in Louisville, Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city would continue reform efforts with or without a consent decree, including hiring an independent monitor to provide oversight. While the Justice Department’s action was not the outcome the city had hoped for, he said, it was nonetheless the one it had planned for.
“We as a city are committed to reform,” Greenberg said.
Ed Harness, the city’s inspector general, said his office was preparing to probe several “misconduct areas” cited in the DOJ’s 2023 investigation.
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Kentucky said its efforts to bring about reform would continue, given what legal director Corey Shapiro called the Louisville police department’s “systemic, long-term, and ongoing problem of unconstitutional policing and lack of transparency.”
“The consent decree was an opportunity to repair some of the broken trust between LMPD and the community,” Shapiro said. While city and police officials have indicated a commitment to following through on the terms of the agreement, he called on them to “begin the hard work of demonstrating, through transparency and accountability, that they will do what is right, even without the federal government’s involvement.”
Despite the Justice Department’s current direction, Lawlor said, the pendulum is bound to swing back the other way.
“Whatever happens in the next few years will be paid for four or five years from now when there’s a different perspective at DOJ,” he said.
Contributing: Lucas Finton, USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Critics say DOJ plans to drop police reform will harm cities
