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Police departments

Justice Department Abandons Police-Accountability Agreements

Strategic Insights

— 2 min read

The Justice Department has announced plans to drop police-accountability agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville, marking a significant shift away from the Biden administration's efforts to reshape law enforcement in cities where high-profile killings by officers sparked widespread outrage. The department's civil rights division, led by Harmeet K. Dhillon, will also close investigations into multiple other local police departments and retract findings of wrongdoing in several agencies.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Justice Department is abandoning police-accountability agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville, citing concerns over the effectiveness and cost of the consent decrees.
  • Harmeet K. Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, has criticized the agreements as "reliant on faulty legal theories" and argued that they strip away local control of police departments.
  • The department will also close investigations into multiple other local police departments, including Phoenix, Memphis, and Oklahoma City, and retract findings of wrongdoing in several agencies.
  • The decision to abandon the consent decrees has been met with criticism from police-accountability advocates, who argue that it will undermine efforts to improve policing and create a "divide between law enforcement and the people they are sworn to protect and serve."
  • The Milwaukee and Boston police departments, among others, had been under investigation, but findings of wrongdoing have not been retracted.
  • The Justice Department's investigation into the Baltimore police department was dropped under the Trump administration.
  • President Donald Trump has been a proponent of police using more force and a critic of efforts to impose restrictions and more oversight on officers.

Statistics:

  • The Justice Department has launched 12 investigations into local and state police agencies during the Biden administration.
  • Only Minneapolis and Louisville had reached agreements with the Justice Department, which were submitted to judges for approval but not formally adopted.
  • The consent decrees have been in effect for approximately two years to date.
  • The Baltimore police department was under a consent decree at one point, but it was abandoned under the Trump administration.
  • Approximately half of the Justice Department's civil rights division lawyers have left since Harmeet K. Dhillon was sworn in last month.
  • 5 years since George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020.
  • The Minneapolis police are already operating under a separate settlement with a state agency imposing changes to the local department.
  • The Louisville and Minneapolis consent decrees faced no hearings in court.

Sources:

  • [1] The Washington Post; By Mark Berman; Perry Stein; March 15, 2023 5:24 PM ET; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/15/police-departments-justice-department-aba-consent-decrees/
  • [2] New York Times; By Adam Nagourney; March 15, 2023; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/us/police-departments-justice-department.html

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