How federal consent decrees have been used in police reform across the US

The Justice Department informed Wednesday it was canceling proposed consent decrees reached with Minneapolis and Louisville to implement policing reforms in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor The department also disclosed it would retract its findings in six other fresh sweeping investigations into police departments as part of a move to phase out the use of the federal oversight mechanism on local police departments at Republican President Donald Trump s behest Related DOJ moves to cancel police modification settlement reached with Minneapolis The decision to unwind the investigations is a major reversal from the Biden administration which had aggressively used the investigations and decrees to push reforms at police departments it accused of civil rights violations Here s more information on how consent decrees work and why they ve been put in place What are consent decrees The federal authorities has used consent decrees after what are commonly referred to as pattern or practice investigations to address findings of civil rights violations or unconstitutional practices They ve been used for things like monitoring mandated desegregation in schools or addressing unconstitutional conditions in jails or prisons The crime bill gave the Justice Department the ability to conduct pattern or practice investigations specifically of police departments The investigations are not criminal They are often triggered by high-profile excessive or fatal use-of-force incidents like the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville But they can also be triggered by citizen complaints or be started at the request of local or state executives Consent decrees are settlements of the inquiry findings that do not require admissions of guilt but put in place a court-enforced improvement plan that requires agencies to meet specific goals before federal oversight of the agency is removed A federal judge usually administers the consent decree and appoints a monitor to oversee and description on progress Who decides what s in a consent decree After the Justice Department study is complete and if systemic civil rights violations are determined the department s attorneys work with local governments or police agencies to negotiate the list of reforms included in the decree Those reforms can cover an array of issues including policies training requirements evidence practices oversight and other policing practices explained Alex del Carmen a professor and associate dean of the School of Criminology at Tarleton State University in Fort Worth Del Carmen who has served as a federal monitor and a special master in large consent decrees revealed the DOJ attorneys and the local regime or police agency the greater part often will agree on the terms of the decree before it is sent to a judge for approval In the rare instance that a police department does not agree to the consent decree terms the Justice Department has in the past filed a lawsuit to force the reforms as it did in Colorado City Arizona A jury determined the department had discriminated against people who weren t members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and put in place court-ordered reforms Preponderance in the past few days Memphis declined in December to agree to the findings of a Justice Department review The department had not filed a lawsuit in the situation and the announcement Wednesday retracted those findings Consent decrees had not yet been proposed in the other five retracted investigations The now canceled consent decrees in Louisville and Minneapolis were awaiting a judge s approval Related The federal consent decree on Minneapolis police transformation is still on pause What now How long do consent decrees last Several decrees are designed to be completed in five years which was the timeframe in which former President Joe Biden s attorney general Merrick Garland proposed all decrees should have a hearing to decide if they should be ended In reality several of the decrees last a decade or longer The Justice Department and local officers filed a joint motion earlier this month to conclude a decree at the Albuquerque Police Department that had been enacted in November Another ongoing consent decree with the New Orleans Police Department began in After the consent decree conditions are met departments often also have to complete a maintenance period to make sure the changes continue Consent decrees remain in effect until a department demonstrates sustained compliance with all requirements del Carmen stated Progress is evaluated through regular monitor reports and agency audits If the department fails to meet benchmarks or violates the decree the court can hold it in contempt impose fines extend oversight or mandate additional corrective measures He announced in cases of continued non-compliance a court can consider the rare step of appointing a receiver- a neutral third party- to manage the department How is success of a consent decree measured Critics of police department consent decrees argue they can come with expensive tabs sometimes in the millions including paying the monitor Police unions and local administrators often say that money could be better used making improvements to the department and paying officers In Albuquerque critics have noted they believe the decree failed citing increased crime numbers But advocates of the federal decrees and former monitors announced those numbers crimes or raw use-of-force numbers are not indicative of success or failure They point to independent monitor audits that track framework compliance to community-trust surveys and to declines in misconduct complaints They also say the money expended in improving training and accountability often means less payouts later in civil-liability states against the police departments Independent oversight ensures that agencies cannot ignore or backslide on required changes even amid political shifts del Carmen noted While resource-intensive it is often argued that consent decrees have repeatedly produced lasting reductions in misconduct and strengthened community trust in reformed departments The post How federal consent decrees have been used in police restructuring across the US appeared first on MinnPost