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

The Justice Department disclosed 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 stated it would retract its findings in six other latest 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 amendment 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 regime 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 functionaries Consent decrees are settlements of the examination 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 summary on progress Who decides what s in a consent decree After the Justice Department research is complete and if systemic civil rights violations are uncovered 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 statistics practices oversight and other policing practices mentioned 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 stated the DOJ attorneys and the local cabinet or police agency preponderance 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 discovered the department had discriminated against people who weren t members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and put in place court-ordered reforms Most of just now Memphis declined in December to agree to the findings of a Justice Department review The department had not filed a lawsuit in the incident 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 adjustment is still on pause What now How long do consent decrees last Particular 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 countless 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 reported 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 mentioned 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 personnel often say that money could be better used making improvements to the department and paying officers In Albuquerque critics have declared they believe the decree failed citing increased crime numbers But advocates of the federal decrees and former monitors reported those numbers crimes or raw use-of-force numbers are not indicative of success or failure They point to independent monitor audits that track initiative 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 alleges against the police departments Independent oversight ensures that agencies cannot ignore or backslide on required changes even amid political shifts del Carmen explained While resource-intensive it is often argued that consent decrees have repeatedly produced lasting reductions in misconduct and strengthened masses trust in reformed departments The post How federal consent decrees have been used in police revision across the US appeared first on MinnPost