A hearing to start finalizing that agreement was set for April 6, but on Monday, the Justice Department asked a judge for 90 days to “review and assess” the decree, citing the Trump administration’s shift in priorities, including the president’s promised focus on law and order and the fight against violent crime.
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Justice Department attorney John Gore told a judge Thursday that newly minted Attorney General Jeff Sessions is concerned about the agreement and “whether it will achieve the goals of public safety and law enforcement while at the same time protecting civil rights”.
“It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies”.
The riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 triggered the highest profile of more than a dozen consent decrees mandated by the Civil Rights Division of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, saddling the police department there with burdensome and costly oversight. The Justice Department’s investigation, after an officer’s fatal shooting of a Native American woodcarver in 2010, found officers had been too quick to assert force, especially in low-intensity encounters.
Activists and civil rights groups criticized the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) pause on police reform, calling the move “alarming” Tuesday. That includes scrutinizing the effectiveness of existing and proposed consent decrees that involve courts enforcing police reforms. But politically, liberal mayors with significant black voting bases had every reason to side with the federal government against their own police departments.
But the Trump administration hinted earlier this week it wanted to revisit the idea of consent decrees, with Attorney General Sessions charging two of his top deputies with reviewing not just the Baltimore decree, but all such decrees now being considered at police departments across the nation.
Because the police departments aren’t normally distinct legal entities suing and being sued, they aren’t parties who can join the Trump Department of Justice in seeking revision of the consent decrees. Actively participating in a consent decree, he said, will help bolster faith in that process.
Richards estimated that the territory has spent approximately $10 million on the consent decree since the judge signed off on it in March 2009.
The Justice Department on Monday filed a motion with a judge seeking a delay before putting in place a consent decree that would mandate reforms.
The consent decree was signed under an Obama administration that made reforming police a priority and used consent decrees as tool in that effort.
The city invited the Justice Department investigation, which found a pattern of discriminatory policing, after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Baltimore’s mayor and police chief worked closely with Justice Department investigators to scrutinize the city’s police force and embraced a plan they crafted to overhaul the troubled department.
A favorite talking point of the mayor’s is that more effective police work and more professional police work are “heads and tails of the same coin”. And it equally important to have an independent monitor acting as the court’s eyes and ears to ensure that reforms are implemented effectively and efficiently, ideally in communication and partnership with the policed communities. “All the reforms in the world” won’t matter if the public doesn’t believe there are actually changes, he said. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis called it “a punch in the gut”, and was clear in his message that both he and the department support a consent decree. And the confidence in the police department by the communities will be eroded.
The question is how to make certain this duty is carried out appropriately, and whether consent decrees are the best way to do it.
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“The Department of Law continues to have conversations with the Department of Justice regarding its investigation of police practices and the efforts to adopt reforms within the Chicago Police Department”, spokesman Bill McCaffrey said in a statement. Did I completely understand the ramifications of the consent decree?
