“Why would our attorney general upend and undo that?”
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President Donald Trump has taken an emphatic pro-police, “law-and-order” stand. And he doesn’t issue modest orders.
The Justice Department requested earlier this week that U.S. District Judge James Bredar postpone a public hearing on civil rights reforms at the embattled Baltimore Police Department. That’s a court-supervised plan to correct civil rights violations by Baltimore police.
“Any interruption in moving forward may have the effect of eroding the trust that we are working hard to establish”, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said. “The current Attorney General’s comments on his department’s policies don’t impact our commitment to constitutional policing and ongoing reform”. The move isn’t meant to make policing less racially disparate, nor to more quickly weed out from the public dole officers who are themselves breaking the law and their oaths. While the city’s police department was the target of much scrutiny in the days after Gray’s death, other incidents – including a “1930s gangster-style” spate of police violence – convinced many local stakeholders that more action was needed to reform the department.
The Thursday hearing was scheduled in February and asks for public feedback on a so-called consent decree between Baltimore and the Justice Department. So what have federal authorities told you about the kinds of questions they want answered in this time?
Hundreds of people are expected to testify about the court-enforceable agreement and special security measures have been put into place, the judge said.
“There’s nothing in there that I see now that says you can’t go out and do aggressive policing”, Jackson said.
In January, the outgoing administration agreed to a decree with Baltimore. “So we’re going to pull back” on federal investigations of police departments.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ order for a review of Department of Justice consent decrees with local police departments should not affect Warren’s 2012 agreement because it already is close to completion, acccording to Law Director Gregory Hicks.
But police reform advocates and former Justice Department investigators said the extraordinary change of course by the Trump administration is missing the point.
No one disputes that being a police officer is hard and that those in blue put themselves at risk of harm every day.
In Albuquerque, allegations of excessive force and a string of about 20 fatal shootings by police in a four-year period prompted a lengthy federal investigation.
Civil rights leaders are alarmed by Sessions’ memo, anxious his efforts will marginalize issues for communities of color. And we believe that kind of oversight is necessary. “It’ll make us better, it’ll make the city better, it’ll make our relationships with the community better”.
MARTIN: So that’s an important thing to note. Consent decrees are binding legal agreements, and once signed, they are overseen by a federal judge and an appointed monitor.
The issue of race and policing has not gone away. And the confidence in the police department by the communities will be eroded.
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Its release was met with sharp rebukes from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of OH, which strongly encourages police reform efforts. It talks about the need for better training. “We’ve been under the decree for a number of years and should look to determine how effective it has been”. “I don’t know that he’s in our corner”.
