Yesterday the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the consent decrees that were to be operative against the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments. We have sought to cut through the din and expose the ludicrous “analysis” underlying the charges against the Minneapolis police department roughly since the day Merrick Garland came to town to announce them.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon explains the Trump administration’s opposition to these consent decrees in the Wall Street Journal column “An End to Biden Injustice Against the Police.” She writes (emphasis added, links omitted):
I have directed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to dismiss two last-minute Biden-administration lawsuits, against the Louisville, Ky., and Minneapolis police departments. The suits sought to subject both cities to sweeping, minutely detailed consent decrees that would inhibit local policing for years, make area residents less safe, and cost local taxpayers millions of dollars.
Using the threat of litigation, the Biden Justice Department sought to force many municipalities into such policing consent decrees—federal court-monitored settlements billed as “achieving reforms.” On our review, it is clear that the previous administration’s investigations and findings were based on faulty legal theories, incomplete data and flawed statistical methods.
Generally, policing consent decrees impose “reforms” far more sweeping than any underlying allegations of unconstitutional conduct. These consent decrees are costly to implement. Local police departments pay an average of $1 million a year to the independent monitors required by consent decrees, with large jurisdictions paying between $100 million and $300 million in compliance costs over the decrees’ lifetime. Once in place, they tend to suffer from mission creep, and it is very difficult to end them, as evidenced by a dozen existing policing consent decrees that have been in place for an average of a decade.
Several analyses, including by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, show that these policing consent decrees can be counterproductive to public safety. Jurisdictions under the policing consent decrees frequently see sharp increases in crime. An Axios review of police consent decrees found that “most police agencies in recent federally court-ordered reform agreements saw violent crime rates skyrocket immediately”—by as much as 61%.
And this:
I have also directed the Civil Rights Division to close its investigations into, and to rescind, the Biden-era findings of constitutional violations by the following additional local police departments: Louisiana State Police; Memphis, Tenn.; Mount Vernon, N.Y.; Oklahoma City; Phoenix; and Trenton, N.J. Many of the Biden Civil Rights Division’s published reports lambasting these departments also praise them for resolving identified problems.
Notwithstanding our reversal of the Biden administration’s flawed and unreliable attacks on police, we reiterate that the Justice Department plays an important role in protecting the civil rights of all Americans. This includes protecting against constitutional violations inflicted by law-enforcement officers. Nobody is above the law, not even the police. Yet the overwhelming majority of police officers should be free to continue what they do best: protect and serve their communities. The Civil Rights Division will work with, not against, our brave police. They risk their lives daily to keep their communities secure—the most fundamental of government services in a civilized society.
As I wrote yesterday in my own comments on the motion to dismiss the Minneapolis case, thank you, Ms. Dhillon.
