The US Justice Department is abandoning efforts to finalise court-approved settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville, despite earlier findings that police in both cities systematically violated the civil rights of Black residents, a senior official confirmed on Wednesday.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, announced plans to seek dismissal of pending litigation against the two cities and to retract previous findings of constitutional violations.
“Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda,” Dhillon said in a statement.
The department will also close investigations and withdraw prior findings of misconduct against police departments in Phoenix, Arizona; Memphis, Tennessee; Trenton, New Jersey; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Louisiana State Police.
This announcement comes just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020. Floyd, a Black man, died after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck during an arrest. The killing, along with the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police during a no-knock warrant raid, ignited global protests over racially motivated policing.
Under the Biden administration, Minneapolis and Louisville were the two most prominent cities under Department of Justice investigations for systemic police abuses. They were the only cities to agree in principle to court-approved consent decrees aimed at reforming their police departments. Minneapolis also entered a separate settlement with the state of Minnesota for police reform.
Congress authorised the Justice Department in 1994 to investigate police departments for constitutional abuses, such as excessive force or racial profiling, following the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police officers.
During President Joe Biden’s term, the Civil Rights Division launched 12 such “pattern or practice” investigations into police forces including those in Phoenix, New York City, Trenton, Memphis, and Lexington, Mississippi.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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