Kristen Clark looks back at police reforming DOJ’s progress
Kristen Clark, the first black woman to serve as civil rights attorney general, discusses police reform and the suspension of hate crimes.
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice is waiving efforts to secure court-approved settlements in Minneapolis and Louisville despite prior findings that police in both cities routinely violate black civil rights, a senior official said Wednesday.
Halheit Dillon, the attorney general of the department’s Civil Rights Division, said her office would dismiss pending cases against the two cities and attempt to withdraw preliminary investigations of unconstitutional violations.
“The Overlord Police Consent Order sells local police control from the community it belongs to, handing over that power to unelected unexplainable bureaucrats, often having an anti-political agenda,” Dillon said in a statement.
She also announced that the department will be closing its department to withdraw preliminary investigation into fraudulent conduct against police departments of Arizona, Memphis, Tennessee, Trenton, New Jersey, New York, New York, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Louisiana State Police.
The move comes four days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, four days before the fifth anniversary of May 25th. George Floyd is a black man killed by Derek Chaubin, a white police officer who kneeled on his neck when Floyd repeatedly pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
Floyd’s murder and Breana Taylor, who was shot dead by Louisville police on a no-knock warrant, sparked global protests over racially motivated policing practices in the final year of President Donald Trump’s first term.
Louisville and Minneapolis were the two most famous cities investigated during former Democratic president Joe Biden administration, and the only two cities that in principle agreed to enter a court-approved settlement with the DOJ, known as the decision to agree.
Minneapolis also entered separate types of settlements similar to Minnesota to reform police practices.
Congress allowed the Justice Department to conduct a civil investigation into constitutional abuse by police in 1994, including the overuse of armed forces and racially motivated police in response to the be-hitting of black Rodney King by white Los Angeles police officers.
During Biden’s presidency, the Civil Rights Division launched 12 such “patterns or practices” investigations into police departments, including New York City, Trenton, Memphis and Phoenix, including Lexington, Mississippi.
However, despite failing to enter the court’s binding agreement for these four years, issues warned by legal experts could be at risk of department police accountability being revoked.
Under Dillon’s leadership, the Civil Rights Division lost more than 100 lawyers due to resignation agreements, demoted and resigned.
“Over 100 lawyers have decided they don’t want their job to do what they need, and I think that’s fine,” Dillon told Glenn Beck on a podcast on April 26th.
Last month, Dillon demoted a senior lawyer who handled police abuse investigations for other low-level assignments, including handling requests for public records and awarding complaints about internal discrimination.
These moves are part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to overturn the Civil Rights Division’s tradition of pursuing cases to protect the civil rights of some of the country’s most vulnerable and historically disenfranchised population.
Since January, it has suspended the probe for alleged police abuse, Los Angeles violated gun rights laws, following Trump’s lead, changing departmental stances on transgender rights and investigating anti-Semitism at US universities, including Palestinian protesters.
The department recently ended a decades-old school segregation order in Louisiana.
