WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Justice Department’s recent decision to dismiss lawsuits and withdraw from accountability agreements with several police departments has alarmed reform advocates, who fear the move could reverse progress in curbing excessive use of force, according to an NBC News report.
Last Wednesday, the DOJ announced it would abandon proposed consent decrees with police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, and end ongoing investigations into departments in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; and the Louisiana State Police.
In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon described the consent decrees as “overbroad” and part of what she called an “anti-police agenda.”
“Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees,” Dhillon said.
Consent decrees—court-enforced agreements designed to reform police departments following findings of civil rights violations—date back to President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. These agreements typically result from investigations that examine systemic issues in policing rather than isolated incidents, NBC News explained.
Public response to consent decrees has been mixed. In Los Angeles, which exited a 12-year federal oversight agreement in 2013, the police department continues to face lawsuits and accusations of excessive force. Supporters of local control argue that communities are better equipped to manage their own law enforcement agencies, NBC News noted.
The proposed decree in Minneapolis followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd, whose death under the knee of a police officer sparked nationwide protests and prompted a federal investigation. A similar agreement in Louisville was reached after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot by officers while unarmed in her home the same year.
Both incidents triggered a wave of mass protests that marked the closing months of Donald Trump’s first term and led to multiple federal investigations during President Biden’s tenure, spearheaded by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Other consent decrees, like the one in Baltimore, remain in effect. That agreement followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who sustained a fatal spinal injury while in police custody. The Baltimore Police Department is currently in the “assessment” phase of its reform process, according to a city dashboard cited by NBC News. In December, the DOJ praised the department’s progress and partially lifted federal oversight.
Reform efforts are also ongoing in Cleveland and Ferguson, Missouri. In Ferguson, a 2014 federal consent decree followed the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager. That agreement mandated increased officer training, revised use-of-force policies, and a more robust system for handling citizen complaints.
Jin Hee Lee of the Legal Defense Fund emphasized the importance of understanding the limits of consent decrees while defending their necessity.
“They are very important and oftentimes necessary to force police departments to change their policies, to change their practices,” she said. “But consent decrees were never the end all, be all.”
