Attorney General Sessions Suspends DOJ Police Reform Program
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on this day announced that the Justice Department would “review” –in effect, suspend– all department activities related to police reform.
Based on statements by Donald Trump during the presidential election campaign and after the election, along with statements by Sessions even before being sworn in as AG, the clear intent of the “review” is to back off from investigating abuses by local police departments and seeking reforms through consent decrees. The announcement brought to a halt twenty years of federal investigations of police department for “patterns or practices” of abuse of peoples’ constitutional rights.
Following the statement, DOJ attempted to delay, if not stop, a pending consent decree over the Baltimore police. The federal judge, however, ignored the DOJ motions and signed the consent decree. A Justice Department investigation of the Chicago police department was also in process but not completed by this date. In response, the Illinois Attorney General launched its own investigation of the Chicago police and obtained a consent decree.
Read the DOJ’s February 2017 report on its Pattern or Practice work since 1994 here.
Learn more about police accountability: Samuel Walker and Carol Archbold, The New World of Police Accountability, 3rd ed. (2020)
Don’t miss: Wesley Lowery, “They Can’t Kill Us All:” Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement (2016)
Read the definitive new book on police shootings: Franklin Zimring, When Police Kill (2017)