Trump Justice Department Killed Police Reform Programs That Could Have Helped Minneapolis
As protests rage across the country over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, the Justice Department is once again brushing aside its mandate to bring broader reform to troubled police departments that have lost ― or never had ― their community’s trust.
Since President Donald Trump took office, his appointees at the Justice Department have all but eliminated the federal government’s police reform work. The Civil Rights Division’s police practices group has shrunk by half, and it hasn’t opened any major pattern-or-practice investigations that could rein in police departments that regularly violate constitutional rights.
The Trump administration effectively killed a collaborative reform initiative created by DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that allowed cities to voluntarily implement reform, a move that left the local officials who had partnered with DOJ feeling abandoned.
Under Attorney General William Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions before him, the Trump Justice Department has subscribed to a “bad apples” view of policing that dismisses systemic problems in local police departments that make unconstitutional policing routine. Sessions rolled back police reform even though he conceded he hadn’t actually read any of the DOJ police department investigations he described as “anecdotal.” Barr recently said that communities that don’t show more respect for law enforcement “might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
Federal authorities, like a lot of law enforcement leaders across the country, have expressed shock at the disturbing video of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck until he died. But they have stopped short of stating that Chauvin’s conduct reveals anything more broadly about the culture within the Minneapolis Police Department.
“This Justice Department has walked away from police...
