MINNEAPOLIS (CN) - The Department of Justice moved on Wednesday to cancel consent decrees made with Minneapolis and Louisville after a series of police killings and abuses set off worldwide protests in the summer of 2020.
The DOJ and Minneapolis asked a judge in January, near the end of President Joe Biden's term, to approve an agreement after the government found the Minneapolis Police Department routinely discriminated against nonwhite people. They also determined that officers had specifically targeted journalists documenting unrest during demonstrations.
"After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest," wrote Andrew Darlington, the acting chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a motion in a Minnesota federal court Wednesday.
The agreement to reform policing was expected to be rescinded after Donald Trump, who has opposed such federal oversight, returned to office.
Minneapolis will remain under a consent decree with Minnesota after a state probe reached similar conclusions.
"While the Department of Justice walks away from their federal consent decree nearly five years from the murder of George Floyd, our department and the state court consent decree isn't going anywhere," said Rebecca Lucero, Minnesota Department of Human Rights Commissioner, in a statement Wednesday.
"Under the state agreement, the city and MPD must make transformational changes to address race-based policing. The tremendous amount of work that lies ahead for the city, including MPD, cannot be understated. And our department will be here every step of the way," Lucero said.
The Justice Department's report was conducted after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Department veteran officer Derek Chauvin, which sparked protests around Minnesota and the world when a graphic video of Floyd's death went viral.
"The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible," then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said when the report was released.
Those patterns included the use of excessive force, including when no force at all was necessary, and discriminatory treatment of Black and Native American people, including disproportionately high rates of traffic stops, searches and seizures and uses of force, officials said in the federal report.
State and local officials say they oppose ending the consent decree. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the Trump administration's decision "political theater" during a news conference Wednesday. He said the city and the department would continue following the decree's recommendations, specifically around First Amendment concerns.
"Minnesota is serious about our commitment to police reform even if the president of the United States is not," he said.
Frey said the city plans to file a motion with the court opposing the Justice Department's intent to drop its lawsuit.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara, who came to the department three years ago amid turmoil within the agency, said police have made progress with problematic policies and outcomes.
"We have been and we remain committed to real, lasting change, both for our residents and for the men and women who serve here," O'Hara said during Wednesday's news conference.
When the decree was announced, then-Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke repeatedly dodged questions about what would happen if the Trump administration refused to follow through.
During Trump's first term, the DOJ sought to limit federal civil rights enforcement, encouraging its attorneys to default to civil rights settlements without court oversight.
Part of Wednesday's rescinding of Minneapolis's consent decree includes a DOJ reversal for a similar lawsuit against the city of Louisville following the killing of Breonna Taylor. The Justice Department is also ending investigations into several other police agencies across the nation, officials wrote in a Wednesday news release.
"These sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs," the department wrote.
Speculation that Trump will pardon Chauvin has led local and state leaders to prepare for possible civil unrest.
If Chauvin were to receive a federal pardon for his crimes, he would still have to serve his sentence for conviction on state charges in April 2021.
Governor Tim Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats, told local media that the state would transfer Chauvin from a federal facility to a state prison to serve the remainder of his more than two-decade-long sentence.
Video showed Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed and unarmed Floyd for about nine minutes. Police arrested Floyd after saying he tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a local convenience store.
The fierce protests that ensued eventually led to the burning down of the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct, along with other buildings in the city. During those protests, police fired 40 mm rubber rounds and tear gas into crowds.
Despite Chauvin's state convictions being upheld by the Minnesota and U.S. Supreme courts, conservative media figures have attempted to rehabilitate the officer's image. Pundits like Ben Shapiro and politicians like U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican, have called for Trump to pardon Chauvin.
Source: Courthouse News Service
