The Trump administration found a perverse way of marking the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s tragic death on May 25, 2020. Last week, it announced it would withdraw the court order to reform the Minneapolis Police Department, as well as those in a number of other cities. Harmeet K. Dhillon, the head of the Trump Justice Department’s civil rights division, made clear that she was looking to end many, if not all, of the federal injunctions aimed at abusive and discriminatory police departments in the United States.
It is not as if the problems of police abuse and racist policing have diminished. Statistics continue to show that Black and Latino people are more likely to be stopped by police then white people for the same behavior, more likely to be arrested and more likely to be subjected to police violence.
The murder of George Floyd led to protests in all 50 states against police abuses. Legislation for reforming policing was introduced into Congress and passed by the House of Representatives, only to be blocked in the Senate. Some state and local governments adopted reforms, but the impetus for change soon faded.
This has long been the pattern. High-profile incidents such as the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, and the more recent police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., and of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., generate outrage, but meaningful reforms rarely get adopted. The simple reality is that the political process doesn’t change policing. Politicians find it more advantageous to be “tough on crime” than to take on powerful police unions.
Instead, what has proved to be an effective tool for police reform is the federal statute that was the basis for court ordered reforms in Minneapolis. The law adopted in 1994, allows the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate police departments and sue local and state governments for “appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice” of unconstitutional violations.
This authority has been used to institute reforms in many major city police departments, including in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Newark and New Orleans.
In most instances cities settle rather than litigate, and a consent decree — a court ordered and court enforceable settlement — is entered into. Usually there is a monitor appointed to oversee the reforms. The federal court can impose sanctions on the state or local government if it does not meet the terms of the agreement.
In L.A., the Justice Department investigated and planned to sue the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rampart scandal, in 2000, where police officers were found to have planted evidence on innocent people and lied in court to gain convictions. In June 2001, the city agreed to a consent decree more than 100 pages long.
The decree affected almost every aspect of policing in Los Angeles and included a large number of overdue reforms. It created databases to track, among other things, police use of force and police discipline. It required police to record information with regard to every stop. It changed how use of force was to be investigated. It altered control of the anti-gang units; it was an anti-gang unit in the Rampart Division that led to the scandal. It also required regular audits of many aspects of policing. A monitor was appointed and for 12 years, until 2013, a federal judge oversaw its implementation.
The Harvard Kennedy School did a detailed study of the process and found that the consent decree significantly changed policing in Los Angeles. Serious use of force incidents, for example, decreased by 15% while the consent decree was in effect.
L.A.’s experience is typical: Consent decrees tend to work in reforming police departments. A study in 2017 supported their use after examining 23 police departments that had been under decrees, finding that “civil rights suits against these departments dropped anywhere from 23 percent to 36 percent after a federal intervention.” Another study found that consent decrees overseen by a monitor led to a 29% decrease in civilian fatalities at police hands.
In Minneapolis, the city and what was then the Biden administration Justice Department only came to terms in January, after a multiyear federal investigation found the city’s police engaged in rampant abuses. By canceling the consent decree process, the Trump administration is indicating that it will no longer use its authority in such situations.
A crucial tool for police reform will be lost. An increase in police violation of rights and police violence, especially against individuals of color, seems inevitable.
During the Vietnam War, Vermont Sen. George Aiken is remembered for saying that the United States should simply declare victory and withdraw. The Trump administration is following that playbook when it comes to police wrongdoing, and the consequences are sure to be tragic.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, is an Opinion Voices contributing writer.
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