CHICAGOAttorney General Jeff Sessions recent remarks that his Justice Department will pull back on federal probes of police departments accused of violating civil rights of minorities reignited a debate over the effectiveness of federal intervention with local law enforcement.
The Obama administration investigated a record 25 law-enforcement agencies, ending in 15 court-enforced agreements, or consent decrees, to make specific changes typically aimed at eliminating excessive force and what the Justice Department alleged was departments systemic racial bias. Among the local departments that agreed to improve training and police oversight, and to treat minorities more fairly, were Ferguson, Mo., where the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown set off nationwide protests, and Cleveland, where 13 officers in 2012 fired 137 shots into a car at the end of a police chase, killing an unarmed black couple inside.
Jonathan Smith, who headed the Justice Departments civil-rights division special litigation unit from 2010 to 2015, said that the probes under the administration of former President Barack Obama were extremely thorough and showed that there were widespread problems in American policing.
But some law enforcement and city officials have pushed back against Justice Department involvement in their departments, citing high costs of implementing the changes and an aversion to federal interference in local law enforcement. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, Americas largest police-labor organization, said some sanctions imposed on police as a result of the agreements made it far more difficult for police to do their jobs.
Officers may become less aggressive in fighting crime immediately after consent decreesbut not in the long term, according to research by Stephen Rushin, an assistant professor at the University of Alabamas School of Law.
Restrictions imposed on police under federal oversight have contributed to temporary upticks in crime, according to research by Mr. Rushin. I do not think there is necessarily a trade-off long-term between constitutional policing and crime prevention, he said. Our best guess is that the de-policing effect of federal intervention is temporary, until the new policies and procedures become routinized.
In Chicago and Baltimore, increases in violent crime started just after Justice Department investigations that followed high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police.
Reforms dont always last, according to Joshua Chanin, an assistant professor of public affairs at San Diego State University. His 2016 study of five police departments found that allegations of police misconduct as well as officers use of force by most measures dropped in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati while those cities were under federal oversight, and for the most part continued a downward trend afterward. Yet police use of force and allegations of police misconduct remained steady in Pittsburgh, then rose after federal overseers left the city, he found. A Pittsburgh police spokeswoman didnt respond to requests for comment.
There were just three consent decrees under the former Republican President George W. Bushs administration, as well as three under the administration of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Brad Schlozman, who oversaw the special litigation section in Mr. Bushs Justice Department, said he didnt believe it was the federal governments role to come in in a very heavy-handed fashion and dictate terms to local police departments. The Bush administration believed that taking a less adversarial and more cooperative approach with police departments would yield better results, he said.
Mr. Sessions said in his first major speech as attorney general that pulling back on the investigations would make the lives of people, particularly in poor, minority communities safer, happier, and wasnt insensitive to civil rights. He also dismissed the Justice Departments Jan. 13 finding that Chicago police had a pattern of using excessive force in violation of the constitution as anecdotal, not systematic, and hasnt committed to negotiating a consent decree to implement reforms there.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sessio...federal-decrees-on-police-1489159495?mod=e2tw
Interested read from the WSJ. I think a lot of people missed the Sessions speech with the heavy news cycles lately. Full story at the link above.