Justice Department pulls civil rights investigations into local police departments

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is dismissing lawsuits against a number of local police departments and ending investigations into patterns and practices of unconstitutional behavior, officials announced Wednesday.

The pullback from police oversight comes amid major change at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division since the start of the Trump administration and the confirmation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s pick to lead the division.

Officials said lawsuits filed during President Joe Biden’s administration against two city police departments — Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis — would be dismissed.

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The lawsuits followed Justice Department investigations into those two police departments, which described patterns of use of excessive force, discrimination against Black people and free speech violations in both jurisdictions. Those investigations were separate from criminal trials of police officers from those departments, who were charged over the high-profile killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.

So-called pattern and practice investigations are meant to focus not on individual incidents but rather on policies and policing cultures that lead to routine constitutional violations.

Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a 2023 statement announcing the results of the Minneapolis investigation that the “patterns and practices of conduct the Justice Department observed during our investigation … made what happened to George Floyd possible.”

In a statement Wednesday, Dhillon said, “Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda. Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”

Kristen Clarke, who held Dhillon’s position during the Biden administration, responded in a statement Wednesday.

“To be clear, these investigations were led by career attorneys, based on data, body camera footage and information provided by officers themselves, and the reforms set forth in consent decrees were carefully negotiated with the full support of law enforcement leaders and local officials,” she said.

Other investigations into policing in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; and the Louisiana State Police will also end.

During Trump’s first term in office, the Civil Rights Division pulled back on police oversight in cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown was killed in 2014.

After Joe Biden took office in 2021, the Justice Department rescinded guidance that had been issued by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Two years later, the Justice Department announced the results of its investigations into police in Louisville and Minneapolis in 2023.

In statements, Louisville’s mayor and police chief said they will move forward with reforms despite the dismissal of the lawsuit.

“We are moving ahead rapidly to continue implementing police reform that ensures constitutional policing while providing transparency and accountability to our community,” Mayor Craig Greenberg said in a statement. “I made a promise to our community, and we are keeping that promise.”

The state of Minnesota also conducted an investigation into policing in Minneapolis. The head of the state’s Department of Human Rights said their agreement remained in place.

“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,” Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in a statement. “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.”