Attorney General Sessions just recently announced that Consent Decrees with police departments will be dissolved. That means that police departments like Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Albuquerque will no longer be required to pay ninety thousand dollars per year to a Federal Monitor. The Monitor is a political appointee by the Federal Judge assigned to the case who oversees all of the operations of the police agency. This includes important items like approving the purchase of paper clips.
Clearly, there is a need for the FBI to investigate allegations of violations of Civil Rights against individual police officers, but the investigation of “patterns and practices” is clearly a witch hunt and prosecute those cases where the facts warrant it. In the case of Ferguson, Missouri, the DOJ found that ninety percent of traffic stops by the agency were of African-Americans. That statistic sets off alarms until the fact that the City is seventy percent African-American is factored in. The stops of white drivers would therefore be limited to people passing through the City. Ongoing investigations of Philadelphia and Baltimore will be closed.
After the police shooting in Ferguson, Mr. Holder sent fifty FBI agents in an effort to manufacture a criminal case against Officer Darren Wilson. All of those resources proved to be a waste of time and effort as the facts became known.
This all began in the Clinton Administration in 1992 with the Rodney King case. The DOJ sat on the sideline until the State criminal case resulted in not guilty verdicts against the four LAPD officers, and then stepped in and prosecuted under the Civil Rights laws of United States Code Section 1983. The “patterns and practices” investigation of LAPD resulted in a ninety-eight page consent decree with the Federal Court. That decree is still being enforced today.
Cities like Cincinnati, Ohio, who entered into a Consent Decree after the shooting of an African-American by a police officer, was continued after the Federal monitoring was terminated. That is a decision which was, and should be, made by the individual City.
Unlike previous DOJ activity, investigations will likely not be limited to African-Americans shot or beaten by police and will cover voter intimidation and hate crimes committed by African-Americans against white victims.
Voters should be the ones who decide what type of policing they want. Although Municipal Police Chiefs are not elected, the Mayors and Council members are. Since Police Chiefs are appointed, they can be replaced by new political make-up in the City.
The function of the Department of Justice is not investigation. It is to provide legal assistance to Federal Law Enforcement and to prosecute violators of Federal law. It is the function of the FBI to investigate allegations of civil rights violations, especially those which involve law enforcement officers.