The Department of Justice have announced that they will move to cancel the police reform agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville.
These reforms were put in place after the 2020 deaths of George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor and were geared to address the systemic issues within police departments. Ben Crump, a Civil Rights attorney, who represented the families of both Taylor and Floyd, said that the decision is a “slap in the face.”
Crump said, “These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering, and advocacy.” He added that this decision will “deepen the divide between law enforcement and the people.”
Jacob Frey, Minneapolis’ Mayor also said that the timing of the decision coincides with the fifth year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. “It is predictable that they would move for a dismissal the very same week that George Floyd was murdered five years ago.”
However, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon defended the DOJ’s decision to cancel the police reform agreements and said that the Biden administration relied on, “faulty legal theories,” and “cherry-picked” statistics.
“It’s our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception and not the norm, and certainly not something that we’re seeking to increase in our time here,” Dhillon said to reporters.
Minneapolis and Louisville officials are pushing to keep their reform efforts independently.