Washington — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it is starting the process of dismissing lawsuits against police departments in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, bringing an end to investigations launched during former President Joe Biden’s administration. It will also put an end to proposed accountability agreements with the departments.
The department said the consent decrees proposed by the Biden administration sought to subject the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments to sweeping agreements that went beyond accusations of unconstitutional conduct and would have led to “years of micromanagement” of local departments.
The federal involvement began following the deaths of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and Breonna Taylor in a Louisville police shooting in 2020.
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”
In addition to taking steps to dismiss the lawsuits against the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments, the Trump administration also said it is closing investigations into police departments in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City and the Louisiana State Police.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
