Justice Department pulls civil rights investigations into local police departments

WASHINGTON — The Justice Division is dismissing lawsuits in opposition to a lot of native police departments and ending investigations into patterns and practices of unconstitutional conduct, officers introduced Wednesday.

The pullback from police oversight comes amid major change on the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division for the reason that begin of the Trump administration and the affirmation of Assistant Lawyer Normal Harmeet Ok. Dhillon, who’s main the division.

Officers stated lawsuits filed throughout President Joe Biden’s administration in opposition to two metropolis police departments — Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis — can be dismissed.

The lawsuits adopted Justice Department investigations into these two police departments, which described patterns of use of extreme pressure, discrimination in opposition to Black individuals and free speech violations in each jurisdictions. These investigations had been separate from legal trials of law enforcement officials from these departments, who had been charged over the high-profile killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.

Then-Lawyer Normal Merrick Garland stated in a 2023 statement asserting the outcomes of the Minneapolis investigation that the “patterns and practices of conduct the Justice Division noticed throughout our investigation … made what occurred to George Floyd attainable.”

In a press release Wednesday, Dhillon stated, “Overbroad police consent decrees divest native management of policing from communities the place it belongs, turning that energy over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, typically with an anti-police agenda. In the present day, we’re ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing native leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”

Different investigations into policing in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma Metropolis; and the Louisiana State Police can even finish.