The "next era" in police oversight on the part of the Department of Justice will be....oops, there won't be one.
Trump
attorney general nominee Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama is an
opponent of civil rights, equality, justice for all and criminal justice reform
and transformation.
Which
makes him the perfect Trump and Republican candidate.
Sessions
was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 because of racist statements he made,
and he appears to be opposite the type of leadership and integrity required by
the role of the nation’s top lawyer.
We
predicted after the presidential election that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division
and the COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) Division would be gutted in a Trump presidency. Sure enough, Sessions, in Senate confirmation hearings this week, gave notice that DOJ
“patterns-and-practices” investigations into cities’ police departments would
be a thing of the past.
Our prediction was not a tough call.
Sessions
has joined the chorus of police oversight opponents in saying, quite oddly,
that police oversight leads to higher crime!
“Sessions struggled on day one of his
confirmation hearing to reason past statements, and his record. In 1986,
Sessions was denied a federal judgeship because he was
deemed too racist. Allegations at the
time said that he called a black attorney 'boy,' and once suggested a
white lawyer was a race traitor for working for black clients.”
In a Hail Mary of timing, the DOJ Civil Rights Division released a report touting its accomplishments since 1994 when
federal legislation permitted the DOJ to investigate and dictate to local law
enforcement agencies.
The
Department of Justice COPS department in October announced it was initiating a “collaborative
review” of the Memphis police department.
This is different from a patterns-and-practices investigation, which the
DOJ Civil Rights Division has imposed upon cities.
The outcomes typically are consent decrees that the cities must enter to
reform discriminatory and unconstitutional practices, and the cities must pay
for about five years of monitoring
progress. During the Obama administration,
23 cities were tabbed for these DOJ investigations. There were none during the Bush administration.
Sixteen
cities, including Memphis, have been selected by the COPS office to join
voluntary reviews, ostensibly to improve those departments. Another motive on the part of cities to join
these collaborative reviews was to head off a patterns-and-practices investigation by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Memphis;
Fort Pierce, Florida, and Saint Anthony, Minnesota, were the last three cities
named to join collaborative reviews by the COPS office in 4Q 2016.
It
is likely they will be the last cities, period, at least during a Trump
presidency.
While
in Memphis a DOJ staffer told us, “We have no idea (what’s going to happen to
us under Trump), but if somebody knows, I wish they would tell me.”
DOJ
employees and attorneys, especially in the Civil Rights Division, are polishing
up their resumes. The COPS office,
unfortunately, could be next down the line in the order of at least
semi-extinction.
