With the Trump and Sessions “tough on crime” agenda it now appears Justice Department investigations into police department abuse of civilians civil rights, as well as physical abuse by police officers, may come to a grinding halt. There exists a fine line between enforcement of the law to protect the public and abuse, one that shouldn’t be crossed. Officers or departments that cross this line have little, if any respect for the civil rights of the individual. Policing this is a the responsibility of our government.
VOX – A new memo by the Trump administration makes it official: The US Department of Justice is putting police reform on hold.
The March 31 memo, published by the Washington Post, instructs Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s top two deputies to “immediately review” reform agreements — known as “consent decrees” — reached with police departments across the country after Justice Department investigations found that these departments routinely violated their residents’ civil rights. The memo argues that the review is necessary to, among other things, ensure public safety comes first and to “help promote officer safety, officer morale, and public respect for their work.”
In short, Justice Department deals that enforced reforms — from revised use-of-force policies to greater emphasis on “community policing” — at police agencies are under review to ensure Sessions and President Donald Trump’s own agenda on policing issues is represented in them.
Given that Trump and Sessions both support a “tough on crime” approach to criminal justice, that could mean that the Justice Department will now take a more tolerant approach to police abuses and a less tolerant view of police reforms than the Obama administration did. In fact, the Trump administration might even try to revoke the Obama-era reform plans altogether.
This isn’t unexpected. On the campaign trail, Trump consistently decried what he characterized as the Obama administration’s aggressive attitude toward the police. He argued that the administration’s policies have fostered a broader anti-police sentiment, enabling more crime and violence against cops. And he suggested that he would allow police to be even more aggressive than they are today.
Sessions expressed a similar view. “There is a perception, not altogether unjustified, that this department, the Civil Rights Division, goes beyond fair and balanced treatment but has an agenda that’s been a troubling issue for a number of years,” he said during a November 2015 Senate hearing called “The War on Police.”
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Before the March 31 memo, it was already clear that Trump’s Justice Department wouldn’t conduct many more investigations into police. Sessions said as much earlier this year, acknowledging that his agency will “pull back” on its inquiries into police departments.
Now we also know that the Trump administration is reviewing — and may potentially ax — police reform plans, even after the Justice Department under Obama found that police departments routinely violated American citizens’ constitutional rights.
This, however, just keeps a promise Trump made while running for president. On the campaign trail, Trump described himself as “tough on crime.” He advocated for more police departments to adopt stop and frisk, which was ruled unconstitutional in New York City because it was used to target minority residents. He said at a February 2016 debate that police officers are “absolutely mistreated and misunderstood.” And he even suggested that Black Lives Matter protesters may need to be investigated by the Justice Department.
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It wouldn’t be the first time the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was effectively gutted by an administration. As Ryan Reilly reported for the Huffington Post, the Bush administration between 2001 and 2009 severely weakened the agency’s ability to investigate any civil rights violations, much less police departments’. So Americans were by and large left in the dark about some of the worst abuses from law enforcement and other government officials.
That history now looks certain to repeat itself.
Full article BELOW THE FOLD.
