U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-Minn) vehemently criticized the Department of Justice’s decision to withdraw the federal consent decree with the Minneapolis Police Department on Wednesday, describing it as “deeply disturbing.”
The Justice Department announced it would dismiss lawsuits against the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments. It claimed the Biden administration’s efforts were based on “flawed methodologies and incomplete data” and proposed “sweeping consent decrees” that constituted “micromanagement.”
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Smith’s condemnation directly countered the Justice Department’s reasoning, emphasizing that the abandoned decree was based on the Justice Department’s “own investigation, which found a pattern of unconstitutional and discriminatory policing practices that have hurt our community, especially Black and Native American people and people with mental illness, for decades.”
The timing of the decision was particularly poignant for Smith, who noted, “It’s especially painful that this decision comes on the eve of the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder—the very tragedy that sparked this investigation and the urgent push for reform.” She asserted that she “led the call for that federal civil rights investigation because Minnesotans deserve accountability and reform. Walking away from this agreement, after confirming the need for it, is unconscionable.”
The Justice Department stated that the lawsuits “wrongly equated statistical disparities with intentional discrimination and heavily relied on flawed methodologies and incomplete data.”
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Furthermore, the department criticized the proposed sweeping consent decrees, arguing they “went far beyond the Biden administration’s accusations of unconstitutional conduct” and would have imposed “years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division criticized the Biden administration’s approach.
“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,” Dhillon stated. “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 its broader announcement, the Justice Department stated it would retract findings of constitutional violations and close investigations into several other police departments across the country, including Phoenix, Arizona; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Louisiana State Police.
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Despite the federal retreat, Senator Smith expressed optimism regarding local commitments to reform.
“Thankfully, the City of Minneapolis and Minnesota state leaders continue to stand on the side of justice,” she stated. “I’m grateful that the state-negotiated consent decree remains in place to continue working toward meaningful reform. The Minneapolis Police Department has taken steps in the right direction and is committed to continuing that work even as the federal government walks away.”
Smith concluded by reiterating the ongoing necessity of reform, stating, “Every Minnesotan deserves to be safe in their homes and neighborhoods, and that safety must include freedom from unconstitutional and discriminatory policing. This work isn’t finished yet, and we will keep holding ourselves accountable.”
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