The Trump administration has initiated the process of ending federal government involvement in reforming local police departments, following the deaths of unarmed Black individuals like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The Department of Justice announced that it will cancel two proposed settlements involving Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, which would have seen the cities agree to federal oversight of their police departments. These settlements, called consent decrees, involve a series of goals and steps negotiated by the parties with enforcement by a federal court.
The Justice Department also announced that it would withdraw reports on six other local police departments that had found patterns of discrimination and excessive violence. The Trump administration claims that this move is part of its efforts to transfer greater responsibility to individual cities and states. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon stated that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception rather than the norm and argued that such oversight wastes taxpayer funds.
However, civil rights leaders and police reform advocates have expressed outrage over the news. Reverend Al Sharpton called it a moral retreat that sends a chilling message that accountability is optional for Black and Brown victims. He argued that the Trump administration’s move signals to police departments that they are above scrutiny.
The year of Floyd’s murder saw several high-profile deaths, including Taylor’s. Taylor, a 26-year-old medical worker, was killed when police used a battering ram to break into her apartment and responded with a volley of bullets. Her death, along with others, sparked nationwide unrest in the US, with millions participating in social justice movements like Black Lives Matter.
In 2021, the Justice Department under Biden conducted investigations into allegations of police overreach and excessive violence at the local level. In both Minneapolis and Louisville, the Justice Department found patterns of discriminatory policing. Therefore, the Trump administration’s decision to drop settlements in these cities means that reforms and resources for police may be stripped away.
Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Trump, views the retractions of Biden-era findings as a policy pivot. She criticized consent decrees as overused tools and indicated a willingness to rescind some agreements already in place. While some community advocates have expressed concerns about the burden consent decrees can place on law enforcement departments, others argue that retreating from these agreements could impede police reform efforts.
In Louisville, Chief Paul Humphrey stated that the commitment to better policing goes beyond any settlement and indicated a
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/21/us-justice-department-ends-post-george-floyd-police-reform-settlements?traffic_source=rss
