Consent Decrees
/USDOJ Should Butt Out of Local Policing
Ever since the Barack Obama administration went on a jihad against local policing and used the process of a consent decree to take away local control, cities have seen an increase in both violent and property crime. There is a plethora of data and evidence coming in that makes the case for the federal government to end this crusade.
Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder held nothing but contempt and animosity toward local policing. Without cause they accused police officers of being inherently racist. Obama in a speech claimed that white police officers have a problem with people who do not look like them. Holder tells a story of being racially profiled as a college student while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. He said he was stopped for speeding and was ordered out of the car and the car was searched. He told the audience he was speaking to that he was later racially profiled while walking in Washington D.C. when he was a federal prosecutor at the time. Holder said the experience humiliated him. Now let’s stop right there. There re numerous questions that beg to be asked of Holder.
First is that if this accusation is true, there should be a record of the traffic stop in New Jersey. Police are required to notify a dispatcher of the location of the stop and the color, make and registration plate number. This if for officer safety in case things go to crap. My point is that a historical search can be made to determine if Holder was ever stopped on the Turnpike. Next is that Holder said he was a federal prosecutor when stopped in the nation’s capital by law enforcement officers for no reason. If he felt he was racially profiled and felt so humiliated, he had an opportunity to file a complaint with the New Jersey State Police and demand that an investigation be conducted. But I guess he wasn’t that humiliated. People who feel humiliated are usually angry and want something done about it. Holder just went on his way. As a federal prosecutor, Holder knew that what he described was a potential federal civil rights violation that he was the victim of, and he didn’t file a complaint? Holder knows that in court there is a saying that if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen. I’ll even go as far as to say that Holder’s claim is totally fabricated.
When Holder became the Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice, he weaponized the Justice Department to go after local police agencies for his spurious claim that police agencies generally engage in racial profiling. He first orders a pattern and practice investigation, the findings of which are the basis to for agencies and municipalities to acquiesce into a consent decree thereby taking local control away and imposing onerous rules of documentation and reporting that have to be followed in order to come into compliance. The USDOJ offers a little grant money to entice them into voluntarily surrender control to the federal government. Under Eric Holder, the USDOJ initiated 22 pattern and practice investigations against various police departments and found that 21 of the agencies engaged in a patter and practice of the nebulous accusation of racial profiling. That record of success doesn’t pass the smell test. It becomes an automatic conclusion. The Trump administration’s DOJ put the brakes on pattern and practice investigations leaving it up to the local municipality to address citizen concerns.
Another aspect of these consent decrees is that there is rarely an expiration date on them to end. They go on in perpetuity. The statistics rolling in now show that these things are having no affect on reform, may be causing crime to rise and are becoming expensive for cities. One reason is that officers end up spending valuable time off the streets filing required reports on traffic stops and field interview stops. Preventive patrols are lacking. Visibility is an effective crime deterrent. Criminals tend to operate where they see little police presence. Let’s look at some data. It’s hard to refute the correlation when the same thing is happening in so many cities under consent decree.
An Axios news site review found that of 12 agencies placed under consent decrees, 7 saw an increase in violent crime rates. According to FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Seattle after being put under a federal consent decree saw a surge in violent crime of 27%. Albuquerque saw a 36% increase in its violent crime rate after seeing a 30 year low before the consent decree. Los Angeles saw an increase of 61% in its violent crime rate. Seattle, Albuquerque and New Orleans also experienced increases in property crime rates. Smaller municipalities saw decreases in violent crime rates after being put under a consent decree. Some scholars indicate that they don’t know if the result of the increase can be traced back to the consent decree affect.
A study done by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) studied the nature and scope of consent decrees over time. Key findings from the study pointed out that the pattern and practice investigations by the USDOJ relied on questionable evidence. It also found that these agreements impose policy preferences on agencies that are outside the scope of DOJ authority. In other words, arm twisting goes on to force an agency into acceptance of being placed under the consent decree. Another finding from the study points out that the metrics, timetables and outcomes for agency compliance are ill-defined, unachievable and subject to the whims of federal monitors and judges.
The most notable finding in the LDLDF is that communities and departments under decrees suffer from rising crime and lower crime clearance rates, ballooning costs to local taxpayers, plummeting officer morale and greater community dissatisfaction.
In the end, the law of unintended consequences kicks in. The reason is that the USDOJ is working on the wrong thing. They do not know how local urban policing works or doesn’t work. They do not understand the nuances and intricacies of crime control and deterrence. If there is a specific problem with a police agency, then fix that specific thing but do not overhaul or overtake an entire agency. The USDOJ objective is one of politics not police reform. Politics and policing are a volatile mix that often results in leaving more crime victims in its wake.
Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of America’s Sheriff LLC, President of Rise Up Wisconsin INC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com
