Courts must clear attempts to roll back police pacts
Sessions orders review of Obama agreements
It was a stunning WASHINGTON reversal when New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu sought to withdraw from a landmark agreement with the Justice Department to revamp the city’s troubled police department.
After all, it was Landrieu who invited the federal government in 2010 to overhaul a department rocked by scandal and the deadly conduct of rogue officers. A federal appeals court rejected the city’s bid to undo that agreement — based largely on Landrieu’s objection to the involvement of a controversial federal prosecutor in the negotiations and the costs associated with implementing the agreement — securing a deal that still guides the police department’s operations.
Not since that challenge was leveled four years ago has such a formal effort to roll back federal intervention in policing operations been proposed until this week, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed a sweeping review of all similar law enforcement agreements and investigations initiated by the Obama administration Justice Department. The administration’s work resulted in court-enforced agreements in 15 agencies, including in New Orleans.
Any attempt to roll back policy changes memorialized in “consent decrees” would have to pass muster not only with Sessions but with the individual federal courts charged with enforcing the agreements.
Friday, a Maryland federal court offered a measure of the challenge before the Sessions Justice Department when it approved — over Justice’s objection — a wide-ranging plan to alter Baltimore’s policing operations.
“This decree was negotiated during a rushed process by the previous administration and signed only days before they left office,” the attorney general said Friday. “While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city.” The attorney general’s position was backed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union.
The Obama administration’s work resulted in court-enforced agreements in 15 law enforcement agencies.