A blind eye to injustice
The brutality of George Floyd’s killing did not happen in a vacuum. The death of the unarmed black man under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer was another example of the racism that often infects police departments and the patrolling of American streets.
In the years since the 1991 beating by police of Rodney King in Los Angeles prompted Congress to empower the federal government with police oversight, the U.S. Department of Justice had been an important check on systemic racism in policing. Its investigations of local departments have uncovered racial disparities in arrests, searches and uses of force.
But under President Donald Trump, that federal oversight has all but disappeared.
The administration, led by a president who jokes about police roughing people up, had a hands-off policy on civil rights issues from the start. But in 2018, then-attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memorandum that severely limited the Justice Department’s oversight role and federal consent decrees —
the court-enforced reform agreements Mr. Sessions considered improper federal meddling in local affairs.
That represented a significant change from the approach of the Obama administration, which had aggressively targeted brutality and used consent decrees to change racist lawenforcement practices in Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere.
The Sessions memo sent a clear message: Don’t worry about answering to the federal government for racist policing, because the Trump administration isn’t interested.
We can’t know if a Justice Department
committed to rooting out institutional racism would have prevented Mr. Floyd’s death and the unrest that has followed. But the Trump administration’s blind eye toward injustice doubtless slowed the nation’s progress toward treating black Americans as full citizens.
If any good is to come of Mr. Floyd’s death, it is that the country is newly awakened to why communities of color distrust police, and to the need for continued reform. The awful video of Mr. Floyd’s life slipping away, with an officer ignoring his pleas, makes policing disparities clear and explains why hundreds of thousands of Americans are voicing their disgust in the streets.
William Barr, the current attorney general, described the video as “harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing” as he announced the Justice Department will pursue a civil rights investigation into Mr. Floyd’s death. Yet given the administration’s record and the politicized nature of virtually every aspect of Mr. Barr’s tenure, skepticism toward the investigation is warranted.
We will see if progress comes. And we’ll remind Mr. Barr that he and future attorneys general have a vital role to play in combating racist policing. They must not shirk it.