Following the news that under AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III administration of the Department of Justice quietly rolling back civil rights protections for Americans…
Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.
The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency’s approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.
“At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.
...the U.S. Civil Rights Commission - and independent body setup by congress — is launching a two year investigation or ongoing administration practices.
Details over the flip.
The United States Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency charged with advising the president and Congress on civil rights matters, unanimously approved a comprehensive two-year probe into the “degree to which current budgets and staffing levels allow civil rights offices to perform” their functions within the administration, said the agency in a statement.
The federal watchdog group became concerned about the Trump administration after several agencies announced budget and personnel cuts in departments that oversee civil rights. The "proposed cuts would result in a dangerous reduction of civil rights enforcement across the country, leaving communities of color, LGBT people, older people, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups exposed to greater risk of discrimination," said the statement.
The commission, created under the Civil Rights Act and funded by Congress, expressed specific worry in seven agencies under the president, including the Department of Education and the Department of Justice.
The “repeated refusal” of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to commit to enforcing federal civil rights during Congressional testimony coupled with deep budget cuts within the agency’s Office of Civil Rights is “particularly troubling,” the agency added in the statement.
The DOJ under President Obama did investigation of 14 major city police departments finding widespread bias, excessive force and lax training and oversight in many of them leading to the creation of consent decrees with Federal Judges to oversee the implementation of corrective measures. Here is summary of the problems they found with the Chicago Police Department.
- Deadly force was used disproportionately against black residents.
- Only 1-in-6 recent graduates of the police academy interviewed by the DOJ "came close" to properly articulating the legal standard for use of force.
- Chicago's police review board received more than 30,000 police misconduct complaints over the five years reviewed by the DOJ, but fewer than 2 percent of those were sustained or resulted in discipline. During that same period, CPD investigated 409 police shootings, but found only two to be unjustified.
- White residents were three-and-half times more likely to have an allegation of police misconduct sustained than black residents. White residents were six times more likely to have their use-of-force complaints sustained than Latino residents.
- A 2016 review of the department's dashboard cameras conducted by the department itself found that the audio capability for 80 percent of the cameras were either not working or had been tampered with.
- Officers commonly colluded to cover up wrongdoing by their colleagues, and officers facing misconduct investigations were coached by union attorneys in a manner "experts had [not] seen to nearly such an extent in other agencies."
- Officers routinely picked up and questioned known gang members about drug activity and dropped them off in rival gang territory if they did not cooperate, putting their lives at greater risk.
Sessions has ordered a review of these decrees and delayed the implementation of others.
In a memorandum dated March 31 and made public Monday, the attorney general directed his staff to look at whether law enforcement programs adhere to principles put forth by the Trump administration, including one declaring that “the individual misdeeds of bad actors should not impugn” the work police officers perform “in keeping American communities safe.”
As part of its shift in emphasis, the Justice Department went to court on Monday to seek a 90-day delay in a consent decree to overhaul Baltimore’s embattled Police Department. That request came just days before a hearing, scheduled for Thursday in the United States District Court in Baltimore, to solicit public comment on the agreement, which was reached in principle by the city and the Justice Department in the waning days of the Obama administration.
“This has all been negotiated by the affected parties,” said Ray Kelly, the president of the No Boundaries Coalition, a citizen advocacy group. Referring to Mr. Sessions, he said, “Now we have an outside entity telling us what’s best for our citizens and our community when he has no experience, no knowledge.”
Baltimore is one of nearly two dozen cities — including Ferguson, Mo.; Cleveland; and Seattle — that were the subject of aggressive efforts by the Obama administration to improve relations between the police and the communities they serve. That effort produced so-called consent decrees with 14 departments.
At least now the Civil Rights Commission will be reviewing these cuts and priority changes and hopefully delivering a report to congress that will allow them to tighten up the enforcement requirements for protecting vulnerable groups within the population.
Eventually.