Joe Biden's parting gift to Minneapolis, ineffective policing guaranteed

With time almost up for Joe Biden’s presidency, the Biden Justice Department has entered into a consent decree with Minneapolis regarding that city’s policing. The Washington Post calls the 167-page decree “a victory for the Biden administration in its efforts to use federal power to require local police departments to pursue broad changes.”

The decree, as described by the Post, will “limit the use of force” by police officers. That’s not just “a victory for the Biden administration.” It’s also a victory for thugs and a defeat for officers trying to protect the public and themselves from them.

The DOJ would respond that it only wants to limit the use of “excessive force.” But that term is fuzzy. What seems clear is the adverse effect on police morale and on policing itself of having police officers in the cross-hairs of outside investigators as they patrol a city’s mean streets.

The decree also requires the city regularly to assess police programs to ensure they do not cause racial disparities. Policing high-crime areas will, in a sense, cause racial disparities because high-crime areas are disproportionately black. But high-crime areas are exactly the ones that should receive most of the police’s attention.

The real cause of racial disparities in policing is the exceptionally high rate of criminality by blacks. The consent decree, in effect, shifts blame to (allegedly) racist policing.

The decree is also designed to protect journalists from retaliation by police while covering demonstrations, to protect the rights of protesters, and to limit the use of military tactics by the police. Is there any evidence that the Minneapolis police force currently retaliates against journalists, improperly interferes with peaceful protests, or uses military tactics (whatever those might be)? None that the Post presents.

In the case of large-scale riots, “military tactics” might well be needed. Now, the use of such tactics will be second guessed.

Second guessed by whom, though?

In two weeks, control of the Justice Department will switch to the Trump administration. The problem, however, is that under the consent decree, compliance will be overseen not just by the DOJ, but also by a court-appointed monitor and ultimately by the U.S. District Court Judge who appoints the monitor.

For now, the judge with jurisdiction of the case is Paul Magnuson. He’ll turn 88 next month.

Senior Judge Magnuson is a Reagan appointee, but according to this source, he received his appointment thanks to Sen. Dave Durenberger, a very liberal Republican. This study rates Magnuson a liberal.

Three years ago, Magnuson presided over the trials of the three Minneapolis officers who were with Derek Chauvin, and who assisted him, when he used excessive force on George Floyd, who died as a result (a jury found). Magnuson sentenced the three. The sentences were lighter than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines.

There’s reason to hope that Judge Magnuson doesn’t fully share the Biden DOJ’s ideology on policing and that he will select a reasonable monitor. However, it will be their duty to ensure enforcement of the consent decree as written. This means, among other things, second-guessing police officers who make life and death decisions about how to cope with violent thugs, how to keep the city safe, and, indeed, how hard to try. Passive policing is the safest way for officers to stay out of trouble and it’s an approach they tend to embrace when scrutiny of their work becomes intense.

It’s also extremely unlikely that Senior Judge Magnuson will remain on the court for the duration of the consent decree — probably about ten years.

In a sense, though, there’s probably less to the consent decree than meets the eye. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey is little, if any, friendlier to the police than the Biden DOJ is. Thus, the consent decree can be viewed as a sweetheart deal between two anti-police forces — kind of like a collective bargaining agreement between a branch of the Biden government and a government employees’ union (such as the one that permits government employees to keep working from home).

It seems likely that Minneapolis would do much, though not all, of what’s required by the consent decree on its own. Most of the rest, it would probably do under an agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights that also mandates changes in policing. It’s telling that the Biden DOJ finds an agreement with this left-wing agency inadequate.

To me, then, the mayor’s decision to burden the police with yet another decree likely was motivated mainly (1) by a desire to be able to blame the adverse consequences of handcuffing the police on the feds and (2) by a desire to handcuff a future mayor in the unlikely event that Minneapolis ever elects one who is genuinely pro-police. Certainly, it was not motivated by fear of litigation. The Biden DOJ is in its dying embers.

Can the Trump DOJ do anything about this decree? I doubt it.

It could ask the court for relief. The Post notes that the first Trump DOJ tried to end a consent agreement with Baltimore that had been reached in the final days of the Obama administration. It was unsuccessful. I would expect the same outcome with this decree, though I suppose some minor modifications are possible.

The best hope for policing in Minneapolis is the election of a pro-police mayor. If he or she ignored or worked around the consent decree then, assuming Trump or a conservative successor were still in office, neither party to the agreement would have a problem. Perhaps that would be good enough for whichever judge had jurisdiction at the time.

Until that faraway, unlikely day, the Biden DOJ’s consent decree with Minneapolis is a gift to the BLM movement, but does the law-abiding citizens of that city no favors. This is especially true of law-abiding black residents, some of whom complained to the Trump DOJ about out-of-control crime and sought more policing of their neighborhoods in 2020. Tying the hands of local law enforcement was not what these besieged residents had in mind.

Unfortunately, that’s what the Biden DOJ has done, probably for the next ten years. It’s scant consolation to remember that liberal Minneapolis would likely be indulging in some (though not all) of what the consent decree mandates even in its absence.