With time running out, Biden-Garland DOJ pushes for a chunk of control over local police departments

Under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice launched a dozen investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies. The goal? To get most, if not all, of these jurisdictions to enter into consent degrees whereby the DOJ would require police departments to change their policies and practices and to submit to federal monitoring. The upshot? Less proactive, more woke policing.

It should not have been terribly difficult to get some of these jurisdictions to consent. After all, many of them are run by left-liberals who are sympathetic to the BLM agenda. How hard can it be to get Minneapolis to agree to softer policing?

Quite hard, it turned out. As of now, the DOJ has not submitted a single negotiated consent decree to a federal judge for approval.

I see only two possible explanations — incompetence and overreaching.

Both, I think, apply. Kristen Clarke, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, is by all accounts I credit, incompetent.

It’s also likely that the DOJ has demanded more police softness than even liberal jurisdictions — even Minneapolis — are willing to commit to. After all, liberal mayors have to answer to voters, and voters are fed up with crime.

Indeed, near the end of the Trump administration, Eric Dreiband, then the head of the Civil Rights Division, traveled to Minneapolis to hear complaints from inner city residents about out-of-control crime. The hope was to get the city to agree to partner with the DOJ to improve policing in poor neighborhoods. Needless to say, tying the hands of local law enforcement was not what these residents, most of whom are black, had in mind.

Four years later, it’s the Biden administration that’s on its way out. The Trump administration says it will not use federal power to coerce local law enforcement agencies into consent decrees. It’s now or never for the Biden-Garland DOJ.

I’m tempted to bet on “never.” The only two jurisdictions that reportedly are close to entering an agreement with the DOJ are Minneapolis and Louisville. But local officials in both cities have expressed doubt about whether negotiations will be completed before Biden leaves office.

Obviously, Trump’s victory strengthens the negotiating hand of localities. If there are one or two sticking points, the DOJ would be well-advised to resolve them in favor of Minneapolis and Louisville. Whether the parties are close enough to reach such an agreement is one question. Whether the ideologues in the Civil Rights Division are flexible enough to bridge even a small gap is another.

I want to be clear. In hoping that cities resist consent decrees with the DOJ, I’m not excluding the possibility that some of them need reforms that could minimize abuses by police. What I’m saying is that cities like Minneapolis and Louisville can adopt worthwhile reforms, if any are needed, on their own.

Minneapolis and Louisville have no reason to want more George Floyd or Brianna Taylor-type tragedies. If they need advice from the federal government on how to prevent abuse, they will ask for it.

At the same time, no city has reason to want to handcuff its police force. Or to submit to ten years (the typical length of these consent decrees) of federal oversight.

Cities need proactive police officers, and officers need a reasonable amount of backing from cities. Without such backing, police officers will be reluctant to do their jobs and police forces will continue to shrink in cities throughout America.

Cities must to balance the need for effective, proactive law enforcement and the need to protect citizens against abuse. That balance is best achieved through decisions made at the local level, not in Washington, D.C. by bureaucrats with an ideological ax to grind or by like-minded federal monitors looking over the shoulders of police officers.

Nonetheless, jurisdictions like Minneapolis and Louisville are willing to enter into consent decrees. They just aren’t willing to give away the store.

Now, with Donald Trump as president-elect, they don’t have to.