Thread by @propublica

1/ The federal government used to take an active role in holding local police departments accountable for brutality and wrongdoing.

Then came the Trump administration. Here’s a quick history of “consent decrees” and why they’re so important...

2/ To address local police reform, Congress gave the Justice Dept. authority in 1994 to use court-monitored agreements that included reform plans negotiated by federal and local officials.

3/ These agreements are known consent decrees. They are effectively settlements where the local authorities agree to conditions without admitting guilt.

4/ While the Obama administration viewed consent decrees as a tool to address troubled police forces around the country. However, the Trump administration saw them as federal overreach.

5/ Then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions all but ended the DOJ's police reform efforts in 2017. He wrote in a dept. memo that “it is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies.”

6/ In one Louisiana town where police were illegally jailing witnesses to crimes, the Trump DOJ backed away from the previous administration's plan to use a consent decree (by @i_m_m) :
propublica.org/article/ville-…

7/ One of Sessions' final acts as AG was to sign a Nov. 2018 memorandum that severely scaled back the DOJ's ability to use these court-ordered agreements to hold local police department's accountable (by @i_m_m) :
propublica.org/article/why-je…

8/ As a result, the DOJ has left reform-minded local government leaders with fewer options for addressing abuse and corruption in their police forces (by @bykenarmstrong & @jcsheckler):
propublica.org/article/elkhar…