Trump Justice Department moves to end consent decree aimed at reforming policing in Louisville
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
The U.S. Department of Justice is pulling back from a consent decree aimed at reforming the Louisville Metro Police Department, saying such actions are “handcuffing local leaders.”
The consent decree — which was in response to the police killing of Breonna Taylor and an investigation that exposed a pattern of constitutional violations by Louisville police — was meant to last five years. It required the police department to focus on de-escalation, work to “reduce unlawful racial disparities in enforcement,” provide training and support to police officers and more.
About six months after the DOJ announced the consent decree — under former Democratic President Joe Biden — the Justice Department under Republican President Donald Trump says it is “confident that the vast majority of police officers across the nation will continue to vigorously enforce the law and protect the public in full compliance with the Constitution and all applicable federal laws.”
The DOJ is also dropping a similar consent decree in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where white police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes.
Louisville Police Department enters consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice
“When bad actors in uniform fail to do so, the department stands ready to take all necessary action to address any resulting constitutional or civil-rights violations, including via criminal prosecution,” the DOJ said Wednesday.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is beginning the process of dismissing the lawsuits against the police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis, according to a news release.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement that “overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda.”
“Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees,” Dhillon said.
The Lantern has asked the Louisville Metro Police Department for comment.
Why the Louisville consent decree?
The consent decree came in December 2024 in response to a series of controversies — including the killing of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who police fatally shot while serving a no-knock warrant in 2020. Her killing sparked months of protests. It late was revealed that police had used falsified information to obtain the warrant.
In 2022, two LMPD officers received federal prison sentences for throwing slushies and drinks from unmarked squad cars at residents in the predominantly Black West End, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.
In August 2024, the DOJ released a separate report saying it had “reasonable cause” to believe Kentucky is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in Jefferson County. That finding came after two years of investigation “focused on whether Kentucky subjects adults with serious mental illness to unnecessary segregation in psychiatric hospitals in Louisville.”
Kristen Clarke, then assistant attorney general for civil rights with the Justice Department, said at the time of the decree that police “used excessive force, unlawfully executed search warrants without knocking and announcing, carried out unlawful stops, searches and arrests, engaged in discriminatory policing with respect to low-level traffic stops and other offenses, violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech during demonstrations critical of policing and treated people with behavioral health disabilities unlawfully.”
This story may be updated.
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: [email protected]. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter. Kentucky Lantern stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Donate to Kentucky Lantern here.
