Washington – The Ministry of Justice rejects prosecution against a certain number of local police services and puts an end to investigations on models and unconstitutional behavior practices, officials announced on Wednesday.
The withdrawal of police surveillance comes in the midst of major changes to the Division of Civil Rights of the Ministry of Justice since the start of the Trump administration and the confirmation of the Deputy Prosecutor General Harmeet K. Dhillon, the choice of Trump to direct the division.
The officials said that the prosecution filed during the administration of President Joe Biden against two city police services – Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis – would be rejected.
The proceedings followed investigations into the Ministry of Justice on these two police services, which described the models of use of excessive force, discrimination against blacks and the violations of freedom of expression in the two jurisdictions. These surveys were distinct from the criminal trials of the police from these departments, which were charged with the highly publicized killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
The so -called model and practice surveys are not supposed to focus on the incidents of individuals, but rather police policies and cultures which then lead to constitutional routine violations.
General at the time, General Merrick Garland, said in a statement in 2023 announcing the results of the Minneapolis survey according to which the “models and conduct practices that the Ministry of Justice observed during our investigation … made possible what happened to George Floyd”.
In a statement on Wednesday, Dhillon said: “The consent of the police’s police consent to give in the local police control of the communities where it belongs, transforming this power to non-elected and non-responsible bureaucrats, often with an anti-political program. Today, we are ending the experience of the Biden Division of Civil Rights on the Dickers of the Hand and the Services an assignment.
Other police investigations in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; And Louisiana’s state police will also end.
During Trump’s first term, the Civil Rights Division fell on police surveillance in cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, the suburbs of Saint-Louis where Michael Brown was killed in 2014.
After Joe Biden came into office in 2021, the Ministry of Justice canceled the councils that had been published by former prosecutor General Jeff Sessions. Two years later, the Ministry of Justice announced the results of its police investigations in Louisville and Minneapolis in 2023.
The state of Minnesota also carried out an investigation into the police in Minneapolis. The head of the State Department of Human Rights said that their agreement had remained in place.
“While the Ministry of Justice is moving away from its federal consent decree almost five years after the murder of George Floyd, our department and the State Court of the Court of State are going anywhere,” said Minnesota Commissioner Department of Human Rights, Rebecca Lucero in a statement. “Under the state agreement, the city and the MPD must make transformational changes to approach the police based on the breed. The enormous work that is in advance for the city, including MPD, cannot be underestimated. And our department will be here at every stage of the process. ”
Michael Kosnar contributed.
