Trump administration withdraws from federal consent decree meant to reform Minneapolis police

Four days before the five-year anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice said it no longer intends to enforce Minneapolis Police Department reforms agreed to by the Biden administration. 

In the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, the Biden-led DOJ spent two years investigating the Minneapolis Police Department. Investigators found that the department routinely deprived people of their rights and discriminated against Black and Native American people. Investigators estimated MPD stopped Black people at 6.5 times the rate at which it stopped white people and Native American people at 7.9 times the rate at which it stopped white people. 

The investigation culminated in an agreement — called a “consent decree” — between the DOJ and the city of Minneapolis on a set of reforms. 

The Trump DOJ’s decision to drop the consent decree — and with it, close supervision of MPD — underscores the administration’s desire to give a freer hand to police. The department is also backing out of a similar decree in Louisville, where police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment in March 2020.

“The United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” DOJ attorneys wrote in a two-paragraph motion asking a federal judge to toss out the agreement with the city of Minneapolis. 

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Wednesday that the city of Minneapolis will continue to implement the reforms outlined in the consent decree, even without the federal government’s support.

“We’re doing it anyway,” Frey said in a press release. “We will implement every reform outlined in the consent decree — because accountability isn’t optional.”

For years, Trump has derided efforts to rein in police brutality and scorned the rights of the accused. “(T)he laws are so horrendously stacked against us, because for years and years, they’ve been made to protect the criminal … [n]ot the officers,” he said during his first term.

The DOJ’s heel-turn on racial justice in law enforcement is showing up in Minnesota in other ways. 

In early May, the DOJ opened a civil rights investigation into the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and County Attorney Mary Moriarty, after Moriarty instructed prosecutors to consider the racial identity of defendants when deciding how long of a sentence to ask for. Moriarty said the policy is constitutional and is meant to combat systemic racism in the criminal legal system that leads to longer sentences for Black and Indigenous defendants. 

“As a longtime prosecutor, I firmly believe in the paramount importance of a colorblind criminal justice system,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release. “This Department of Justice will avail itself of every tool at its disposal to protect all Americans from illegal DEI discrimination.”

While the federal consent decree is on its way out, a similar agreement at the state level will remain in effect. The state Department of Human Rights also entered into a consent decree with the city in 2023.

The state’s court-enforcable consent decree limits officers’ use of force; requires police to de-escalate; prohibits certain pretextual stops; and restricts the use of chemical irritants and Tasers.

The nonprofit firm Effective Law Enforcement For All, which was hired as an independent monitor, released a semi-annual report this week. The report said progress toward the consent decree’s goals has been steady, if slow at times, the Star Tribune reported. 

Among other provisions, the federal consent decree would have prohibited: 

• Handcuffing children under the age of 14. 
• The use of neck restraints and choke holds.
• The use of some tear gases, including Mace. 
• The initiation of foot chases just because a person runs away when they see an officer.
• Off-duty jobs for officers who are under investigation or suspended from the force.

It also set guidelines for misconduct investigations, requiring them to be completed within 180 days, with some exceptions. MPD’s disciplinary process had been notoriously slow and ineffective, as the Reformer reported in 2020. 

The DOJ’s investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department revealed systemic problems: racist policing practices; use of excessive force, including against restrained people; failure to address bias; and failure to intervene or investigate when an officer violates the law or department rules. 

The department failed to provide medical aid to people it injured. When police shot a Black man in 2018, officers waited at least 11 minutes — when video of the incident ended — to help him. 

Investigators found that officers fired weapons in situations that posed no threat to their lives. A “significant portion” of the 19 police shootings that occurred between January 2016 and August 2022 were unconstitutional uses of force, according to the DOJ report.

The 17 DFL state lawmakers representing Minneapolis condemned the DOJ’s motion to toss out the consent decree.

“We are deeply disappointed that the federal government is abandoning its responsibility to drive reform at the Minneapolis Police Department,” the Minneapolis delegation said in a joint statement. “For years, Minneapolis community members have spoken out to make their voices heard as part of this process, and now their work and commitment have been disregarded by the federal government.”

The DOJ’s refusal to enforce the consent decree comes as the city of Minneapolis prepares for a potential pardon of Derek Chauvin, the former MPD officer convicted of murdering Floyd. Right-wing figureheads like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia, and commentator Ben Shapiro have asked Trump to pardon Chauvin in recent weeks.

Chauvin was sentenced to 22 ½ years in prison on state murder and manslaughter charges in 2021. The following year, he pleaded guilty to federal charges, and a judge ordered him to serve 21 years in federal prison, concurrent with his state sentence. 

A presidential pardon would only erase the federal charges; Chauvin would then return to state prison to finish his sentence. 

Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to pardon his political allies or at the behest of his political allies. Among the first acts of his second term was the blanket pardon of some 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters.

Among the injured that day were 140 police officers.