Civil rights investigations
If you wonder what triggers an investigation of a local agency by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, there’s a new report out that should answer a lot of your questions. “Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned,” was published in July by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).
This report provides new information about investigations of local police departments by the Justice Dept. More than 25 law enforcement agencies have experienced this type of DOJ involvement. Some of these cases have taken more than 10 years to resolve, and many of them have been controversial.
And yet, despite the fact that these investigations have been occurring for nearly 20 years, local police departments have been hard pressed to know exactly what was expected of them.
With this report, PERF offers a better understanding of what DOJ expects. PERF conducted extensive research on the past consent decrees, and then convened a national meeting of officials from cities that have experienced consent decrees, along with members of the DOJ Special Litigation Section.
The result is this document, which details the substantive issues – for example, which aspects of policing tend to trigger DOJ investigations – and the procedural issues, such as how DOJ and local officials negotiate reform packages and how they decide when police departments have achieved compliance with the requirements.
The bulk of this report is verbatim quotations from the police chiefs, DOJ officials, and other experts who participated. So I think you will find the report lively and interesting. Most importantly, we aimed to give you the information you need to ensure that your department has the policies, training, and management and supervision systems needed for a high level of Constitutionally sound policing.
Chuck Wexler, Executive Director
Police Executive Research Forum