A recent article titled, “Defying presidents and Congress, the ATF, DEA, FBI and U.S. Marshals shroud their shootings in secrecy,” highlights the hypocrisy of DOJ Consent Decrees. While the DOJ demands absolute transparency and loyalty to local police agencies, they are actually extremely secretive about their own law enforcement agencies. In referring to police consent…
VALLEJO, CA. – A Solano County Superior Court judge indicated last week that he will not enforce some elements of a stipulated judgment between the Vallejo Police Department and the California Department of Justice, and may not approve the document at all. The Vallejo Sun reported that Judge Stephen Gizzi wrote in an order to show cause…
As of July 2022, the city had spent $1.9 million on its efforts to cooperate with the U.S. Justice Department civil investigation into Phoenix Police. An investigation that Phoenix voluntarily agreed to. The bulk of that expense up to now has involved the $1.35 million in salaries paid to the nine fulltime employees who have…
Phoenix officers and residents have expressed concerns that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will use a consent decree to take over the Phoenix Police Department (PPD), as they have done for several dozen other major cities across the country. Activists accused the DOJ of using a rinse-and-repeat playbook: launching opaque investigations into police departments over…
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell on Wednesday warned that prosecuting criminals from Phoenix could become more difficult in the future if the U.S. Justice Department takes steps to oversee the Phoenix Police Department. Phoenix police are the target of a civil rights investigation by the DOJ, which is investigating whether officers use excessive…
While we have spoken extensively of the damage consent decrees have caused communities in the terms of higher violent crime, a more difficult metric is the cost of a consent decree. Any city that volunteers to have their police department monitored by the federal government has to pay for it through their own budget. While…
In the wake of high-profile police-involved incidents, calls to reform often dysfunctional departments grow deafening. Like a superhero, the Department of Justice heeds those calls for help, wielding its trusty tool – the federal consent decree or court-monitored agreement with the city to implement police reforms. But that blunt instrument often proves to be ineffective…
PHOENIX, Ariz. – Bob Scales, a leading national voice on the pitfalls of the use of Consent Decrees by the U.S. Department of Justice to take control of local police agencies around the country, spoke to a group of concerned community members in Phoenix on Tuesday about their city’s options in facing that scenario in…
Last November, as Mayor Brandon Scott prepared to announce his former chief of staff as the city’s new top attorney, the head of the Baltimore Police Department’s consent decree monitoring team quietly notified the federal court of a familial relationship. Ebony Thompson, Scott’s choice foracting city solicitor, is the great-niece of Ken Thompson, the head…
The federal consent decree was supposed to fundamentally reform the way police work in Chicago. But five years into the decree, forcing change on the Chicago Police Department has proved to be a lot slower and tougher than anybody expected. A Fox 32 investigation by Dane Placko, has found it’s also proving to be much…