The Trump administration's toxic view of police reform

I was sworn in as the first-ever community safety commissioner for Minneapolis in August 2022. I began that role more than two years after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer in that city, murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck and back for more than nine minutes and more than a year after a jury convicted Chauvin of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
My mission was to oversee and integrate five departments: 911, the city fire department, emergency management, police, and neighborhood safety (formerly the Office of Violence Prevention). I set as my goal the development of 'a more effective, integrated approach to public safety,' to include a comprehensive 21st-century safety strategy.
While I believe I laid a foundation for improvement and achieved marked crime reduction, my administration faced institutional resistance and generally inadequate resources. I retired in September 2023 not long after the Justice Department announced its findings that the Minneapolis Police Department and the city of Minneapolis had committed and were committing civil rights violations. DOJ found that the police department was using excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and unreasonable use of stun guns; unlawfully discriminating against Black people and Native American people; and violating the rights of people engaged in protected speech.
The Justice Department also found that Minneapolis, when responding to calls for assistance, had discriminated against people with behavioral health disabilities.
In January 2025, before President Joe Biden left office, Minneapolis and its police department cooperated with the DOJ in accepting a consent decree to guide the city's and the department's efforts toward reform and restorative justice. But last week, President Donald Trump's DOJ invalidated not only the consent decree in Minneapolis, but also one with the Louisville Metro Police Department (and Louisville/Jefferson County metro government) that was hammered out in 2024, more than four years after police there wrongly killed Breonna Taylor.
The DOJ also announced that it's ending investigations into policing in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City; and the Louisiana State Police.
Astoundingly, Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's assistant attorney general in charge of civil rights, didn't dispute the findings underpinning either consent decree. She simply characterized them as 'overbroad' and said such agreements '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.'
Dhillon continued: 'Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division's failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.'
There's a synonym for such verbiage: garbage. To be more specific: toxic garbage.
I have devoted the better part of my life to police work and public safety. I am a firm believer in community policing, the cooperation between local law enforcement and the people of the local community it serves. The argument that dismissing the consent decrees will improve law enforcement by 'returning' it to local control is mistaken. In fact, this action will reduce the effectiveness of local policing, which has enjoyed a fruitful partnership with federal law enforcement. Even worse, it will weaken the bonds between local police agencies and the communities because members of those communities will feel they have no place to seek justice when their local force violates their civil rights. Without mutual trust and respect, local police agencies are bound to fail.
We can presume that Dhillon is articulating the Trump administration's view of justice. Such a view, however, is either the product of ignorance of the constitutional foundation of American law, or it is a willful denial of that foundation. Whatever the cause, the decision to invalidate the consent decrees is outrageous and terrifying.
Pushing back on Dhillon's assertion that the consent decrees were unwarranted and a reflection of anti-police bias, Kristen Clarke, who led the Civil Rights Division before Dhillon did, said: 'To be clear, [the] investigations [on which the consent decrees were founded] were led by career attorneys, based on data, body camera footage and information provided by officers themselves, and the reforms set forth in consent decrees were carefully negotiated with the full support of law enforcement leaders and local officials.'
Every community in the United States is subject to the rights and responsibilities set forth in the Constitution and in the laws that flow from the Constitution. A violation of civil rights is a crime whether it is committed in a blue, red or purple state, in Minneapolis or Louisville. It is a self-evident truth and the entire sum and substance of democracy. It cannot be twisted with fatuous words into something else.
As an American and as a longtime American peace officer, I feel a combination of shame, disgust and disbelief that the Justice Department would abdicate its role in making law enforcement agencies follow the Constitution. We, as Americans, simply cannot consent to this.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Boston Globe

37 minutes ago

• Boston Globe

At Embrace Ideas Festival, Black Bostonians discussed politics, art, business

Advertisement Margaret Breeden, daughter of Boston civil rights leader Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'My parents really ingrained social justice in me every day at the kitchen table, so I came here to figure out what I could do to help,' she said. In the first panel of the day, State Senator Liz Miranda and Segun Idowu, chief of economic opportunity and inclusion for the City of Boston discussed how they were using government policy to uplift Black Bostonians in light of the new presidential administration. Miranda represents the 2nd Suffolk district which includes parts of Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester and Northeastern University or 'the Blackest district in the Commonwealth' in her words. Idowu, a member of Mayor Wu's cabinet, Advertisement Idowu said that Trump's tariffs and executive orders would impact the 'five pillars' of Massachusetts' and the city of Boston's economy — medical institutions, educational institutions, life science research, tourism and climate technology. Idowu also said Trump's tariffs were impacting community projects in the city like the P3 project, a plan to build affordable housing and a research lab on the site of a vacant lot in Roxbury. Miranda was critical of the Trump administration's rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. She said Trump's actions would hurt sectors like medical research. 'It's not just symbolic, it's sidelining brilliant people,' Miranda said. Miranda also said that even when DEI policies were not under attack, Massachusetts' government was not representative. 'I'm one of four Black women in the entire legislature of 200 people … we're not even represented in the bluest state in the country,' Miranda said. Miranda encouraged attendees to boycott companies that rolled back DEI efforts and to contact their alma maters if the institutions were abandoning programs to foster diversity. The politicians also told the audience policy wins they're proud of. Miranda said that she's proud of a bill she passed last year that addresses the higher morbidity rate that Black mothers face compared to white mothers. 'Six years ago when I first started talking about this issue, everyone told me 'there's no problem here,' here in the public health Mecca of the world,' Miranda said sarcastically. Advertisement Idowu said that he felt proud that people of color have started businesses in almost every neighborhood in the city and no longer feel limited to Mattapan, Dorchester and Roxbury. 'The whole city belongs to us … we can go to establishments in other neighborhoods now and not feel policed,' Idowu said. Priscilla Douglas, an executive coach and author who recently stepped down from the board of the Boston Public Library, attended the Embrace Ideas Festival. She is a lifelong resident of the city who went to Northeastern University and worked at the Roxbury YMCA and the Urban League growing up, but said the festival was eye-opening. 'Listening to the policy panel, I had no idea that 17 percent of Boston residents live in poverty,' Douglas said. At the last panel of the day, Jeneé Osterheldt, deputy managing editor for culture, talent and development at The Boston Globe interviewed entrepreneur Morgan DeBaun about her new self-help book and her career. DeBaun is the founder and CEO of Blavity Inc., a digital media company geared to Black millennials. DeBaun said that she had the idea to start a company focused on Black people when she was working for Intuit in Silicon Valley because she didn't see anyone building technology with Black users as the primary customer they were targeting. DeBaun, who is originally from Missouri, said that the murder of Ferguson teenager Mike Brown at the hands of the police in 2014 also led to her wanting to work with Black people. Advertisement 'I was sitting in a cubicle in San Francisco after Mike Brown and the people around me were asking 'what's for lunch,' they just were not seeing what I was seeing,' DeBaun said. In the audience, Laurie Nicolas resonated with DeBaun's experiences of working in predominantly white offices. Nicolas works in the healthcare space but started her own nonprofit called Pink Sunday which focuses on physical fitness for women. Nicolas learned about the Embrace festival after the inauguration of the Embrace statue in Boston Commons in 2023. She said she appreciated the diversity of the speakers at the festival. 'I want to focus on cultivating spaces where people feel included, not just people who look like me, but all kinds of diversity and I learned a lot from this event,' Nicolas. This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Angela Mathew can be reached at

Chicago Tribune

an hour ago

• Chicago Tribune

Alexander Polikoff, public-interest lawyer behind landmark CHA segregation case, dies

Public-interest lawyer Alexander Polikoff spent decades fighting powerful interests, most notably in a case he filed on behalf of Black public housing residents against the city of Chicago that spanned most of his career. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 agreed with Polikoff and his clients' contention that the city had discriminated against Black public housing residents and had selected housing for them based on race. Polikoff spent the next 43 years holding the city accountable until federal oversight over Chicago public housing was lifted in 2019. 'Alex was not motivated by money, fame or life's comforts,' said Hoy McConnell, who succeeded Polikoff as the executive director of Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest, the small public-interest law firm that Polikoff joined in 1970. 'Rather, he dedicated his life to making change to improve the lives of those burdened by poverty and discrimination.' Polikoff, 98, died of natural causes May 27 at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, said his son, author Daniel Joseph Polikoff. A longtime Highland Park resident, Polikoff moved to New Hampshire in 2022 to be near his daughter. Born and raised in Chicago, Polikoff was the son of attorney Julius Polikoff. After graduating from Senn High School in 1944, he briefly attended Purdue University before joining the Navy. After his discharge, he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. He then received his law degree from the Hyde Park school in 1953, and worked for the next 17 years at the firm that became Schiff Hardin. Polikoff performed extensive pro bono legal work, representing clients alongside the American Civil Liberties Union. 'I don't remember a time when my dad wasn't doing some pro bono work with the ACLU, taking on various causes,' Polikoff's son said. 'That pro bono work was very compelling to him — it was part of his character.' In 1965, he filed a lawsuit in Lake County on behalf of four pupils to force Waukegan's elementary school board to reorganize school boundaries in order to meet integration standards. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1968 ruled favorably on Polikoff's contention that race could be taken into account to redraw school district boundary lines to achieve integration. The longest battle of Polikoff's career started in 1966, when he represented a group of Black Chicago Housing Authority residents in a federal class-action lawsuit. The case is known by the name of one of those residents, tenant activist Dorothy Gautreaux. Polikoff alleged that the CHA had practiced racial segregation by building most of its public housing complexes in Black neighborhoods and had deliberately placed Black residents in those complexes. In 1969, Judge Richard Austin concluded that the CHA had discriminated against Blacks in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination in any program receiving federal aid. Austin also ruled that three public housing units must be built in white areas for every similar unit built in a Black neighborhood. White aldermen refused to approve sites for new construction. The CHA also dragged its feet by simply stopping building instead of following Austin's directives. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on an appeal from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, unanimously concluded that the CHA had practiced segregation. Justices found that the CHA's problems were regional in nature, and that solutions could occur both in the city and the suburbs. Austin then expanded his order to include the entire metro area as an option for scattered-site housing. However, suburbs resisted new construction of lower-income scattered-site housing. A 1981 consent decree in the case placed CHA tenants in existing area housing and gave them federal Section 8 rent subsidies. 'The whole idea was to take the thinking beyond the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation and transfer it to the area of housing,' Polikoff told the Tribune in 1994. '(The) CHA's policy since the early 1950s worked to make each of its 168 high-rise buildings virtually 100% Black. It was illegal, immoral and socially disastrous to pile poor people on top of poor people.' The CHA eventually altered its operations and demolished numerous high-rises such as Cabrini-Green, the Henry Horner Homes and the Robert Taylor Homes in favor of scattered-site housing. The federal government ended its oversight of the CHA in 2019. At 92 years old, Polikoff was still involved in the case. 'It is well-known that the work Alex led changed public housing practices both in Chicago and nationally, and positively impacted tens of thousands of public housing residents,' said attorney Julie Brown, who worked for decades with Polikoff on the Gautreaux case. 'He was brilliant, of course, but always questioning. He had an uncanny ability to put aside extraneous issues and get to the heart of any matter he addressed. He had an innate sense that justice should prevail and insisted on doing everything he could to try to make it so.' Alex Kotlowitz, whose award-winning 1992 book, 'There Are No Children Here,' covered hardscrabble life in the Henry Horner Homes, praised Polikoff for challenging the CHA, 'which had become a kind of warehousing for the city's poor. He challenged the nation's conscience.' 'Alex was one of the first to recognize the profound effects of concentrated poverty,' Kotlowitz said. 'The Gautreaux litigation changed more than just housing policy. It forced us to reconsider how we treat the marginalized. It prodded us to consider our collective responsibilities to those who are struggling economically.' 'Gautreaux laid the foundation for the present-day national conversation about mixed-income housing, a reconsideration of how we think about community,' Kotlowitz said. Polikoff left private law practice in 1970 to join the staff of the public-interest law firm Businessmen for the Public Interest, later named Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest and now known as Impact for Equity. He became the executive director of the group, which provided a full-time platform for continued social justice advocacy, and held that post until 1999. He continued to work as the group's housing director until fully retiring in 2022. Under Polikoff, the group succesffully fought City Hall's proposal in the early 1970s to build a new airport on landfill in Lake Michigan. It also successfully fought plans for a nuclear power plant near Chesterton, Indiana, on the border of the 12,500-acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, winning a key court fight in 1974 when a three-judge panel of federal judges halted construction. The utility Northern Indiana Public Service Co. formally abandoned plans for a nuclear plant on the site in 1981. And pressure from Polikoff and his colleagues at BPI and from the Citizens Utility Board spurred utility Commonwealth Edison Co. to announce the settlement of 10 years of rate-case litigation in October 1993 with a record $1.34 billion refund to rate-payers. Polikoff's 'vision and passion inspired many of us,' recalled Environmental Law & Policy Center CEO Howard Learner, BPI's former general counsel and the lead consumer lawyer in ComEd settlement negotiations. 'Alex was always proud that part of his legacy in leading BPI was the multiplier impact from the number of talented public interest attorneys and vital new organizations that were developed at and grew from BPI to make a difference for the public good.' Bob Vollen, who worked alongside Polikoff at BPI from 1972 until 1982, said Polikoff had a 'way of posing a question that it allowed no possible answer other than the one he was seeking.' Polikoff authored five books, including 'Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto,' which was published in 2006. His most recent book, 'Cry My Beloved America,' an examination of anger and frustration in America, was published in 2024. Polikoff's wife of 71 years, author Barbara Garland Polikoff, died in 2022. A daughter, Joan, died in 2016. In addition to his son, Polikoff is survived by another daughter, Eve Kodiak; and five grandchildren. Services will be private.

CNN

an hour ago

• CNN

Trump Justice Department not expected to appoint outsider as special counsel, source says

The Justice Department is not expected to appoint an outsider to serve as special counsel to handle politically sensitive criminal investigations, but will likely deputize a US Attorney to handle such matters if the need arises, according to a source familiar with the strategy. On Friday, President Donald Trump once again called for a special prosecutor to investigate former President Joe Biden and aired unfounded claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 'A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!' he wrote on Truth Social. The president has repeatedly called for a special counsel to investigate his predecessor over a number of issues. 'The whole purpose of the special counsel regime is to appoint a politically neutral outsider who can bring independence and credibility to a case,' said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and author of a forthcoming book on the history of special counsels and independent prosecutions. 'To choose a Trump-appointed US Attorney will, at a minimum, create the appearance that that person is biased in favor of Trump and his political agenda.' The Justice Department is already investigating some of Biden's actions while in office as part of its 'Weaponization Working Group.' On her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo establishing the group, which would focus on examining the state and federal investigations into Trump as well as the prosecutions related to the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and other right-wing priorities. Ed Martin, who failed to secure confirmation as US Attorney for Washington, DC, now oversees that effort, which has expanded to include subjects such as pardons issued by former President Joe Biden and other aspects of his administration. CNN previously reported that Martin sent a letter to the National Archives requesting information about White House operations under the Biden administration. He is also seeking information related to Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the investigation into links between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. It is expected that if the department deems that if any of these matters need to be escalated to a full-blown criminal investigation – that work will be outsourced to a US Attorney. The administration currently does not have any Senate-confirmed US Attorneys, but they do have nominees working in offices across the country. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The special counsel role was created through federal regulation to be used when there are conflicts of interest for the Department handling an investigation and it 'would be in the public interest to appoint an outside special counsel.' There have been several notable special counsels in the past few years, including Robert Mueller who was appointed by then-deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate the Russian government's interference with the 2016 presidential election. Mueller had previously served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013. Trump has repeated railed against special counsels. In Mueller's final report, Trump is quoted saying, 'Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels, it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won't be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.' Jack Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump for allegedly interfering with the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and for his allegedly mishandling of classified documents. Smith had also previously served as a federal prosecutor and was working at The Hague at the time he was tapped for this position. In July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw Trump's classified documents case, ruled that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional under the Appropriations Clause, which determines how the federal government is funded. Smith appealed the controversial ruling, but after Trump was reelected, he withdrew both cases against the president-elect. The nature of special counsels has evolved over time – under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, Congress allowed for appointment of 'special prosecutors,' which later became known as 'independent counsels.' These individuals were appointed by specially selected three-judge panel and were outside-government appointees. Ultimately, the law expired in 1999 after much debate about the cost and scope of special prosecutors, especially after the Kenneth Starr-led investigation of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. When the law expired, the Justice Department created a new regulation that allowed the Attorney General to appoint a 'special counsel' from outside the federal government. The Justice Department determined that special counsels would be appointed for investigations that would have too much conflict of interest to operate under normal agency guidelines.