MINNEAPOLIS — The Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that became the catalyst for nationwide racial injustice protests in the summer of 2020.
The Trump administration also announced it was retracting the findings of Justice Department investigations into six other police departments that the Biden administration had accused of civil rights violations. The moves represent a dramatic about-face for a department that under President Joe Biden had aggressively pushed for federal oversight of police forces it accused of widespread abuses.
“It’s our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception, and not the norm,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the division, told reporters.
“The specifics of policing policy, hiring, training, management, promotion and internal policies are best made at a local level where there’s local accountability and local control over funding and policy issues,” Dhillon said.
Following a scathing report by the Justice Department in 2023, Minneapolis in January approved a consent decree with the federal government in the final days of the Biden administration to overhaul its training and use-of-force policies under court supervision.
The agreement required approval from a federal court in Minnesota. But the Trump administration was granted a delay soon after taking office while it considered its options, and on Wednesday told the court it does not intend to proceed. It planned to file a similar motion in federal court in Kentucky.
“After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” said the Minnesota motion, signed by Andrew Darlington, acting chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The United States will no longer prosecute this matter.”
The Justice Department announced its decision just before the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Then-officer Derek Chauvin used his knee on May 25, 2020, to pin the Black man to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes in a case that sparked protests around the world and a national reckoning with racism and police brutality.
However, no immediate changes are expected to affect the Minneapolis Police Department, which is operating under a similar consent decree with the Minnesota Human Rights Department.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara reiterated at a news conference Tuesday that his department would abide by the terms of the federal agreement as it was signed, regardless of what the Trump administration decided.
The city in 2023 reached a settlement agreement with the state Human Rights Department to remake policing, under court supervision, after the agency issued a blistering report in 2022 that found that police had long engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination.
Minnesota Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said the state court decree “isn’t going anywhere.”
“Under the state agreement, the City and MPD must make transformational changes to address race-based policing,” Lucero said in a statement. “The tremendous amount of work that lies ahead for the City, including MPD, cannot be understated. And our Department will be here every step of the way.”
In Kentucky, the city of Louisville had reached an agreement with the Justice Department to reform its police force after an investigation spurred by the fatal police shooting of Taylor and police treatment of protesters.
The agreement, reached in the closing days of the Biden administration, needed court approval to progress. The consent decree followed a federal probe that found Louisville police engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community.
Louisville Mayor Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city remains committed to reforming its police force.
“This is not the outcome we hoped for when we stood right here in December and announced the decree,” he said of the department’s move to dismiss the case. “It is an outcome that we have planned for.”
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Richer reported from Washington. Bruce Schreiner in Louisville contributed.