Amid concerns that the U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald J. Trump will not pursue consent decrees to hold police departments accountable for use of excessive or deadly force, a law professor who negotiated consent decrees under President Barack Obama said the rights of minorities are at stake.
“It has been and should always be the role of the civil rights division to protect minority rights from infringement by the majority,” said Christy E. Lopez, Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law and former deputy chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Obama.
“You can’t just say, ‘Don’t violate the law.’ Courts have long recognized you don’t just say, ‘Don’t violate the law.’ That is not even allowed in a consent decree or an injunction in these cases,” Lopez said. “The law recognizes that you have to show them what do we need to do to make sure we don’t violate the law.”
Lopez said one of the most important ways to prevent excessive force — including deadly force — is to get police officers to have “more positive interactions with the people they police.”
“Where we can have more positive interactions between police officers and community members, you can create community trust that will not only bring crime down but will prevent those terrible outcomes,” Lopez said. “That’s why in the Ferguson consent decree and others, you see a redundancy of opportunities for positive interactions between police and community members.”
Lopez was referring to the 2016 consent decree with the City of Ferguson that followed the 2014 fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown that sparked nationwide protests.
Lopez’s remarks — made Thursday during a New America panel discussion titled “Policing in a New Political Era” — come in the wake of remarks by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearings that consent decrees “undermine the respect for police officers.”
