Justice Department rolls back police reform days before George Floyd anniversary

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced it is dismissing lawsuits against the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments, days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.

The move ends yearslong investigations into several police departments, including the ones being probed for the murder of Floyd and the death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by a Louisville police officer on March 13, 2020. It also ends police reform agreements that the federal government had with those cities and is emblematic of the Trump administration’s retreat from policies that center equity for communities of color.

What’s worse, such a move could effectively unleash corrupt cops who wield police brutality to hurt Black and Brown citizens.

During the Biden administration, the Justice Department made agreements with local police departments, called consent decrees: federal agreements with local governments approved by a judge to implement a review or reform.

An agreement between the federal government and the city of Minneapolis was reached in early January 2025. It outlined reform for the Minneapolis Police Department that included prohibiting racial discrimination in enforcement and investigating allegations of misconduct.

In December 2024, the Justice Department also reached a consent decree with the city of Louisville to reform its police department after police killed Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020.

Those reforms included investigating every use of force and complaints of police misconduct, enforcing police accountability for misconduct, and training officers to respond to mental health crises.

“Overbroad police consent decrees 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,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”

The Justice Department is also ending investigations into the Louisiana State Police and Memphis, Mount Vernon, Oklahoma City, Arizona, and Trenton police departments.

Some Black state attorneys general, including Letitia James of New York and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, vowed on Thursday they will ensure police are held accountable in their states. Ellison said there is a police reform agreement in place between the state and the Minneapolis Police Department that will continue. He also said Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering Floyd, will remain in jail.

Trump’s actions are “a sign of contempt, and it is a sign of disrespect. And it is a clear sign that Trump doesn’t give a damn,” Ellison said during a press event.

When asked by The Emancipator if state attorneys general believe the Trump administration is trying to goad the Black community into action and then justify a stringent crackdown, Ellison said, “Nobody can know exactly, but we better be prepared for it, and we better talk about it.”

Civil rights leaders and organizations have also denounced the move.

“To “disappear” DOJ findings like this is the most disturbing and disgraceful part. A key advantage of DOJ pattern & practice investigations is that DOJ has the resources to absorb the cost of generating the findings that indiv civ rights groups suing police depts find onerous & often prohibitive,” Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights attorney and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told The Emancipator that attacks on consent decrees are “a naked retreat by the Department of Justice.”

“We support consent decrees because they represent a voluntary agreement to support reform,” Morial said in a written response. “We oppose the cancellation of the agreements, a move that is blatantly political and puts community safety at risk.”

The ACLU on Wednesday said it will file requests for public records in seven of the states where patterns of civil rights violations were found by the federal government.

“Under President Biden, police departments in Arizona, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, and Tennessee were found to routinely use excessive force, target people of color, and violate constitutional rights as a matter of practice. We won’t let them off the hook,” the organization also wrote on social media.

The Justice Department says it is “confident” the majority of police officers will “continue to vigorously enforce the law and protect the public in full compliance with the Constitution and all applicable federal laws.”

“When bad actors in uniform fail to do so, the Department stands ready to take all necessary action to address any resulting constitutional or civil-rights violations, including via criminal prosecution,” the agency also said on Wednesday.