Louisville Vows To Continue Police Reform
The United States Department of Justice has instructed its Civil Rights Division to dismiss lawsuits against the police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis. This announcement proves that Trump is still settling scores over the 2020 election instead of governing in 2025.
Responses to this announcement came quickly from local leaders and organizations, including Mayor Craig Greenberg and the ACLU of Kentucky
The DOJ claims that the lawsuits were filed “last minute by the Biden Administration” after Trump’s reelection. However, the Consent Decree filing came after Louisville agreed to the negotiated terms. The negotiation spanned nearly two years after the Department of Justice under Biden and led by Merrick Garland found major violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department. The negotiations were announced in 2023, long before Trump was reelected.
While the DOJ under the Trump Administration, led by Pam Bondi claims the Consent Decrees were “wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination and heavily relying on flawed methodologies and incomplete data,” and that, “these sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts,” these were terms negotiated by both parties, the DOJ and Louisville Metro Government after years of investigations and findings.
“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,” added Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in today’s DOJ release. “Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.”
This policy change has nothing to do with Trump’s reelection. Nor does it have anything to do with ensuring the civil rights of citizens, but everything to do with making room for police departments to continue to violate the rights of local citizens, particularly in Black communities and communities of color. It also has everything to do with Trump settling scores with anyone that he feels has wronged him, including Biden for winning in 2020, and areas of the country where he is not popular — blue cities and states.
This decision is disappointing but not surprising. Situations like this that leave citizens subject to government abuse are why we have the Second Amendment… for now.
City’s Response
In Louisville, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced that Louisville will proceed forward with what he calls “lasting police reforms,” and said the city would move forward with the Community Commitment – Louisville’s Consent Decree.
“As promised, we are moving ahead rapidly to continue implementing police reform that ensures constitutional policing while providing transparency and accountability to our community,” said Mayor Greenberg in the press conference. “I made a promise to our community, and we are keeping that promise.”
Greenberg announced that the city would seek RFP’s from ‘qualified candidates wishing to serve as the independent monitor for the reforms.’
The process will begin after the judge’s final ruling on the consent decree and will include: “Two community engagement sessions will be held to hear from Louisville residents about what qualities and qualifications they would like to see in an independent monitor. An online survey will also be issued to garner additional feedback from those who are not able to attend in-person engagement sessions.”
The independent monitoring will be reported to the public regularly, according to the city’s press release.
The city has initiated policy reform within the LMPD, rewriting over 260 policies, updating procedures, and restructuring the personnel, leadership, and organization of the department. There will be a new Community Safety Commission, regular assessments in collaboration with the John Glenn College of Public Affairs from Ohio State University.
Chair of the Government Oversight, Audit and Appointments Committee, City Council Member Donna Purvis (D-5) issued a statement regarding the DOJ’s dismissal of the lawsuits.
“Today’s announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, closing its case and withdrawing the lawsuit against the city, was anticipated. The Government Oversight, Audit, and Appointments Committee has been preparing for this possibility and is actively working to determine our next steps.”
She said that she is also encouraged by steps the Mayor has already taken and is committed to taking in the future.
The Louisville Metro Council’s Republican Minority Caucus, led by Anthony Piagentini, couldn’t be more thrilled that Trump’s DOJ is actively working to put local communities in harm’s way.
“The decision of the US Department of Justice to dismiss the case involving Louisville Metro in a consent decree is welcomed by the members of the Metro Council’s Minority Caucus,” they announced in their release.
“In December, we argued that efforts to bring real and lasting reforms to policing within our community is best accomplished by persons closely associated to this community rather than out-of-town, federally appointed persons who benefit from a slow and more costly consent decree, and who have no accountability to the people of Louisville.”
Their statement ignores that the city had many, many years of recorded police overreach and abuse, but did nothing to stop it. The DOJ is tasked with such oversight, particularly when a police force that receives government funding and equipment mistreats and abuses the rights of the citizens they are supposed to serve.
American Civil Liberties Union Response
The ACLU of Kentucky, along with its partners, launched the Seven States Safety Campaign today. They filed coordinated public records requests in an effort to uncover police misconduct in Louisville, Kentucky, and six other states where the US DOJ under Biden’s administration found patterns of “unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing.”
“Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) has a systemic, long-term, and ongoing problem of unconstitutional policing and lack of transparency,” said ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director Corey Shapiro in the release. “The consent decree was an opportunity to repair some of the broken trust between LMPD and the community. While we understand Louisville will be implementing a voluntary version of that consent decree, Louisville Metro Government and LMPD must begin the hard work of demonstrating, through transparency and accountability, that they will do what is right, even without the Federal government’s involvement.”
In the DOJ investigation of the Louisville police department, they found that police routinely used excessive force, targeted Black people and communities of color for unlawful stops and searches, and repeatedly violated constitutional rights.
The ACLU shared snippets from that DOJ finding in the release:
“As one example from the hundreds of incidents that we reviewed, an officer encountered an intoxicated white woman screaming and crying while sitting on her friend’s lawn. After 90 seconds of standing back and doing nothing, the officer rushed up to the crying woman as she fought with her friends and used his boot to push her torso to the ground. […]he struck the woman’s face over and over again with his flashlight. He later called his supervisor to report the incident and explained what happened, admitting that he “beat the shit out of [the woman] . . .” (page 12)
“[A]n LMPD officer ordered his dog to bite a Black 14-year-old even though he was not resisting.
[…] the officer saw the teenager lying on the ground, face down in the grass. Immediately after noticing the teen, the officer deployed his dog off-leash without giving any warning—and ordered the dog to bite the teen at least seven times.” (page 15)
Today’s announcement isn’t a shock. It certainly made for a lot of sensational headlines and opportunities for posturing, but the real outcome of dismissing these Consent Decree filings is that police are given a blank check to continue their bad behaviors. Even with some of the reforms that have happened in the LMPD, officers still overpolice communities of color, and poor interactions with police still occur.
How this plays out remains to be seen, but Louisvillians must hold Metro Government and LMPD to their word on these reforms.
