Consent decrees were a staple of the Obama administration's efforts to change troubled city police departments, often in light of aggressive policing practices, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made
it clear he's no fan of consent decrees. When he took office in February, he ordered a review of all federal consent decrees entered in Justice Department lawsuits against local police departments, and in early April, he tried to delay the implementation of the consent decree reached with the City of Baltimore by the Obama era Justice Department, but a federal judge shot down the request and approved the consent decree.
A new report from researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas examined consent decrees in twenty three police departments and found that fewer civil rights lawsuits were filed in those cities. What can we conclude from that study? Here to help us examine that is Christy Lopez, professor at Georgetown Law School, formerly a deputy chief in the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. Christie, let's start with the basics.
What is a consent decree? Continue? A consent decree is is simply an order that has the back end of a federal judge UM that requires the police department to make a set of changes to address allegations that they're violing the law. Were you involved with negotiating consent decrees when you're at the Department of Justice. Yes, I UM let a number of the pattern or practice police investigations
and negotiated several consent decrees. So let's look at this study, which has nothing to do with what Jeff Sessions asked for. Just to be clear, explain the parameters and the conclusion reached. So this is a really important study UM for a couple of reasons. First, it's one of the few studies that's focused on whether the consent decrees are actually bringing about the ultimate goal, which is reducing police in misconduct UM,
and it answers that question into very important ways. UM. One is that it tells us that, as we have found previously from other evidence UH, consent decrease can actually help cities save money by reducing the number of lawsuits the policeeness conduct lawsuits. And it also is important because it UM has helped confirm for us that UM that consent decrease are in fact effect of a uniquely effective
form of reducing policeness conduct. The authors seem to have hesitation in saying that one is definitely a cause of the other, saying that there could be other causes and more study has to be done. Do you agree with that there that there could be a lot of different reasons for policeness conducts. No. No, for the for the for the reduction in the in the lawsuits, while the and I understand it's while the consent decree is actually ongoing than it been uh, sometimes goes back up again. Yeah,
that's an important point. I mean, they did try to control, to try to determine how much of this reduction and lawsuit was the result of the consent decree versus other things that we're going on. But it's absolutely the case that it's very difficult to control for all these different different factors. Um. But um, I do. I actually think that the report finds um about it up to a forty reduction of lawsuits filed during the course of a consent decree. Um, and then it finds that that reduction
seems to dissipate after consent decree is over. But I think it's really important to note that UM. I think there's a bit of a problem with the methodology here, and as I said, it's an important study, but I think it does definitely indicate the needs for further UM study.
It indicates while while this research report purports to focus on consent decrees, if you look at the cities they looked at and they're listed in foot night footnote nine of the report, most of those those cities actually involved what we call memorandum of agreement, not consent decrees. And that's because those are the older form of agreements that the Department of Jeffice used to reach before the Obama administration.
And it was precisely because we learned that those the changes under those older m oa's didn't last as long as that we moved to consent decrees. And so when this report looked at the agreements that were ended, they were looking primarily at those older m oas, and so when they found that the the changes didn't last as long, that's actually what we would expect and we would hope, I would hope that these authors would be open to actually focusing UM on whether consent degrees actually have a
longer laughing effect. And that's obviously important as Jeff Sessions wants to move away from consent decrees back to those more voluntary agreements. Is there any evidence for what Sessions has said that heavy scrutiny of police in recent years had made has made officers less aggressive, leading to a rise in crime and s these like Chicago, and also saying that the decrees reduced the morale of police officers. So there has been a little bit of studying into that,
and there is not a lot. There is very little evidence to support what he says and what they're what evidence there is is hardly conclusive, and there's there's more evidence to that is the opposite of that um there. Incent decrees are correlated not only with with lower payouts for cities, but they're also correlated with lower crime rates and with higher office morale. We've actually seen that in studies. So, you know, I think that that Sessions is wed to
this idea that he's held for a long time. That's that's that's not going to be swayed by by the actual facts on the ground. And consent decrees are expensive costs estimated about ten million or more in cities such as Baltimore and New Orleans. Explain what that money goes to. Some of it, Yeah, I mean they do. Yeah, there's
no questions. They do cost the money. A lot of money goes to training officers, and I think that's why I hope that we would all agree that that's a really important investment to be put in our police departments. But some of it does go to UM creating systems for collecting information, but that really opposite that the departments has had for a long time. And some of it goes to mock to paying monitors to actually be able to report out is neutral independent people about whether the
changes are being made. But I think you have to look at again the reduction of UM lawsuits. This shows you look for example at Chicago, which has paid out well over half a billion dollars in the past ten years or so in lawsuits to see to ask yourself whether this is would be rather be spending our money to get our police department up to constitutional muster, or would be rather be paying lawyers and litigants for being
abused by the police department. Some civil rights advocates fear that Sessions memo could imperil the status of agreements that have yet to be finalized. I think there's one pending with Chicago Police Department, right do do you are you concerned that that might happen? Yes, I am. I mean I think that the a G has made it clear that he doesn't think that preventing systemic police abuse is
a worthy endeavor for the federal government. Um. He's made it clear that, UM, he believes it's worth tolerating police abuse if that if that makes it easier for police to lock up for people of color for low level drug crimes. And he believe that, notwithstanding the research that shows us that that sort of policing makes communities and police officers less safe, stop to mention that it perpetuates
violations of people's civil rights. UM. So you know, I'm obviously concerned, and I think that this this report just gives us more evidence that consent decrees again are uniquely useful in helping to change departments but may have been trying to change for decades and not been able to in the past. Thank you so much for being on Bloomberg Law. That's Christie Lopez. She's a professor at Georgetown Law School. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law.
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