One of President Donald Trump’s big promises on the campaign trail last November was to crack down on crime.
A frequent complaint heard from constituents and prospective voters was that Democrats were too soft on crime — and too anti-police.
Trump’s Department of Justice seems poised to tackle both of those issues in one fell swoop.
The DOJ, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, announced Wednesday that it is doing away with a number of restrictive investigations and lawsuits ushered in at the 11th hour by the administration of former President Joe Biden.
“Today, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is beginning the process of dismissing lawsuits against the Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis, Minnesota police departments,” the statement began.
“These lawsuits, which were filed at the last minute by the Biden administration after President Donald Trump’s reelection, accused Louisville and Minneapolis of widespread patterns of unconstitutional policing practices by wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination and heavily relying on flawed methodologies and incomplete data,” the statement continued.
It noted: “They also sought to subject the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments to sweeping consent decrees that went far beyond the Biden administration’s accusations of unconstitutional conduct; the decrees would have governed many aspects of those police departments, including their management, supervision, training, performance evaluations, discipline, staffing, recruitment, and hiring.
“In short, these sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stressed that these moves would unshackle law enforcement and allow them to do their jobs.
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“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,” Dhillon said.
She noted: “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 DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is seeking to get lawsuits against Louisville and Minneapolis police dismissed “with prejudice.”
Additionally, that division will close investigations and dismiss Biden administration findings of:
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Trenton, New Jersey
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Mount Vernon, New York
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Louisiana State Police
The DOJ has been keeping itself busy as it tries to uphold Trump’s campaign promise.
On Tuesday, the DOJ filed a religious liberty lawsuit on behalf of a small church in Idaho.
Bondi has also been busy diverting DOJ funds earmarked for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives toward helping law enforcement, further highlighting the department’s newfound commitment to battling crime and empowering police.
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