Community leaders call on Justice Department to ramp up police investigations
Elected officials and advocacy groups from cities across the country are calling for the pace of police investigation announcements by the Justice Department to increase.
Last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced pattern or practice investigations against the Louisville Metro and Minneapolis police departments following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in March and May 2020, respectively. These investigations — which may result in court-ordered consent decrees — came after four years of silence from the previous administration regarding police accountability.
Since those announcements, the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, and the mayor of Columbus, Ohio, have called on Garland and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to swing their attention to their municipalities.