As Minneapolis prepares to negotiate a federal consent decree that would install an independent monitor of its embattled police force, officials under scrutiny to deliver meaningful reforms will likely find a laborious process with no obvious end in sight.
They need only look to the roughly dozen cities and communities that in the past decade have adopted specifically tailored court orders to ensure their law enforcement agencies are complying with constitutional policing.
The agreements — while necessary because they guarantee federal oversight, supporters say — remain fraught, often lasting years while costing cities millions of dollars annually in legal and monitoring fees and other mandated upgrades.
In Baltimore, where a federal consent decree was implemented in 2017, staffing shortages within the police department and a slow rollout of new equipment have hampered efforts. Cleveland, Ohio, has made strides since its consent decree was put in place in 2015, although a federal judge said the city will continue to be under a monitor through at least 2024 as it grapples with staffing and accountability requirements.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, which entered into a consent decree in 2019, community activists and policing reform groups say little progress has been made as the previous administration weathered larger crises that stalled the effort.
Chicago is in “full compliance” with less than 5% of its consent decree requirements, according to a police department dashboard.
Residents are “telling us they don’t see an effect on their neighborhoods. Police officers are still disproportionately targeting communities of color for these really aggressive interactions,” said Alexandra Block, a senior supervising attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which is part of a coalition of community groups that sought a consent decree in Chicago.
“The big issues haven’t changed either, despite a new use of force policy and foot pursuit policy,” Block said. “It…
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