Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned in a late Monday op-ed for USA Today that recent efforts to reform police practices have focused too much on the “small number of police who are bad actors, rather than on criminals.”
“[T]oo many people believe the solution is to impose consent decrees that discourage the proactive policing that keeps our cities safe,” he wrote.
Sessions has openly criticized consent decrees a means of reforming local and state police departments. This month, he called for a sweeping review of any consent decrees, which are court-binding agreements between the federal government and a police department on how to reform, that were reached before President Trump took office or that are currently being negotiated.
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Sessions said his department supports “the need to rebuild public confidence in law enforcement through common-sense reforms, such as de-escalation training,” and said the agency “will punish any police conduct that violates civil rights.”
“But such reforms must promote public safety and avoid harmful federal intrusion in the daily work of local police,” he wrote, arguing that it is “proactive policing” keeps cities safe through reducing violent crime and upping public safety.
Sessions said his department will not sign any more consent decrees “for political expediency that will cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.”
“Our first priority must be to save lives, restore public safety, and bring back the community policing that we know works,” he concluded.
