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 Loomis and two other attendees said Trump seemed receptive to
Loomis's concerns that federally monitored police reforms
introduced during the Obama administration in some cities in
response to complaints of police bias and abuse are ineffective
and impose an onerous burden on police forces.
Trump, Loomis said, was “taken aback by the waste of money” when
the union chief told him that federal monitors overseeing his
city’s police department earned $250 an hour - a standard salary
for the position.
"I think he’s going to have a more sensible approach to rising
crime rates," Loomis said of now President Trump. "What I got
from the meeting was that Donald Trump is going be a very strong
supporter of law and order."
Emboldened by Trump's election, some of the country’s biggest
police groups want to renegotiate "consent decrees" agreed to
under President Barack Obama, the police labor groups said in
interviews.
Consent decrees are agreements between a police force and the
Justice Department that can prescribe changes to use of force,
recruiting, training and discipline. They are enforced by a
federal court with the oversight of court-appointed monitors.
Currently 14 police departments, including Seattle and Miami,
are operating under the decrees.
The police groups want to discuss the decrees with Jeff
Sessions, Trump's designee for attorney general who has voiced
criticism of them, although any renegotiation would be legally
complicated because all parties as well as a federal judge must
approve any changes.
“There are certainly decrees that are inartfully applied that
we’d like to see revisited,” said Jim Pasco, the head of the
Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union
with 330,000 members. It endorsed Trump in September and has
worked with Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, for
years while lobbying Congress for pro-police policies.
“We’ve always found him a man who’s willing to listen to
alternatives to a previously charted course,” Pasco said of
Sessions.
Civil rights groups are alarmed at the possibility that the
decrees could be unraveled, saying they have been an important
tool for the government to try to address issues like excessive
use of force by police in Baltimore and an officer shooting in
Ferguson, Missouri that led to nationwide protests.
Trump officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment
on the meeting with Loomis.
While Trump has not publicly commented on consent decrees, he
has expressed strong support for police departments and unions,
and on Jan. 20 the White House said he wants to end the
"dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America."
CURBING ABUSE
There have been questions by police and conservative politicians
over the effectiveness of the consent decrees, which give the
Justice Department power to obtain court orders imposing reforms
on police forces that routinely violate civil rights through
practices such as unlawful stops and seizures, racial
discrimination, and illegal uses of force.
The federal program was authorized by Congress in 1994 in the
aftermath of riots in Los Angeles sparked by the police beating
of Rodney King.
Some police unions complain the decrees stigmatize police and
impose overly restrictive limits on use of force. They also
chafe at what they see as misguided federal prescriptions to
local problems and have fought the reforms in court.
A reform agreement that the Justice Department negotiated with
the New Orleans police department in 2013, for instance, has
been “extraordinarily expensive” to implement, said Donovan
Livaccari, the lawyer for the Louisiana Fraternal Order of
Police. The city of New Orleans is footing the bill.
The Obama administration negotiated 24 reform agreements with
law enforcement agencies during Obama's eight years in office
after finding patterns of excessive force, racial bias, poor
supervision and other issues, more than double the 11 agreements
reached under the previous Bush administration.
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Vanita Gupta, the last Obama-appointed head of the Justice
Department's civil rights division, which investigates and
recommends reforms for police departments, defended the use of
consent decrees in an interview, saying they are apolitical ways of
improving public safety and making policing more effective.
Bill Johnson, head of the National Association of Police
Organizations, which represents about 241,000 officers, said he
expects local police associations to examine existing consent
decrees to see whether the Justice Department under Obama
overstepped in imposing any measures.
Some police union officials say they have been encouraged by
comments by Sessions, who has said that federal inquiries “smear”
police departments and “undermine respect for officers.”
“Under Attorney General Sessions, it’ll be more, ‘Okay, there’s a
problem, let’s craft an agreement as best we can and cure it, and
then move onto the next thing’,” Johnson said.
Union officials said they expect the Trump administration to
initiate and reach fewer binding reform agreements with police
departments, and they hope Sessions will work with them to try to
re-negotiate some of those existing agreements.
Sessions said in his confirmation hearing on Jan. 10 that he
“wouldn’t commit that there wouldn’t be any changes” to existing
consent decrees when he becomes attorney general if police
departments show improvement before they have fully complied with
the terms of the decree.
A Trump transition official said Sessions would not comment on his
testimony until after the Senate votes on his appointment. That vote
is not expected until February.
DECREES HAVE MIXED RESULTS
Not all union leaders agree that the decrees’ costs outweigh the
benefits.
Sean Smoot, who directs the Police Benevolent & Protective
Association of Illinois and serves as a monitor for the Cleveland
police reform agreement, said the federal inquiries prompt cities to
hire more cops and invest in better equipment.
The decrees have had mixed results. Reforms in some cities, such as
Los Angeles, have resulted in higher public satisfaction with police
and declines in reports of police use of force. In other places,
such as Ferguson, the city has missed multiple deadlines for
implementing reforms required by its decree.
Civil rights advocates in Chicago say that given Trump's law and
order platform they fear his administration will neglect the Justice
Department’s findings from a 13-month-long investigation into the
police force.
Issued in the last days of the Obama administration, the Justice
Department’s Jan. 13 report found that Chicago police routinely used
excessive force and violated the constitutional rights of residents,
particularly minorities. City officials signed an agreement to
negotiate a consent decree.
But with Trump in the White House, “it’s not clear where the
leverage is going to come from for the reforms,” said Jamie Kalven,
founder of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit group which
advocates for police transparency.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about
Kalven's concerns.
Jonathan Smith, the Obama-appointed former chief of special
litigation in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said
he is confident that most agreements reached during the Obama era
will remain intact because they are overseen by judges who are
“committed to their implementation.”
In Cleveland, for instance, the judge who oversees the reform
agreement that Loomis’s union is objecting to recently rejected any
efforts to renegotiate it.
(Editing by Jason Szep and Ross Colvin)
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