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The Justice Department said that it would abandon efforts to overhaul local policing in Minneapolis and other cities with histories of civil rights violations.
May 21, 2025Updated 10:18 a.m. ET
The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to scrap proposed agreements for federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, as part of a broader abandonment of efforts by previous administrations to overhaul local law enforcement across the United States.
Justice Department officials said they planned to drop cases filed after incidents of police violence against Black people in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., and to close investigations into departments in Memphis; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Trenton, N.J.; and Mount Vernon, N.Y., as well as a case against the Louisiana State Police.
In those cities and states, Justice Department officials said, they were retracting Biden-era findings that police departments had violated the constitutional rights of residents and declaring those findings to be misguided.
The announcement came four days before the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. That act of violence, caught on video, inspired national outrage and worldwide protests against police violence targeting Black Americans.
It also resulted in a withering federal report that found that the Minneapolis Police Department had routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people and had used deadly force without justification. After nearly two years of negotiations, the Justice Department and the city submitted an agreement to a federal judge in January calling for federal oversight of the Police Department’s efforts to address the issues.
That arrangement, known as a consent decree, was similar to court-approved agreements between the federal government and at least 13 other cities whose police forces have been accused of widespread civil rights abuses, including Los Angeles, Newark and Ferguson, Mo. The decrees set requirements for how officers should be trained and disciplined, with an outside monitor and a judge to ensure compliance, sometimes for years.
