Consent decisions enforce changes in policing. But will reforms last?

“It’s kind of like the old saying, if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority,” said Jason Johnson, who was deputy police chief in Baltimore and oversaw compliance with the city’s consent order. In a recent column, he warned Louisville about this buy carefully. “When you put down this huge consent decree, it’s honestly like the department just stepped into a bucket of concrete.”

Mr Johnson, who calls himself a “constructive opponent” of the decrees, said the layers of approval required made it difficult for Baltimore to implement changes quickly. And, he said, the Justice Department wanted rules for officers that went beyond what the Constitution required, whether or not they impeded the ability to stop crime. “I can tell you at the table that there was no interest in having conversations about the impact of some of these policies,” he said.

Departments also have to bear the costs of new technology, better equipment and better training, as well as fees for a monitor to check their compliance. Still, believers point out that decrees of consent can be much cheaper than unconstitutional policing. Minneapolis has paid out more than $70 million in police misconduct settlements over the past five years, including $27 million to Mr. Floyd.

“What we’re talking about is broad institutional reform,” said David Douglass, the deputy monitor of the New Orleans law of consent and founder of a nonprofit called Effective Law Enforcement for All, which helps communities develop voluntary reforms. . “So yes, it’s expensive, but I guess I’d say, ‘So what?’ measured by the damage and the resulting benefit.”

One of the strengths of decrees of consent, for those who like them, is that they are not subject to the political winds that blow mayors and police chiefs in and out of office. In Baltimore, Michael Harrison, who was appointed commissioner for his success in implementing the New Orleans police overhaul, has just resigned, but the assent order remains in effect. Experience running a department with a decree of consent has become a plum mark on a chief’s resume. In Minneapolis, the new chief is Brian O’Hara, who hails from Newark, where he served as director of public safety.