The consent decree effect
A recipe for change, or a vehicle for red-tape bureaucrats and wasteful spending?
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 set off a series of events that would have both immediate and long-term consequences for a city that was once seen as a Midwest jewel on the rebound after its notorious dive into street violence and gang warfare of the 1990s. The city lay in a smoldering ruin. Antipolice sentiment grew across the country along with frenzied calls for sweeping investigations, change, and oversight of law enforcement agencies and police departments from civic and political leaders.
The officers directly involved in Floyd’s death were charged in state court with varying degrees of murder. The same officers were also indicted in federal court for violating Floyd’s civil rights — invoking the rare Dual Sovereignty Doctrine.
Calls for civil rights investigations began immediately. Consistent with the sledgehammer approach taken in criminal court, both the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responded to calls for investigations into civil rights violations. Both entities concluded that the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) displayed a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory and unconstitutional policing, and despite initially suggesting that the MPD would submit to only one consent decree, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the city eventually entered into consent decrees with both the state and the federal governments.
In January the MPD became the only law enforcement agency in the nation submitting to two simultaneous consent decrees. One stems from an investigation by the MDHR, and the other from an investigation by the DOJ, though the latter has since been set aside by Pres. Donald Trump’s administration. The result is MPD has entered into a court enforceable agreement requiring it to work with a monitoring team to reform its policies and practices.
The experiences of other cities under consent decree suggest the MPD is in for a drawn-out, ineffective, expensive process with many unintended and unfavorable consequences.
History of law enforcement consent decrees
Consent decrees between the government and law enforcement agencies began during Pres. Bill Clinton’s administration with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The Act, known as the “Crime Bill,” focused more on fighting crime than addressing police accountability but initiated federal government use of the consent decree process to mandate reforms in agencies it determined to be operating unconstitutionally.
Theoretically, a consent decree is consensual. It represents a settlement agreement between parties in a lawsuit. However, the threatening shadow of being sued by the DOJ in federal court calls into question the willing agreement of the cities to oversight.
The consent decree process begins with a request for a DOJ investigation following a high-profile incident often involving police use of force. The request can come from community leaders, local and state officials, or federal officials up to and including the president. If granted, the investigation can take several years to complete.
The investigation examines whether there are “patterns or practices” of improper policing, such as excessive force, race-based enforcement, or violations of civil rights. Once complete, the DOJ announces its findings and attempts to negotiate a settlement agreement with the city to avoid a lawsuit. If an agreement is reached, a federal judge accepts the agreement and issues a consent decree laying out the reforms agreed to and identifying the independent monitor chosen to oversee the work.
Despite the use of dozens of consent decrees to reform local law enforcement agencies since the late 1990s, there is no clear outcome regarding their effectiveness.
Jason Johnson and Sean Kennedy of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund conducted a historical review of dozens of consent decrees in 2023. In their paper “Police Reform by Decree,” they concluded,
Consent decrees are not a quick, easy, or inexpensive fix. And this type of settlement can have consequences — higher crime, lower police morale, ballooning costs, drifting timelines, and dissatisfied residents. In many cases, consent decrees prove to be damaging boondoggles rather than bolstering effective and constitutional policing. Federal intervention for some agencies may still be necessary but less onerous and more effective tools exist for enacting necessary reforms. Those alternatives should be preferred where possible.
Minneapolis consent decrees Johnson and Kennedy noted that these “pattern and practice” investigations, as initiated in Minneapolis, were often “based on flimsy evidence and unproven strategies.”
They went on to say that in the case of the Minneapolis consent decree, the DOJ investigation rested on “anecdote and vagueness, and reflect(ed) policy aims. They include several egregious cases of police use-of-force but often omit whether or how those cases were addressed by the department internally, by the local prosecutor, or by any other agency.”
Johnson and Kennedy continued:
The Minneapolis report’s flaws extend to conflating “chokeholds” with “neck restraints,” alleging a practice (i.e., shooting into a moving vehicle) is “dangerous” despite their writ being to determine if it was unconstitutional, and asserting claims about excessive force or disproportionate police stops without explaining their methodology.
Despite Minneapolis police responding to over one million calls in the six years it examined, the Justice Department offers fewer than twenty specific examples of supposed misconduct while often omitting the outcome of internal and independent investigations into those incidents. Meanwhile, it mentions Derek Chauvin, George Floyd’s killer, by name 21 times in an apparent attempt to both inflame and assign collective guilt.
The city capitulated and now finds itself enmeshed in the consent decree process.
In a rare sign of moderation, Minneapolis, the MDHR, DOJ, and the two involved courts all agreed that a single “monitor” could provide oversight on both decrees.
Despite the DOJ consent decree being frozen, Mayor Frey has indicated that the city will continue the reform work it mapped out in its settlement agreements with the DOJ and DHR. The reality is the independent monitor will undoubtedly blend the overall goals of both agreements moving forward.
The monitor
Out of a group of nearly 20 applicants, Effective Law Enforcement for All (ELEFA) was selected as an independent evaluator, or monitor. The ELEFA website lists among its services “Reinventing the Law Enforcement Mission” and “Transforming Police Departments.”
The contract calls for ELEFA to receive $1.5 million per year for the duration of the consent decree(s). History has shown that consent decrees commonly last 10 years or more. The monitors have a great deal of influence over their duration with little incentive to make quick work of them.
The co-leaders of the MPD monitoring group are ELEFA president David Douglass and Michael Harrison, a former police chief who managed the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) from 2014-2019 and the Baltimore Police Department from 2019-2023, while both operated under DOJ consent decrees. Douglass also serves as the appointed deputy monitor of the NOPD consent decree, which has been in effect since 2012.
Nearly five years after the smoldering fires from the riots in Minneapolis have been extinguished, the city finds itself at the beginning of a long, complicated, expensive, and unproductive process — one that is unlikely to improve community relations or the MPD’s ability to suppress crime and provide for public safety if the experiences of New Orleans and Baltimore are any indication.
New Orleans
The NOPD has been subject to a DOJ consent decree since 2012, with no definite end in sight. Like the MPD consent decree, the NOPD consent decree was initiated due to allegations of “unconstitutional policing.”
Things have gone on for so long and so poorly that in 2022, the city motioned the federal judge overseeing the consent decree, seeking to terminate the process. In September 2024, the DOJ joined the city in that motion seeking dismissal of the consent decree.
New Orleans argued that the consent decree process had become a series of “ever-shifting goals.” The city described these shifting goals as, “Seemingly easy, but equally vague and subjective.”
In January 2025, the judge announced that she was establishing a two-year “sustainment period,” signaling a willingness to end the consent decree if the NOPD “sustains” its progress for two years.
This prompted La. Gov. Jeff Landry and Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill to join in the call for an immediate end to the New Orleans consent decree. The two filed a motion calling the sustainment period just another “empty promise.”
Baltimore
In 2017, following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the DOJ initiated a consent decree on the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) citing “unconstitutional policing.” Harrison stepped in as police chief in 2019, following his stint with the NOPD, and began overseeing the implementation of the consent decree through June of 2023, before he resigned.
In 2022, critics of the consent decree began speaking out, saying the process was hurting the police department’s ability to fight crime. Citizen activist Kinji Scott alleged that the federal judge overseeing the consent decree and Chief Harrison had become too close and that the judge had become biased.
In 2023 Mike Mancuso, president of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police, said about the situation within the BPD, “This regime, at the BPD, is in full survival mode due to a net loss of over 300 police officers under PC Harrison’s watch. Crime is still out of control, as one would expect from there being no plan to address violent crime, for the past four years, and an exodus of officers.”
A 2023 community survey conducted by the monitoring team revealed that 80 percent of respondents considered Baltimore’s crime rate to be excessively high, and 72 percent considered the BPD to be too slow in arresting criminals and solving crimes. Complying with the decree’s benchmarks has also been underwhelming. In the first seven years of operating under the DOJ consent decree, the BPD achieved compliance in just two of 17 criteria set out by the monitoring team. After eight years, it is compliant in just five of 17.
The results
If consent decrees successfully improved policing, one expects that impacted cities would be reaping the benefits of improved community relationships, police recruitment and retention, clearance rates, and a corresponding drop in crime rates. The reality is that many cities under consent decrees experience the opposite.
The core function of a police department is to provide public safety by fighting crime. In both New Orleans and Baltimore, despite a combined 20 years of federal consent decree oversight, the police departments have failed their core function.
An analysis of crime data revealed that the NOPD experienced a 29.4 percent increase in violent crime and a 13 percent decrease in crimes solved, while the BPD experienced a 13.6 percent increase in violent crime and a 14.4 percent decrease in crimes solved in the three years following implementation as compared to the three years preceding implementation.
A significant driver of these dismal crime statistics is the staffing crises that were born out of the consent decrees.
In Baltimore, the federal judge overseeing the consent decree described the staffing crisis as “playing with fire.” In 2024, more BPD officers resigned than were hired, leaving the department down a staggering 600 officers, or 25 percent of its authorized strength.
New Orleans is even worse. Between 2019 and 2023, 776 officers resigned, leaving the department 40 percent below its authorized strength — an 80-year low. A staffing survey revealed 47.3 percent of officers cited the federal consent decree as making it more difficult for them to do their job, and after 13 years of operating under an endless federal consent decree, just 8.9 percent of officers reported having high morale.
The strain of consent decrees affects more than line officers. Leaders are also impacted. The NOPD is on its fourth chief since its consent decree took effect. The BPD is on its fifth police chief since the investigation supporting the issuance of its consent decree began. The Washington Post reported that of 16 police departments under a consent decree in 2015, 52 different police chiefs had rotated through those departments during the duration of the decrees.
This is a major problem. A lack of stable leadership is a significant factor leading to the creation of a consent decree in the first place. If the consent decree process fosters continued leadership instability, then the process is self-defeating.
Considerations
Setting aside the DOJ consent decree, the MPD remains legally bound to the terms of the state consent decree with the MDHR. While not a certainty, the lack of an adjoining DOJ consent decree could signal a less onerous and more focused process. The stated term of the MDHR consent decree is four years before eligibility to achieve “full and complete compliance.” If the monitor determines the MPD has not achieved compliance, the consent decree could be extended indefinitely.
The MPD has two important factors on its side: stable leadership and an improved staffing outlook.
MPD chief Brian O’Hara was hired from the Newark Police Department where he was overseeing its consent decree process. O’Hara understands the pitfalls that can occur and has shown his willingness to stand up to an antagonistic city council. If he can weather the storms ahead, his leadership at the top will serve the MPD and the city well.
The MPD announced in 2024 that for the first time in five years, the department hired more officers than it lost. While it is still nearly 40 percent below its desired strength, the signs of growth are encouraging.
The MPD should take the lead in this process and push for “partial termination” of the agreement as it achieves compliance with each objective. If the process grows inefficiently, ineffectively, and is counterproductive, the MPD should aggressively demand the court modify the agreement as laid out in the modification and termination section. If it doesn’t, the MPD, and the city, may find themselves mired in “empty promises” for a long and painful time.