Dr. Yohuru Williams, the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, recently joined PBS’ “Almanac” to discuss the Minneapolis Police Department’s pending federal consent decree, which is on hold another 30 days after a federal judge granted the extension requested by the Trump administration.
From the interview:
Host: Is there a chance this delay will become permanent?
Williams: This second request by the Department of Justice is troubling. The concern is that we will see efforts to continue this process of putting it off and putting it off, which effectively would end this important part of constitutional policing.
You’ve had people in the aftermath of this second request for an extension, say, ‘we don’t really need this, we’re making progress with regard to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights consent decree. We’ve got a reform-minded chief in place.’ The city is definitely continuing with that work. Yet at the same time what we lose are those critical pieces related to constitutional policing. It wasn’t just about the violence visited on George Floyd’s body, it was about what happened in the aftermath, the efforts to take away people’s First Amendment rights with regard to protest. The challenges that came as a result of what we saw with the treatment of people with disabilities, so you’re losing that First Amendment, that Fourth Amendment, those 14th Amendment concerns and I think that’s why there’s so many people who say we still need that federal consent decree.
