GEN: I saw [former head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division] Vanita Gupta’s tweet saying that under Obama, she “would have been in Minneapolis, working with local officials and community leaders and activists.” What would that collaboration have looked like?
Becky Monroe: The role of the Civil Rights Division was to enforce the statutes that we had jurisdiction over, but in order to do that we recognize the underlying, often systemic issues and problems that were in a particular jurisdiction. Vanita and Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch were in Baltimore very soon after Freddie Gray was killed.
They were there to listen to local government officials, the police department, local advocates and activists. Part of the Department of Justice’s role in terms of conducting a civil rights investigation was getting to the city and listening to what people who’ve been experiencing the civil rights violations were experiencing, and also hearing directly from law enforcement. Also when [then-Attorney General] Eric Holder went to Ferguson, you saw a real effort both to go and to listen. Again, it was listening to law enforcement, listening to local advocates.
And what has that DOJ section looked like under current leadership?
One thing that is obviously very different is that you have a president of the United States who, upon seeing just the raw pain that people were experiencing, issued a racist incitement to violence. I think we also see an administration that has supported the militarization of police. And I will say that support is in direct contradiction to what police leaders have said for many years about what works in the community. If you look at the 21st Century Policing Task Force, that’s obviously a very different approach.
Many of Obama’s criminal justice reforms have been abandoned or dismantled under Trump. What are the first policies that need to be reimplemented?
One that immediately comes to mind is the pattern and practice authority of the Civil Rights Division. That is a civil statute that under the Obama administration was used very effectively to look at, as the name suggests, patterns and practices of unconstitutional policing. These are cases that are very time intensive and they require the expertise of the career lawyers that are in the special litigation section of the Civil Rights Division.
They go in and open investigations where they’re really looking for these longer standing underlying systemic abuses. That kind of investigation requires a lot of time in the jurisdiction, working with people in the community, talking to law enforcement, talking to people that really have a better understanding of what’s happening there. That’s where you can kind of get the kinds of consent decrees that can really lead to genuine longstanding sustainable reform.
Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions basically just stopped that process and really undermined the work of not only a lot of career attorneys, but also people in the communities who saw the need for systemic change.
Research around the effectiveness of body cameras is actually quite mixed. What are the things we need to actually do a better job at combating police bias?
There are some legislative proposals that are out there. The national standard on use of force, as opposed to different standards that are now applied in different jurisdictions. I think one that should be very clear is a prohibition on chokehold. And I really want to be clear about that: many, many, many departments already prohibit that particular action. That’s something else people are looking at.