Trump Justice Department closes investigation into Memphis police & retracts findings
The U.S. Department of Justice is closing its investigation into the Memphis Police Department, a May 21 press release from the DOJ said.
The Justice Department opened a pattern-or-practice investigation into Memphis Police Department months after Tyre Nichols was beaten by police and later died. The findings of that investigation concluded that MPD had multiple patterns or practices of violating the civil rights of Memphians.
The City of Memphis declined to enter a consent decree ahead of the findings being released Dec. 4, 2024. The report was released in the waning months of former President Joe Biden's administration, and no lawsuit was ever filed against the city to push it into a consent decree.
More: The stories the DOJ used to make its case against the Memphis Police Department
Even if the Justice Department had sued the city, which it said was a possibility in the days after the report was released, it was not likely to maintain that suit. Wednesday's official end to the investigation also came with an announcement that the DOJ would seek to dismiss its lawsuits in Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis, Minnesota, that resulted in consent decrees.
"Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda," said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division's failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees."
Though Memphis never entered a consent decree, the DOJ also said it was "retracting the Biden administration's findings of constitutional violations."
The DOJ findings report found that Memphis police routinely use excessive force, unlawfully stop residents and search them, discriminate against Black people in its policing, and that they "discriminate in their response to people with behavioral health disabilities."
President Donald Trump's first administration made similar moves to undo consent decrees. It also was not common for it to investigate police departments for their use of force.
It is unclear if the retraction of the Justice Department's findings will impact the $550 million civil lawsuit Tyre Nichols' family filed against the City of Memphis. The amended lawsuit cited the investigation extensively, and the documents reviewed by the Justice Department have become a contested issue during the discovery process.
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Trump DOJ retracts findings of Memphis police civil rights violations
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