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Justice Department Ends Program Intended to Help Police Departments
The continued tense relationships between police and citizens across the country is again being enflamed by the actions of Trump's Justice Department led by Jeff Sessions. Sessions announced in mid-September that he is ending a program created to help improve trust between police agencies and the communities they serve. Seriously.
The changes target the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance. DOJ described it in 2016 as a “a long-term strategy that first identifies issues within an agency that may affect public trust and then offers recommendations based on a comprehensive agency assessment for how to resolve those issues and enhance the relationship between the police and the community.”
DOJ’s civil rights division has for decades conducted “pattern or practice’’ probes of troubled police departments to determine whether there are systemic problems that require a court-appointed monitor to correct.
Trump and Sessions are attempting to put an end to as much of this as they can, as quickly as they can claiming that by doing so they are tough-on-crime and pro-police. How about being pro-common sense and pro-citizens too?