The Minneapolis Police Face a Consent Decree. Do They Work?

Because consent decrees seek to correct systemic problems, they often take a soup-to-nuts approach, from rewriting policies on when officers can use force to revamping everything from internal affairs investigations to cadet training. But what some view as necessary, others say is overwhelming.

“It’s kind of like the old saying, when everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority,” said Jason Johnson, who was a deputy police chief in Baltimore overseeing compliance with the city’s consent decree. In a recent column, he warned Louisville to bargain carefully. “When you lay out this massive consent decree, honestly, it’s like the department just stepped into a bucket of concrete.”

Mr. Johnson, who calls himself a “constructive opponent” of the decrees, said the layers of approval they require made it hard for Baltimore to implement changes swiftly. And, he said, the Justice Department wanted rules for officers that went further than the Constitution required, without regard for whether they hampered the ability to stop crime. “I can tell you from being at the table, there was no interest in having conversations around what the impact might be from some of these policies,” he said.

Departments also have to bear the costs of new technology, better equipment and better training, as well as fees for a monitor to check their compliance. Even so, believers point out that consent decrees may be far cheaper than unconstitutional policing. Minneapolis has paid out more than $70 million in police misconduct settlements over the past five years, including $27 million to the family of Mr. Floyd.

“What we’re talking about is broad institutional reform,” said David Douglass, the deputy monitor of the New Orleans consent decree and founder of a nonprofit group called Effective Law Enforcement for All, which helps communities develop voluntary reforms. “So, yeah, it’s expensive, but I think I would say, ‘So what?’ measured against the harm and the resulting benefit.”