A consent degree similar to the one between the Cleveland Police Department and the U.S. Department of Justice was successful in Los Angeles, said Professor Stephen Rushin, who has studied DOJ settlements with police departments.
Los Angeles was supposed to be under consent decree for five years, but the process ultimately took 12 years before the Los Angeles Police Department was deemed to be under compliance and released, Rushin recently told the Christian Science Monitor.
“Critics said this would impair the ability of police to fight crime,” he said. “But LA is a great test case, because they not only saw a reduction in misconduct [by every measure], but they also had one of the largest sustained drops in crime in U.S. history.” Those two facts aren’t necessarily connected, he said, but they showed “that you can have a consent decree that addresses misconduct and can also effectively fight crime.”
For more, read “Cleveland police reform: Why federal oversight matters.”
