Tag Archives: U.S. Justice Department

U.S. in deal to reform Baltimore police after Freddie Gray death

mural of late Freddie Gray in Baltimore

By Donna Owens

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – The city of Baltimore will enact a series of police reforms including changes in how officers use force and transport prisoners under an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department filed in federal court on Thursday.

The agreement comes almost two years after the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, of injuries sustained while in police custody sparked a day of rioting and arson in the majority-black city. It also led to an investigation that found the city’s police routinely violated residents’ civil rights.

Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the deal, which is subject to a judge’s approval, would be binding even after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

“The reforms in this consent decree will help ensure effective and constitutional policing, restore the community’s trust in law enforcement, and advance public and officer safety,” Lynch told reporters, flanked by recently elected Mayor Catherine Pugh.

The 227-page consent decree agreement is the result of months of negotiations after a federal report released in August found that the city’s 2,600-member police department routinely violated black residents’ civil rights with strip searches, by excessively using force and other means.

The probe followed the April 2015 death of Gray, 25, who died of injuries sustained in the back of a police van. His was one of a series of high-profile deaths in U.S. cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to North Charleston, South Carolina, that sparked an intense debate about race and justice and fueled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Department of Justice is scheduled to release the findings of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department on Friday in the Midwest city, local media reported. In Philadelphia on Friday, a report on reform efforts by the Philadelphia Police Department will be released, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

Prosecutors brought charges against six officers involved in Gray’s arrest but secured no convictions.

William Murphy Jr., an attorney who represented the Gray family in a civil suit against the city that led to a $6 million settlement, praised the deal.

“Make no mistake, today is a revolution in policing in Baltimore,” Murphy said.

The head of city’s police union was warier, saying his group had not been a part of the negotiations.

“Neither our rank and file members who will be the most affected, nor our attorneys, have had a chance to read the final product,” Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said in a statement.

City officials said union officials had been involved in talks early on but stopped attending meetings.

(Additional reporting by Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago. Editing by Tom Brown and Andrew Hay)

FBI report expected to show violent crime rise in some U.S. cities

Phone banks of the FBI

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Violent crime in certain big U.S. cities in 2015 likely increased over 2014, although the overall crime rate has remained far below peak levels of the early 1990s, experts said, in advance of the FBI’s annual crime report to be released later on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s report was expected to show a one-year increase in homicides and other violent crimes in cities including Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., based on already published crime statistics.

Coming on the day of the first presidential campaign debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the report could “be turned into political football,” said Robert Smith, a research fellow at Harvard Law School, in a teleconference on Friday with other crime experts.

A rise in violent crime in U.S. cities since 2014 has already been revealed in preliminary 2015 figures released by the FBI in January.

A recent U.S. Justice Department-funded study examined the nation’s 56 largest cities and found 16.8 percent more murders last year over 2014.

Trump last week praised aggressive policing tactics, including the “stop-and-frisk” approach.

Clinton has pushed for stricter gun control to help curb violence and has called for the development of national guidelines on the use of force by police officers.

FBI Director James Comey warned last year that violent crime in the United States might rise because increased scrutiny of policing tactics had created a “chill wind” that discouraged police officers from aggressively fighting crime.

Increased crime has been concentrated in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods of big cities. Experts said in such areas crime can best be fought through better community policing and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crime.

“We’re just beginning to see a shift in mentality in law enforcement from a warrior mentality … to a guardian mentality,” said Carter Stewart, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, on the teleconference. “I don’t want us as a country to go backwards.”

In Chicago, 54 more people were murdered in 2015 than the year before, a 13 percent jump in the city’s murder rate, according to an April study by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)

Curbs on excessive force proposed for Cleveland police

Police officer at Republican convention

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Cleveland police would face new limits on the use of force under proposals issued on Thursday by a group charged with monitoring the city’s police department, after a U.S. Justice Department report highlighted abuses by some of its officers.

The report came just weeks after Tamir Rice, aged 12, was shot and killed by a rookie Cleveland police officer in November 2014, triggering national outrage over another case involving a young African-American who died at the hands of police.

Rice was shot after a 911 caller reported someone waving a gun outside a city recreation center. Investigators later determined he had been in possession of a replica-type gun that shot pellets, not bullets.

Changes proposed by the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team – a group of 17 national experts and community activists – include a requirement that officers use de-escalation tactics before resorting to force, such as creating distance from the threat involved.

Officers would also be required to provide medical aid, rather than just request aid, for anyone injured after the use of force. Cleveland officers were roundly criticized for waiting eight minutes before providing first aid to the wounded Rice, who died a day after he was shot.

Cleveland police did not carry first-aid kits at the time of Rice’s death, a policy that has changed since then.

Officers would also be barred from using chokeholds or force against suspects already handcuffed under the monitoring team’s proposals, and prohibited from putting themselves in harm’s way in a manner that might then require the use of deadly force.

A Cleveland police officer who was in the path of an oncoming vehicle, after a high-speed car chase in 2013, shot the first in a barrage of 137 rounds fired by 13 officers that killed the man and woman in the car.

The proposals from the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team are still subject to public comment this month. If approved by a judge and federal officials, they would take effect sometime early next year, according to Matthew Barge, the oversight consent decree monitor.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Ben Klayman and Tom Brown)

Justice Department opens probe into black Louisiana man’s death

Sandra Sterling, reacts during community vigil in memory of her nephew, Alton Sterling, who was shot dead by police, at the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.

By Edward Krudy

BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the fatal police shooting of a black man in Louisiana’s capital, the state’s governor said on Thursday, as two deadly encounters between law enforcement and black men triggered protests in the United States.

The probe comes as community leaders in Baton Rouge urged authorities to conduct a full-scale criminal probe of two white police officers over the slaying of Alton Sterling, 37, on Tuesday.

“I want you to know that a criminal investigation is under way. It is being led by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Louisiana Governor Jon Bel Edwards told hundreds of people at Living Faith Cathedral in Baton Rouge on Thursday evening.

“We are going to come out of this tragedy stronger and more united than ever,” he added.

Sterling was pinned to the ground and fatally shot in the chest outside a convenience store after the officers responded to what police said was a call about a black man reported to have made threats with a gun.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday it would conduct a civil rights investigation into Sterling’s death.

The city’s mayor and police chief welcomed the move, but community leaders said they worried the probe would be too limited and urged authorities to consider all possible federal and state criminal charges against officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake.

“We don’t want this to be a narrow investigation,” Edgar Cage, a spokesman for the community organization Together Baton Rouge, said at a church earlier on Thursday. “We plan to use this tragic event as a tool, a stimulant to change the culture.”

President Barack Obama said in a statement he had full confidence in the Justice Department’s ability to conduct a “thoughtful, thorough and fair inquiry” into Sterling’s death.

Citing an unnamed law enforcement official, CNN reported on Thursday that a homeless man placed the 911 call after seeking money from Sterling, who was selling CDs outside the store.

The 300-pound (135-kg) Sterling showed the man his gun and said to leave him alone, the official told CNN. Reuters could not independently confirm that account with Baton Rouge police, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Sterling, a father of five, had several criminal convictions since the mid-1990s for battery, resisting arrest, burglary and other crimes. He was a registered sex offender after spending nearly four years in prison on a charge he had sex with a 14-year-old girl when he was 20.

COMMUNITY-POLICE CHASM

Sterling’s death was the first of two fatal police shootings of black men in two days. Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on Wednesday near Minneapolis.

The shootings and videos showing their bloody aftermath have sparked protests, including an overnight rally in Baton Rouge that drew about 300 people who stood in a peaceful vigil near the Triple S Food Mart where Sterling was killed.

Obama said that “all Americans should be deeply troubled” by the two deaths, which he said were indicative of wider problems in the U.S. criminal justice system.

At the Baton Rouge church on Thursday, Edwards said there would be a new focus on training and retraining in the police department, and stressed the need to introduce people to the police at an early age.

His words appeared to address concerns voiced by many community leaders in recent days about a chasm between the black community and the police.

Video recorded by a bystander’s cellphone showed an officer confronting Sterling and ordering him to the ground. The two officers then tackled him to the pavement, with one pulling a gun from his holster and pointing it at Sterling’s chest.

One officer shot Sterling five times at close range, and the other took something from his pants pocket as he was dying, another video recorded by Abdullah Muflahi, owner of the store where Sterling was killed in the parking lot, showed.

Police said Sterling was armed. Muflahi said in an interview that police took a gun out of Sterling’s pocket after shooting him.

Officers Lake and Salamoni have been put on administrative leave, police said. In Lake’s three years and Salamoni’s four years on the force, both have been cleared by the police department after prior complaints against them regarding use of force, the Advocate newspaper reported, citing records.

The deaths of Sterling and Castile were the latest in a string of incidents in recent years involving police treatment of black men and boys in cities including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Cleveland.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien and Bryn Stole; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)

North Carolina officials sue U.S. Justice Department over transgender ‘bathroom law’

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access adorns the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – North Carolina officials sued the U.S. Justice Department on Monday for challenging the state’s law on public restroom access, in the newest chapter of the fight over the rights of transgender Americans.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, and the state’s secretary of public safety accused the agency of “baseless and blatant overreach.”

In March, North Carolina became the first state in the country to require transgender people to use restrooms in public buildings and schools that match the sex on their birth certificate instead of one that matches their gender identity.

The Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, Vanita Gupta, sent letters to North Carolina officials last week, saying the law was a civil rights violation and the state could face a federal lawsuit if it did not stop enforcing it by Monday.

The North Carolina officials are now suing Gupta as well as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for their “radical reinterpretation” of federal civil rights law in federal district court in North Carolina.

“We’re taking the Obama admin to court. They’re bypassing Congress, attempting to rewrite law & policies for the whole country, not just NC,” McCrory wrote on Twitter.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on Monday.

The so-called bathroom law has thrust North Carolina into the center of a national debate over equality, privacy and religious freedom in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that legalized same-sex marriage.

Prominent entertainers canceled performances in the state in protest of the law, associations relocated conventions and companies halted projects that would create jobs in the state.

AMERICANS DIVIDED

Americans are divided over how public restrooms should be used by transgender people, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, with 44 percent saying people should use them according to biological sex and 39 percent saying they should be used according to the gender with which they identify.

The Justice Department had previously declined to say whether it would take legal action if the state stands by the law, but last week’s letters suggested it was willing to do so, setting the stage for a potentially costly court battle.

North Carolina stands to lose $4.8 billion in funds, mainly educational grants, if it does not back down, according to an analysis by lawyers at the University of California, Los Angeles Law School.

McCrory said in a statement that he had filed the suit to ensure that North Carolina continues to receive federal funding until a court resolves the dispute.

He noted his office had sought additional time to respond to the Justice Department letters but said the request was refused “unless the state agreed to unrealistic terms.”

Officials at the University of North Carolina system, who also received a civil rights violation notification letter from the Justice Department last week, did not join the suit that McCrory filed on Monday. The university could not immediately be reached for comment.

The letters were “a statement that they clearly are ready to litigate” on behalf of transgender people in North Carolina, said Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The commission works with the Justice Department to investigate discrimination charges by public employees.

The Justice Department and McCrory squared off over the same issue last year in a case involving a similar bathroom rule at Virginia schools. The administration’s position was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the same court that would hear appeals in any future federal case over the North Carolina law.

The law is already being challenged in federal district court by critics including the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Writing by Julia Harte; Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)