Jeff Sessions could weaken police reforms on excessive force and racial bias

Trump’s attorney general pick would not rule out withdrawal
or modification of court orders that he said tend to ‘undermine
respect for our police officers’

Jon Swaine in New York
Wednesday 11 January 2017 00.38 GMT

The Trump administration is prepared to weaken legal deals struck by the justice department under Barack Obama forcing local police to prevent excessive force or racial bias, Trump’s nominee for attorney general said on Tuesday.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said he would not rule out the “withdrawal or modification” of consent decrees secured by the justice department from departments such as Ferguson, Missouri, which he said tend to “undermine respect for our police officers”.

“I would just not commit that there will never be any changes in them,” Sessions told Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii during his confirmation hearing in Washington. He said earlier in the day that law enforcement had been “unfairly maligned” by political leaders in recent years.

Consent decrees are court-enforced lists of reforms that are typically struck when justice department civil rights investigators discover a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional policing by a department. A total of 25 such investigations have been opened under the Obama administration.

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