Some States Step In to Fill Federal Void on Police Consent Decrees

Route Fifty: On a July afternoon six years ago, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and then-New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stood together in historic Gallier Hall and announced a sweeping proposal to remake the troubled New Orleans Police Department.

It was just one of many announcements by the Obama-era Justice Department, with federal officials and local officials laying out court-enforced agreements to require a wide variety of changes at police departments facing widespread findings of police brutality and misconduct, particularly against black and Latino residents.

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