In a speech before law enforcement officers Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions denounced consent decrees as a contributor to rising crime in American cities like Chicago and Baltimore, where those court orders requiring police departments to fix complex internal issues have been implemented to confront corruption and discrimination by officers.
He also disseminated misinformation about Baltimore’s own consent decree, which attorneys from the city and the Department of Justice–the group Sessions is now in charge of–spent months negotiating in late 2016 and early 2017, by erroneously saying it was forged between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union, a civil rights group.
Running with that detail, the attorney general went on to say the court-ordered agreement led police to conduct fewer field interviews and make fewer arrests, and allowed for bumps in crimes like murder, rape, car theft and aggravated assault. One of his claims that rapes “more than tripled” in the city from 2014 to 2017 was also incorrect, though they did increase 51 percent, from 249 in 2014 to 375 in 2017.
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