Theodore Decker: In police reform, consent decree isn't always what it's cracked up to be

Those with hopes of sweeping reforms within the Columbus Division of Police might welcome Thursday's announcement of an impending, top-to-bottom review by the U.S. Department of Justice.

They also might see this as another step closer to a federal consent decree, in which the division would be compelled to make court-ordered changes to its policies and procedures.

To all who see that as a good thing, a word of caution:

Be careful what you wish for.

Consent decrees have been used, sometimes successfully, to force the hand of local law enforcement agencies that are resistant to change. They can provide a flood of federal resources to bring about that change. They can inject fresh perspectives into institutions that can be notoriously insular.

More:With Justice Department review possible, could consent decree be next for Columbus police?

But they are not guaranteed saviors.

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein courted federal scrutiny in April, when they wrote the DOJ in response to police protests that had at that point been simmering for nearly a year, following the murder of George Floyd Jr. by a Minneapolis police officer.

Klein said on Thursday that this DOJ review is not adversarial, and apart from those underway in other cities.

"This approach is different because we invited them to come in and take a look under the hood and see how things are really working here," he said.

The feds will look into areas of the division identified by Chief Elaine Bryant, including officer training and technology.

Yet the letter penned by Ginther and Klein cited "fierce opposition from leadership within the Columbus Division of Police" when it came to enacting previously proposed changes.

That's exactly the sort of verbiage that leads to consent decrees.

The DOJ will be allowed to poke around as it sees fit, and Ginther said there is no timeline for how long the review might last.

Should we move from review to consent decree, that lack of a timeline can prove to be one of the greatest potential drawbacks.

Consent decrees aren't transitory affairs.

The city of Cleveland has been under a consent decree for six years, but that's barely a blip on the radar when it comes to federal oversight of a police agency.

In Oakland, California, police have been under a federal consent decree since 2003.

That relationship began for good reason. The Oakland department had a host of problems. It had allowed to fester within its ranks a small but particularly nasty group of dirty cops who beat suspects, planted drugs and framed citizens. Their reign of corruption cost the city $11 million in payouts to 119 people.

But nearly two decades later, there are frustrations with the process. And they're not all coming from within the the police department.

"It seemed to be the right thing to do at the time," Bishop Bob Jackson of the Acts Full Gospel Church told USA TODAY. "The lies, the falsification of evidence — the culture needed to be changed."

But after years of internal disruption, millions in city dollars spent trying to meet shifting federal demands, and continued erosion in community trust in the meantime, he told the newspaper that his opinion has changed.

"You have to kind of wonder who is running the show," he said. "It feels like we are worse now than we were 10 years ago. The community feels like we are not being protected."

More:As federal oversight of police comes to new cities, Oakland serves as cautionary tale

That experience is not unique to Oakland. Seattle police have been under a consent decree since 2012, and some activists there have expressed similar frustrations at the slow pace and loss of local control.

Lisa Daugaard, a public defender whose police reform work won her a MacArthur genius grant, told NPR this summer that she has grown disillusioned by the federal oversight process, which she feels has hamstrung citizens and local officials.

"It doesn't matter what you think should happen," she told NPR. "It can't happen unless it's the court's own idea, and it never is.

"It is in the way," she said. "It interposes itself between the community and our elected leaders."

When policing the thin blue line, we should be careful whom we dub our white knights.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker