The Civil Rights Division’s 

Pattern and Practice Police Reform Work: 

1994-Present

Civil Rights Division

U.S. Department of Justice

January 2017
TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1

II. BACKGROUND – THE HISTORY AND PURPOSE OF SECTION 14141........................................3

III.INITIATING A PATTERN-OR-PRACTICE INVESTIGATION......................................................5

Identifying the Need for a Pattern-or-Practice Investigation ................................................................................. 5

Prioritizing Among Viable Pattern-or-Practice Investigations Across the United States................................... 6

Opening an Investigation.............................................................................................................................................. 8

IV. CONDUCTING AN INVESTIGATION .......................................................................................9

The Role of Policing Experts in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations....................................................................10

The Role of Data Analysis in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations.........................................................................11

The Role of the Law Enforcement Agency in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations............................................11

The Role of the Community in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations.....................................................................13

The Role of United States Attorney’s Offices in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations........................................14

The Length of Pattern-or-Practice Investigations ..................................................................................................14

Concluding a Pattern-or-Practice Investigation ......................................................................................................15

V. NEGOTIATING REFORM AGREEMENTS................................................................................17

VI. THE CURRENT REFORM MODEL AND ITS RATIONALE .....................................................20

A) The Structure of the Division’s Police Reform Agreements ...............................................................................20

Court-Enforceable Consent Decrees........................................................................................................................20

An Independent Monitoring Team...........................................................................................................................21

Outcome Measures to Assess Progress....................................................................................................................23

B) The Substance of the Division’s Police Reform Agreements ...............................................................................25

Advancing a Community and Problem-Oriented Policing Strategy ....................................................................26

Promoting Bias-Free Policing ....................................................................................................................................26

Use of Force Principles...............................................................................................................................................27

Community Engagement............................................................................................................................................29

Departmental Policy Changes and Re-training........................................................................................................30

Reforming Accountability Systems............................................................................................................................30

Officer Wellness and Support....................................................................................................................................33

Recognizing the Link Between Policing and Other Criminal Justice and Social Systems................................33

VII. CONCLUDING THE CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION’S POLICE REFORM AGREEMENTS ................35

VIII. CONCLUSION: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF PATTERN-OR-PRACTICE ENFORCEMENT ON 

POLICE REFORM.................................................................................................................38

APPENDIX A: SUMMARIES OF THE DIVISION’S PATTERN-OR-PRACTICE CASES........................ 41

Other Open Pattern-or-Practice Cases.....................................................................................................................47

APPENDIX B: OTHER DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE POLICE REFORM TOOLS..............................49

Criminal Civil Rights Prosecutions............................................................................................................................49

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) Collaborative Reform Initiative for 

Technical Assistance ....................................................................................................................................................50

OJP Bureau of Justice Assistance and Diagnostic Center.....................................................................................50
1

I. INTRODUCTION

There are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Law enforcement is a 

demanding, rigorous, and – at times – dangerous profession. The vast majority of men and women 

who police our communities do so with professionalism, respect, bravery, and integrity. But as we 

have seen around the country, when police departments engage in unconstitutional policing, their 

actions can severely undermine both community trust and public safety.

Today, our country is engaged in a critically important conversation about community-police 

relations. This report describes one of the United States Department of Justice’s central tools for 

accomplishing police reform, restoring police-community trust, and strengthening officer and public 

safety – the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of the civil prohibition on a “pattern or practice” of 

policing that violates the Constitution or other federal laws (the Department’s other tools are 

described later in this document). Pattern-or-practice cases begin with investigations of allegations of 

systemic police misconduct and, when the allegations are substantiated, end with comprehensive 

agreements designed to support constitutional and effective policing and restore trust between 

police and communities. The Division has opened 11 new pattern-or-practice investigations and 

negotiated 19 new reform agreements since 2012 alone, often with the substantial assistance of the 

local United States Attorney’s Offices.

The purpose of this report to make the Division’s police reform work more accessible and 

transparent. The usual course of a pattern-or-practice case, with examples and explanations for why 

the Division approaches this work the way it does, is set forth in this report. The following is a brief 

summary of its major themes: 

 The Division’s pattern-or-practice cases focus on systemic police misconduct rather than 

isolated instances of wrongdoing. They also focus on the responsibilities of law enforcement 

agencies and local governments rather than on individual officers. 

 The Division’s pattern-or-practice cases begin with the launch of a formal investigation into 

a law enforcement agency to determine whether the agency is engaged in a pattern or 

practice of violating federal law. An investigation most often consists of a comprehensive 

analysis of the policies and practices of policing in a particular community, although an 

investigation may also focus on a specific area of policing practice. 

 If the Division finds a pattern or practice of police misconduct, it issues public findings in 

the form of a letter or report made available to the local jurisdiction and the public. The 

Division conducts a thorough and independent investigation into allegations of police 

misconduct and substantiates any conclusions it draws with evidence set forth in its public 

findings.

 After making findings, the Division negotiates reform agreements resolving those findings,

usually in the form of a “consent decree” overseen by a federal court and an independent 

monitoring team. The lead independent monitor is appointed by the court, and usually 

agreed upon by both the Division and the investigated party, but reports directly to the 
2

court. If an agreement cannot be negotiated, the Division will bring a lawsuit to compel 

needed reforms. 

 When the court finds that the law enforcement agency has accomplished and sustained the 

requirements of the reform agreement, the case is terminated. In recent years, the Division’s 

reform agreements have included data-driven outcome measures designed to provide clear 

and objective standards for measuring success and determining whether the law enforcement 

agency has met the objectives of the agreement.

 At all stages of a pattern-or-practice case, from investigation through resolution, the 

Division emphasizes engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders, including community 

members and people who have been victims of police misconduct or live in the 

neighborhoods most impacted by police misconduct, police leadership, rank and file officers, 

police labor organizations, and local political leaders. Each of these groups brings a different 

and important perspective and plays a critical role in accomplishing and sustaining police 

reform.

 In keeping with the focus on systemic problems, the Division’s reform agreements 

emphasize institutional reforms such as improving systems for supervising officers and 

holding them accountable for misconduct; ensuring officers have the policy guidance, 

training, equipment and other resources necessary for constitutional and effective policing; 

creating and using data about police activity to identify and correct patterns of police 

misconduct; and institutionalizing law enforcement agencies’ engagement with and 

accountability to the community. 

The sections that follow provide background on why Congress gave the Division authority to 

address systemic police misconduct, how the Division opens pattern-or-practice investigations, what 

an investigation involves, and how the Division negotiates reform agreements. The report then 

outlines the common threads among the Division’s current generation of police reform agreements, 

explaining how the Division’s model promotes sustainable reform and constitutional, effective 

policing, as well as how those agreements come to a close. Finally, the report discusses the evidence 

to date of the impact of the Division’s pattern-or-practice work on police reform, as well as future 

directions for research and reflection on that impact.
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II. BACKGROUND – THE HISTORY AND PURPOSE OF SECTION 14141

In 1991, video of the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers sparked widespread 

public outrage. The officers’ acquittal on state criminal charges in 1992 triggered riots in Los Angeles 

and protests across the nation. (Later, two of the officers involved were successfully prosecuted on 

federal charges by the Criminal Section of the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.) An 

independent commission linked the beating of Mr. King to institutional failure within the Los 

Angeles Police Department, and Congress held hearings on how the federal government could do 

more to address police misconduct.

1

Following that series of events, in 1994 Congress authorized the Attorney General to investigate and 

litigate cases involving “a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers” that violates 

Constitutional or federal rights.2 Under this authority, the Civil Rights Division of the Department 

of Justice may obtain a court order requiring state or local law enforcement agencies to address 

institutional failures that cause systemic police misconduct.3 These cases are commonly referred to 

inside the Division as “pattern-or-practice cases” or “14141 cases” after the section of the United 

States Code codifying this authority, 42 U.S.C. § 14141. 

Pattern-or-practice cases are investigated, litigated and resolved by the Special Litigation Section of 

the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, sometimes assisted by the local United States 

Attorney’s Office. The Special Litigation Section consists of career professional attorneys with many 

decades of collective experience working on police reform cases. They are specialists in the field of 

criminal justice reform and have worked with police departments large and small to address the wide 

range of issues and challenges in modern policing and bring about lawful and effective police 

practices. The Special Litigation Section also has experienced investigators and community outreach 

specialists to assist in gathering the information needed to ensure the integrity and thoroughness of 

the Division’s investigations and reform efforts.

Section 14141 is a vehicle for the Department of Justice to enforce rights defined and protected by 

the Constitution and other federal laws, such as the rights to be free from excessive force; 

unreasonable stops and searches; arrests without warrants or sufficient cause, or in retaliation for 

exercising free speech rights; and discrimination based on factors such as race, ethnicity, national 

origin, religion, disability, and sex—including sexual orientation, gender identity and LGBT status.4 

The first pattern-or-practice policing case brought under Section 14141 was in Pittsburgh, 

Pennsylvania. In January 1997, following a nearly year-long investigation, the Division issued a letter 

to the City of Pittsburgh finding a pattern or practice of excessive force, false arrests, and improper 

searches and seizures, grounded in a lack of adequate discipline for misconduct and a failure to 

supervise officers. The parties negotiated a resolution and jointly entered a court-ordered reform 

agreement overseen by an independent monitor that was in effect from April 1997 until September 

2002, with ongoing monitoring through 2005. The Vera Institute of Justice conducted an 

independent, extensively researched assessment of that effort after it concluded, describing it as “a 

success story for local police management and for federal intervention.”5 

Since then, the Division has opened 69 formal investigations, and entered into 40 reform 

agreements to bring much-needed change to police departments. At the time of this publication, the 

Division had 18 open reform agreements, 5 open investigations, and one case in active litigation.

6
4

Much has changed since the Division’s first initiatives under Section 14141. The Division’s process 

for conducting pattern-or-practice cases and the model the Division uses to design effective reforms

have evolved as the Division has responded to feedback from stakeholders—including state and 

local law enforcement, developments in the social science of police reform, and lessons from its 

own experience in this field. In that sense, the Pittsburgh consent decree and many of the early 

reform agreements that followed it reflect a different era in the Division’s history. A focus on fixing 

broken systems and building police-community trust remain the consistent themes of the Division’s 

pattern-or-practice police reform. But the methods for fixing those systems and restoring that trust, 

as well as the means for assessing the success of those methods, have evolved significantly. The 

following sections describe the Division’s current process for enforcement and its model for reform.
5

III. INITIATING A PATTERN-OR-PRACTICE INVESTIGATION

In general, the first stage in a pattern-or-practice case is an internal process by which the Civil Rights 

Division decides whether to open an investigation into a particular law enforcement agency. The 

decision to open an investigation is made by the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights

Division upon the recommendation and advice of experienced career professional attorneys and 

investigators from the Division’s Special Litigation Section. 

In making the decision whether to open an investigation, the threshold questions the Division asks

are:

 Would the allegations, if proven, establish a violation of the Constitution or federal laws?

 Would the allegations, if proven, constitute a pattern or practice, as opposed to sporadic or 

isolated violations of the Constitution or federal laws?

Identifying the Need for a Pattern-or-Practice Investigation

To determine how to best direct its resources, staff in the Civil Rights Division regularly examine 

information available to the Division, including publicly available information and confidential 

information provided to the Division by witnesses and complainants, to conduct preliminary 

inquiries into whether law enforcement agencies may be engaging in a pattern or practice of police 

misconduct. Although the Division is not a complaint-driven agency, and there is no requirement 

that it take action in response to every allegation or request to investigate, it regularly receives and 

reviews complaints from affected community members and families, advocacy groups, prosecutors 

and defense attorneys, judges, legislators, and police officers with knowledge of misconduct. In 

some instances, the Division will receive a request to investigate from a law enforcement agency or 

local government officials in the relevant jurisdiction. 

The Division also conducts its own research to identify potential subjects for investigation by, for 

example, examining information provided by other agencies or components of the Department of 

Justice, including local United States Attorney’s Offices; reviewing investigative reports by 

academics, review panels, and journalists; monitoring existing lawsuits involving law enforcement 

agencies; tracking complaints received over time by the Division; and consulting with persons or 

organizations likely to have relevant information about policing issues around the country. Access to 

information during a preliminary inquiry is critical to the Division’s efforts, and local communities 

play a key role in bringing information to the Division’s attention.

The Division’s preliminary inquiries are confidential, as they reflect deliberative agency decisionmaking and constitute confidential investigative process. The Division has opened hundreds of

preliminary inquiries since the enactment of Section 14141 in 1994. 
6

Prioritizing Among Viable Pattern-or-Practice Investigations Across the 

United States

The Division’s police reform strategy is not, and cannot be, premised on an effort to investigate 

every police department in need of reform among the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies 

in the United States. The Division identifies far more jurisdictions that meet the basic criteria for 

opening an investigation than it is able to investigate. Law enforcement officers today are asked to 

do more than ever in communities, often amidst fraying infrastructure and social support networks, 

as well as rising community anger and frustration that makes the job of police officers more 

complex and challenging than ever before. In that context, it is no surprise that the need for police 

reform is so great. The Division also receives a large quantity of complaints and information 

intended to prompt a pattern-or-practice investigation, requiring the exercise of discretion and 

judgment to ensure that its law enforcement authority is used efficiently and effectively.

Given the necessity to prioritize, the national context of the Division’s police reform efforts is a 

central consideration in the decision to open an investigation. The Division considers whether the 

allegations represent an issue common to many law enforcement agencies as well as whether the 

allegations represent an emerging or developing issue, such that reforms could have an impact 

beyond the primary objective of eliminating constitutional violations in the specific law enforcement 

agency. 

Many of the Division’s investigations focus on core issues in police reform common to many law 

enforcement agencies—such as patterns of unlawful use of force; unlawful stops, searches and 

arrests; and racial discrimination. Others of the Division’s more recent investigations have focused 

on issues law enforcement agencies are currently grappling with, where federal action might help set 

a standard for reform, such as unlawful arrests and retaliatory force against persons exercising their 

First Amendment right to observe and record police activity; gender bias in police enforcement; and 

the use of force against persons with disabilities or who are in mental health crisis. These are just 

some examples of recent Division priorities, and those priorities change over time as the Division is 

responsive to contemporary issues in policing and the law. 
7

In deciding whether to initiate a pattern-or-practice investigation, the Division also considers 

whether other forms of federal intervention are better suited to address a particular law enforcement 

agency’s needs. The United States has a range of tools to support constitutional and effective 

policing other than pattern-or-practice investigations—including criminal civil rights prosecutions of 

individual law enforcement officers and various programs and initiatives run by the Department of 

Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and Office of Justice Programs 

(OJP). (More information about each of these tools can be found in Appendix B of this report.) 

The Division consults regularly with staff from COPS, OJP and other components of the 

Although many people may be familiar with the Division’s police reform agreements 

addressing use of force or discriminatory policing on the basis of race or national origin, the 

Division’s agreements have addressed a wide range of issues in policing. For example:

 In Baltimore, the Division found a pattern or practice of systemic violations of the 

Americans with Disabilities Act by the police department, focusing on the failure to 

make reasonable accommodations when interacting with people with mental health 

disabilities.

 In Los Angeles County, the Division’s reform agreement addresses a pattern of 

singling out people who receive federal housing subsidies for unconstitutional stops, 

searches, arrests and uses of force linked to community bias against people poor 

enough to qualify for such assistance. 

 In New Orleans, the Division found that officers systematically undercounted rapes 

and other sex crimes. Officers also wrongly arrested transgender women for 

prostitution and then charged them under the state’s “crimes against nature” law.

Multiple convictions under this law forced them to register as sex offenders, hurting 

their chances of landing a job or finding a home. The Division’s reform agreement 

addresses these practices.

 In Ferguson, Missouri, the Division’s reform agreement addresses municipal court 

practices that imposed court fines and fees on people unable to pay them, which 

contributed to discriminatory and unconstitutional policing through the use of police 

officers as municipal debt collection agents. 

 In Portland, Oregon, the Division’s reform agreement addresses interactions between 

police and people who are in mental health crisis, requiring department-wide policy 

changes and training designed to reduce use of force and facilitate the diversion of 

such people into community services and treatment, where appropriate, as well as 

supporting local government efforts to increase the availability of such services.

 In Puerto Rico and New Orleans, the Division’s reform agreements contain 

provisions aimed at eliminating policing practices that discriminate on the basis of 

sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

 In Evangeline Parish and Ville Platte, Louisiana, the Division’s recent letter of findings 

addresses the use of so-called “investigative holds”—illegally jailing people who police think 

may be witnesses to or otherwise associated with a crime, but who police do not have any 

probable cause to arrest, often for the purpose of coercing the person into confessing or 

providing information about the crime. The Division also addressed a similar practice in 

Ferguson, Missouri, where officers issued “wanteds” for arrests without probable cause. 
8

Department of Justice to consider whether a pattern-or-practice investigation and enforcement 

action is the best approach or whether other forms of intervention would be more appropriate to 

address the issues in a particular jurisdiction. 

Even when the Division uncovers evidence of concerning policing practices in the course of a 

preliminary inquiry, it is common for the Division to defer to another federal component’s reform 

efforts, or to refer law enforcement agencies to other components when the issues seem better 

suited to that component’s approach. The Division also considers the context of local reform 

efforts, including actions by private litigants or advocacy groups, and whether federal action is 

needed to expand or support such efforts, or to otherwise ensure that effective reform occurs.

A high-profile incident—such as a shooting death, a use of excessive force, or a false arrest—

standing alone never warrants opening a pattern-or-practice investigation. Individual incidents may 

suggest a systemic problem and often, therefore, comprise part of the information the Division 

relies upon to justify opening an investigation. But the focus of a pattern-or-practice case is on 

systemic reform of widespread police practices and institutional change within police departments, 

not addressing isolated or sporadic instances of police misconduct. 

Opening an Investigation

At the end of the preliminary inquiry stage, if the career attorneys and managers of the Division’s 

Special Litigation Section determine that there is sufficient cause to investigate an alleged pattern or 

practice of violations of the Constitution or federal laws and that opening an investigation advances

the federal government’s interest in constitutional policing, the Section recommends opening an 

investigation to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. 

If the Assistant Attorney General agrees that an investigation is warranted and authorizes an 

investigation, the Division notifies the jurisdiction’s chief executive officer and chief legal officer of 

the Division’s intent to open an investigation, generally in advance of any public announcement. 

That notice will generally identify the specific areas of inquiry to define the scope of the 

investigation. Following that notification, the Division makes the existence of the open investigation 

public.

In the more than twenty years since the Division first undertook a pattern-or-practice investigation, 

the Division has opened a total of 69 formal investigations. It has investigated (or is currently 

investigating) some of the nation’s largest police departments (Puerto Rico, with more than 18,000

sworn officers; and Chicago, with over 12,000), some of the smallest departments (Ferguson, 

Missouri, with fewer than 60; East Haven, Connecticut, with approximately 50), and many in 

between. It has investigated big-city departments like Seattle and Baltimore, small-city 

departments like Warren, Ohio, and suburban departments like Suffolk County, New York, and 

Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Division has investigated departments in California, 

Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, and many 

places in between. 
9

 This map does not include places where the Division has opened investigations but not concluded reform 

 agreements. 

IV. Conducting an Investigation 

The Division’s pattern-or-practice investigations examine not only whether there is a pattern or 

practice of police misconduct, but also why such a pattern or practice exists, in order to identify the 

right reform steps to eliminate it. As a result, when the Division finds cause to open an investigation, 

it comprehensively evaluates the law enforcement agency’s relevant written policies and actual 

practices, including its systems for training, equipping, and supervising officers; how it collects and 

uses data to identify and address problems; its systems for holding officers accountable for 

misconduct; and the degree of accountability to community voices and democratic government. 

Attorneys, investigators, paralegals, and community outreach specialists from the Civil Rights 

Division and, often, local United States Attorney’s Offices, alongside policing experts retained for 

purposes of the investigation, typically spend significant time meeting with people face-to-face, 

listening to the concerns of the police and the communities they serve, and directly observing how 

policing works in that location.7
10

Although the precise contours of an investigation will vary depending on factors such as the 

investigation’s scope, the structure of the law enforcement agency, its data collection practices, and 

other factors, almost all pattern-or-practice investigations involve the following steps:

 Immediately following the opening of an investigation, meeting with the law enforcement 

leadership, local political leadership, police labor unions and affinity groups, and local 

community groups to explain the basis for the investigation, preview what the investigation 

will involve, and explain the next steps in the Division’s process;

 Reviewing written policies, procedures, and training materials relevant to the scope of the 

investigation, through requests for documents shared with the law enforcement agency;

 Reviewing systems for monitoring and supervising individual officers, and for holding 

individual officers accountable for misconduct, including the handling of misconduct 

complaints; systems for reviewing arrests, searches, or uses of force; and officer disciplinary 

systems;

 Observing officer training sessions; ride-alongs with officers on patrol in varying precincts or 

districts, to view policing on the ground and obtain the perspective of officers on the job; 

and inspections of police stations, including lock-up facilities;

 Analyzing incident-related data (i.e., arrest and force reports, disciplinary records, 

misconduct complaints and investigations, and data documenting stops, searches, arrests and 

uses of force), often using sampling methods depending on the size of the data set, as well as 

an analysis of the adequacy of the law enforcement agency’s system for collecting and 

analyzing data to identify and correct problems;

 Interviews with police command staff and officers at all levels of rank and authority in the 

department, both current and former; representatives of police labor organizations and other 

office affinity groups; community representatives and persons who have been victims of 

police misconduct; and local government leadership, including members of the local 

executive branch, legislators, judges, and prosecutors.

The Role of Policing Experts in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations

The Division in almost every case engages expert consultants from the outset of an investigation to 

assist and support the Division’s experienced attorneys and investigators. Most often, the Division 

retains current and former police chiefs and deputy chiefs to serve in these roles. It looks for experts 

with past experience in departments similar to the one under investigation, or with backgrounds 

tailored to the issues raised in a particular investigation. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the 

Division retained two chiefs of small-to-mid-sized law enforcement agencies to ensure that its 

investigation would be informed by experts knowledgeable in the specific challenges faced by such 

agencies.

Policing experts assist the Division in assessing evidence gathered in the course of an investigation, 

such as arrest reports, use-of-force investigative files, and training curricula. They offer valuable 
11

context for the information the Division receives, and can help the Division to more quickly 

understand how a particular law enforcement agency’s systems work. Experts also help the Division 

link patterns of police misconduct with systemic deficiencies in the way the law enforcement agency 

operates. While the Division retains ultimate responsibility to draw its own conclusions and issue its 

own findings regarding the existence of a pattern or practice of police misconduct, the perspectives 

of policing experts add value and strength to those findings. 

The Role of Data Analysis in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations

The Division also reviews large volumes of records—in larger departments, often in the range of 

hundreds of thousands of pages—and collects and analyzes data. Use of force investigations in 

larger law enforcement agencies, for example, frequently involve a random sample of non-deadly 

force reports as well as a thorough review of investigative files for all deadly forces cases. In 

investigations focusing on stops, searches, and arrests, the Division may review a random sample of 

incident reports for the sufficiency of reasonable suspicion and probable cause. In reviewing these 

files, the Division looks for systemic constitutional violations, like patterns of excessive force or 

unjustified stops, as well as indicators of institutional deficiencies in policy, training, and 

accountability that may lead to such unlawful patterns. 

In addition, many of the Division’s investigations include complex statistical analyses developed in 

conjunction with statistical experts and criminologists. For example, in assessing an agency’s search 

practices for racial disparities, the Division will often analyze “hit rates,” or the rate at which 

searches of certain racial or ethnic groups yield a finding of contraband compared with searches of 

other groups. In Ferguson, Missouri, for example, the Division revealed that African-Americans 

were 26% less likely to be found with contraband after a search, even though that group was twice 

as likely as others to be searched during a traffic stop. The Division conducted similar analyses in 

Baltimore and other cases.

In analyzing “hit rates” and other data points, the Division often uses regression analysis to identify 

patterns of discriminatory policing and control for an array of factors that could provide alternative 

explanations for patterns of disproportionate use of force or stops of racial or ethnic minorities. 

Such factors may include demographics or benchmarks for criminal activity, such as dissimilar rates 

of involvement in crimes for different races or ethnicities based on available data in reported crime.

In analyzing search “hit rates,” for example, regression analysis controls for any differences in the 

stated reason for the search, and in assessing whether certain racial or ethnic groups receive more 

adverse treatment following a traffic stop, regression analysis controls for the reason the stop was 

initiated. In Maricopa County, Arizona, for example, the Division based its findings of 

discriminatory traffic enforcement in part on regression analyses of the law enforcement agency’s 

rate of traffic stops that controlled for the rate at which people of different ethnic backgrounds 

violate traffic laws.

The Role of the Law Enforcement Agency in Pattern-or-Practice 

Investigations

As part of its investigations, the Division emphasizes outreach to all levels of a law enforcement 

agency, from the chief executive through management and including rank-and-file officers. In the 

Division’s experience, engaged and committed police leadership makes investigations more effective 
12

and efficient. Police leaders set the tone for the law enforcement agency’s approach to an 

investigation, particularly in the early stages. The Division works hard to ensure that its process is 

transparent and does not unduly 

distract from the business of law 

enforcement. 

Rank-and-file officers also provide an

essential perspective on both 

problems within an agency and how 

to address them. Engagement with 

individual officers helps the Division 

recognize when police misconduct is 

the result of systemic, institutional 

failures that let down not only the community members who suffer violations of their rights but also 

the individual officers called upon to police without adequate training, support, or resources. In 

Baltimore, for example, meetings with individual officers helped the Division identify the ways in 

which lack of access to basic technology, such as in-car laptops and functioning computers at district 

headquarters, impaired their ability to police constitutionally and effectively.

The Division engages officers both directly—at roll-calls, during ride-alongs, and in face-to-face 

meetings—and through the police unions and affinity groups that serve as representatives of 

individual officers’ interests. The Division meets with representatives of police labor organizations

and affinity groups (such as groups representing black, Latino, female, or LGBTQ officers)

throughout an investigation to explain the purpose and general structure of the planned 

investigation, answer questions, and ensure that Division staff have a clear understanding of the 

often complex, varied, and nuanced concerns of a law enforcement agency’s sworn officers and 

other employees. United States Attorney’s Offices often play an important role in the outreach and 

relationship-building with local law enforcement.

Police unions and affinity groups provide a critical perspective in a pattern-or-practice investigation. 

As with individual officers, they often direct the Division to aspects of problems otherwise obscured 

to outside review. They provide important insight into the question of why observable patterns of 

police misconduct occur. They pinpoint the linkages between policing practices and systemic,

institutional failures such as actual or perceived unfairness within a law enforcement agency, or a 

lack of training, equipment, or other resources. In many cases, police unions have pointed out the 

link between officer perceptions of a lack of fairness and procedural justice within police 

accountability and disciplinary systems and the lack of procedural justice in police-community 

encounters. These examples illustrate concretely how incorporating the perspective of police officers 

has strengthened the Division’s reform work.

Officers and unions have the potential to play a critical role in building trust between law 

enforcement and the communities they serve. Unions have an important role in ensuring that law 

enforcement agencies are transparent, officers’ positive community interactions are valued and 

rewarded, and accountability systems are fair and consistent.

In Baltimore, police union representatives 

explained to the Division the stress placed on 

officers by a staffing scheme that resulted in officers 

working double 10-hour shifts with only a few hours 

break between, and the impact of that stress on 

officers’ capacity to police constitutionally and 

effectively. Indeed, many of the well-documented 

complaints from the Baltimore Fraternal Order of 

Police informed the Division’s Findings Letter in 

that case.
13

The Role of the Community in Pattern-or-Practice Investigations

Community input and engagement is a core part of every pattern-or-practice investigation. Hearing 

from the community, in all its 

diverse forms, is necessary for the 

Division to obtain complete and 

accurate information about patterns 

and practices of police misconduct. 

The Division often hears 

perspectives from community 

representatives about particular 

aspects of a policing problem that 

may not have otherwise been 

obvious from documents or other 

sources. For example, in 

Ferguson, Missouri, community input as well as frustration expressed by individual officers led the 

Division to understand the role that municipal court practices—including the imposition of court 

fines and fees and the use of police officers as municipal debt collection agents—played in the 

erosion of trust between communities and police, spurring the Division to investigate court practices 

as part of its pattern-or-practice investigation of the Ferguson Police Department.

The Division engages the community proactively from the very start of its pattern-or-practice 

investigations. As with local law enforcement, United States Attorney’s Offices often play an 

important role in such engagement. That engagement involves outreach to civic leaders, faith 

leaders, neighborhood groups, advocacy organizations, local business owners, and individuals. The 

Division often engages language interpreters to ensure outreach to communities and people with 

limited English proficiency and specifically seeks out input from groups that may experience police

misconduct in unique ways, such as young people, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, people 

of color, and immigrant communities. Different parts of the community often bring varied 

perspectives on and opinions about police reform, and the Division strives to ensure that all voices 

are heard. 

The Division almost always conducts a series of community or town hall meetings in different 

locations designed to create a forum for members of the community to speak to their experiences 

and insights. These face-to-face meetings also help build relationships between community members 

and the lawyers, investigators, and community outreach specialists conducting the investigation. The 

Division generally creates voice and email mailboxes to receive information from community 

members. It may, depending on community input, reach out through neighborhood listservs, 

community blogs, social media, and radio stations. The Division also canvasses places communities 

gather—places of worship, street corners, apartment complexes, parks, shopping malls, and local 

businesses. In some communities, frustration runs so high that its takes little more than an active 

presence to elicit robust community input. In other communities, distrust of government and 

disappointment in past reform efforts require proactive and patient effort.

The Division also gathers evidence from people who have experienced specific instances of police 

misconduct themselves or within their families. That evidence provides necessary context for the 

In Ferguson, Missouri, the Division reviewed an arrest report 

in which officers explained they had to use a canine to retrieve 

a 14 year-old boy hiding in a closet during what they described 

as a burglary in progress because the boy would not follow 

commands and show his hands. The Division’s investigators 

located and spoke to the boy, who explained that he had been 

skipping school and hanging out with friends in an abandoned 

building, that he never hid from police, and that he never heard 

any police warnings or had an opportunity to surrender before 

officers sent the dog to retrieve him. The dog bit the boy’s 

arm, causing puncture wounds.
14

Division’s review of incident reports and other internal documentation from law enforcement 

agencies about particular police-community interactions. 

Combined with the Division’s other investigatory tools, community input provides a broader 

perspective and often supports factual findings that form the basis for the Division’s investigatory 

conclusions. Without access to that critical information, the Division could not make 

comprehensive findings, and its remedies would be less effective. 

If the Division finds a pattern or practice, community engagement at the investigative stage also lays 

the foundation for community participation and engagement in the solutions the Division negotiates

to any findings of police misconduct. And, in a very real sense, community engagement at the 

investigative stage is the first step in reform, particularly in places where trust and communication 

between police and communities has broken down severely. The process of bringing people 

together and identifying the common threads of their experience in the context of a federal 

commitment to reform can begin to rebuild faith in government institutions. 

The Role of United States Attorney’s Offices in Pattern-or-Practice 

Investigations

The Civil Rights Division often works with the local United States Attorney’s Office in opening and

conducting pattern-or-practice investigations. The degree of participation of those offices varies 

from case to case, but in many cases United States Attorneys take on significant roles. United States 

Attorney’s Offices often provide important knowledge of the local context and history of policing,

assisting the Division’s staff as they get to know the unique people, places, and dynamics of each 

community. In certain cases, especially in areas where United States Attorney’s Offices have 

dedicated civil rights resources, those offices continue to play a critical role throughout the process 

of negotiating and implementing a reform agreement.

 

The Length of Pattern-or-Practice Investigations

The time an investigation takes varies greatly. It depends on factors like the size of the law 

enforcement agency, scope of the investigation, the complexity of the allegations, the quality of the 

jurisdiction’s recordkeeping, and the degree of cooperation the Division receives from the 

jurisdiction and other stakeholders. As a result, there is no typical length of time for a pattern-orpractice investigation. 

Many investigations take over a year. The Division spends substantial time in jurisdictions under 

investigation, meeting face-to-face with diverse stakeholders from the law enforcement agency, local 

government and the community. It gathers and reviews vast quantities of documents and data. 

Even when law enforcement agencies keep robust electronic records, reviewing anywhere from 

thousands to tens of thousands of incident reports to identify patterns or practices—review that is a 

core element of the Division’s policing investigations—takes a significant amount of time. And, 

unfortunately, the agencies the Division investigates—ones that are already exhibiting signs of 

systemic failures by meeting the threshold for a federal investigation—often do not keep wellmaintained, comprehensive electronic records. In many cases, staff within the Division must create 

electronic databases from paper files in order to conduct the type of pattern analysis required to 
15

make findings of systemic police misconduct, or must conduct complex calculations with the 

assistance of statistical experts to compensate for inadequacies in the agency’s data.

For communities and officers who experience daily the stresses and strains of dysfunction in a law 

enforcement agency, the length of the Division’s pattern-or-practice investigations can be an 

understandable source of stress. Ultimately, however, the thoroughness of the Division’s 

investigations underpins the credibility and effectiveness of its reform efforts. The Division may 

inform the law enforcement agency of specific problems that emerge clearly in the course of an 

investigation, as well as advice or suggestions for change, to provide the agency with the opportunity 

to address problems as quickly as possible. In some instances, the Division has drawn on other 

federal resources—such as the assistance of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

(COPS) or the Office of Justice Programs (OJP)—to provide technical assistance or other support 

to make those changes. In this way, an investigation can trigger reform even before the Division has 

made formal findings.

Concluding a Pattern-or-Practice Investigation

The Division aims to continuously 

engage with the law enforcement agency 

and community stakeholders during an 

investigation to ensure that the 

Division’s process and developing 

conclusions are transparent.

If the Division determines that there is 

insufficient evidence to support a finding 

of a pattern or practice of conduct in 

violation of the Constitution or federal 

law, the Division will notify the 

jurisdiction of that finding and close the 

investigation. Of 69 total investigations 

since Section 14141’s enactment, the 

Division has closed 26 investigations 

without making a formal finding of a 

pattern or practice. Since 2008, the 

Division has concluded six investigations 

of law enforcement agencies without 

finding a pattern or practice of police 

misconduct.

If, on the other hand, the Division determines that there is reasonable cause to believe that there is a 

pattern or practice of conduct in violation of the Constitution or federal law, the Division will send a 

letter or report (sometimes referred to as a “Findings Letter” or “Findings Report”) notifying the 

jurisdiction of the Division’s determination and setting forth the specific conclusions underlying the 

Division’s determination. The announcement of findings is typically accompanied by a day of 

meetings with police leadership and command staff, police unions, and community stakeholders to 
16

present and explain the findings and discuss next steps. The Division’s findings are public 

documents and are posted on the Division’s website.

A Findings Letter or Report represents the culmination of the evidence the Division gathered in the 

course of its investigation. It lays out the basis for the Division’s findings, linking those findings to 

specific problems within a law enforcement agency or between that agency and other parts of local 

government. The document also sets forth the steps the Division took to complete its investigation, 

so that the community and the law enforcement agency understand the sources and evidence on 

which the Division based its conclusions. It is both a diagnosis of a law enforcement agency’s 

problems and the foundation for a plan to treat the root causes of those problems. Since the 

Division began releasing formal, public findings, they have become an important step in the process 

of reform, documenting and validating the concerns that led to the Division’s investigation and 

framing expectations for the reforms to come.
17

V. NEGOTIATING REFORM AGREEMENTS

A Findings Letter shifts the focus of a pattern-or-practice case from identifying problems to creating 

solutions. The process of designing

comprehensive, durable and successful 

reforms to resolve the sort of widespread 

and deeply rooted patterns of police 

misconduct that the Division’s pattern-orpractice cases address takes time. As in the 

investigatory stage, the Division 

systematically seeks input from all 

stakeholders to inform its negotiations with 

the law enforcement agency and local 

government. 

In the course of an investigation, the 

Division continuously engages in open 

communication with both the law 

enforcement agency and the community. As 

a result of that communication, at the 

conclusion of an investigation the Division 

sometimes issues a joint statement with a 

jurisdiction memorializing the commitment 

to necessary reforms. These statements—

often called “Statements of Intent” or 

“Agreements in Principle”—set a general 

framework for negotiations over a reform agreement and signal the parties’ intent to avoid litigation 

and come to an agreement to address the Division’s findings.

Before negotiations over a reform agreement begin in earnest, however, the Division seeks

community input regarding remedies to the issues identified in the Findings Letter. The Division 

holds community meetings and draws on relationships built during the investigation stage to involve 

the community in building solutions. Often the Division will present specific briefings on its 

findings to community representatives and hold meetings focused on particular aspects of those 

findings designed to drill down on specific remedies. The Division always encourages community 

representatives to present specific proposals for reform, in writing or at a community meeting, and 

works to incorporate those proposals into its reform agreements. 

Community input has informed the provisions of the Division’s reform agreements. In Cleveland, 

community input played a key role in shaping solutions to that city’s broken system of community 

oversight, helping the Division and the Cleveland Division of Police to understand the value of 

reforming rather than replacing that system because of the community’s significant investment in it. 

In recent years, the Division has incorporated community feedback into the mechanism of 

community engagement built into many other of its reform agreements—for example, by mandating 

that community meetings be held in places accessible to public transportation.

Unions and individual officer input often focuses 

on resource issues as well. In Cleveland, officers 

felt strongly that their department did not have 

enough supervisors but lacked data needed to 

establish appropriate staffing levels, so the 

Division’s reform agreement contains a 

requirement that the Cleveland Division of Police 

conduct a staffing study to determine the scope of 

the problem and address it. Officers also reported 

that most patrol cars did not have working 

computers, so that when officers conducted vehicle 

stops they often lacked basic information about the 

vehicle and its driver, including whether the vehicle 

was stolen or involved in a crime, or whether the 

registered owner was wanted on outstanding 

warrants. This placed officers at unnecessary risk 

and created the possibility that traffic stops could 

escalate unnecessarily. The Division’s reform 

agreement requires the City of Cleveland to provide 

for necessary equipment including patrol cars with 

reliable, functioning computers.
18

The Division also seeks the input of rank-and-file officers and police unions and affinity groups. 

Individual officers at all ranks have interests in fair process, and safe working conditions that must 

be taken into account as Division shifts its focus from problems to solutions. As with community 

stakeholders, the Division generally briefs police unions and affinity groups on its findings and seeks 

out specific proposals for reform. 

Input from officers and their representatives have informed aspects of the Division’s specific 

consent decrees. For example, several of the Division’s reform agreements—including in Ferguson, 

Albuquerque, Cleveland, Puerto Rico, Seattle, and New Orleans—contain provisions that 

directly address issues of officer wellness that were raised by officers and their families in the 

Division’s discussions during the negotiation process. In New Orleans, the Division learned from 

officers and unions the degree to which the lack of counseling and support services for officers 

called upon to police in extraordinary circumstances of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath took an 

enormous toll on officer morale and mental health. 

Beyond the specific impacts engaging community leaders, line officers and police unions have on the 

content of the Division’s reform agreements, engagement with all stakeholders is itself the 

cornerstone of the Division’s reform process. All stakeholders must feel invested in the remedies 

presented in the Division’s reform agreements. Communities must be invested for the long-term 

sustainability of reform. Individual officers who, day-to-day, will carry out the reforms must be 

invested for the long-term durability of reform. And police and local leadership must be invested to 

provide the leadership and support a long-term commitment reform requires. 

Thus, although the Division negotiates resolutions to its pattern-or-practice cases with 

representatives of the agency or government under investigation, it does so equipped with the 

information gathered from community representatives, rank-and-file officers, police union 

leadership, and other stakeholders, and with a commitment to ensuring that the input of those 

stakeholders remains a part of the process. Direct negotiations over a reform agreement are bilateral 

and confidential, to best facilitate reaching an agreement.

As in the investigatory stage, the Division approaches discussions about remedies in a cooperative 

manner. The Division’s goal in every case is to avoid contentious litigation and begin the process of 

reform as quickly as possible. Although the process involves lawyers and takes place against a 

backdrop of potential legal remedies, the Division’s discussions do not resemble the sort of zerosum, adversarial negotiations commonly associated with most civil litigation. The Division does not 

stake out aggressive positions merely for the purposes of creating negotiating leverage, and rarely 

finds that local jurisdictions withhold agreement on common-sense measures merely for that 

purpose, either. To the contrary, the Division’s experience, in general, has been that law 

enforcement agencies receiving a Findings Letter understand the value of reform and share the 

Division’s interest in addressing the issues identified in the course of the pattern-or-practice 

investigation.

As a result, of the many dozens of cases in which the Division has found a pattern or practice of 

police misconduct, all but six have resulted in a reform agreement without the need for civil 

litigation. In Colorado City, Arizona, the Division obtained a verdict at trial. In Alamance 

County, North Carolina, the Division did not prevail at trial, but appealed and entered into a 

settlement reform agreement while the appeal was pending. In Maricopa County, Arizona, 

litigation was required to enforce a court order requiring reforms, resulting in an order of contempt. 
19

In Meridian, Mississippi, the Division entered into a consent decree shortly after filing suit, after 

the City initially declined to negotiate. Likewise, in Columbus, Ohio, the Division filed litigation 

but later reached an agreement resolving its claims. And in Ferguson, Missouri, the City initially 

rejected a proposed consent decree resolving the Division’s findings but later accepted it shortly 

after the United States filed suit in federal court. In a seventh case, in New Orleans, the Division 

was forced to litigate to compel the City of New Orleans’ compliance with a consent decree to 

which it had previously agreed. Thus, although it is rare and not the preferred outcome, the 

Division is fully prepared to litigate pattern-or-practice cases when jurisdictions refuse to agree upon 

necessary reforms. 
20

VI. THE CURRENT REFORM MODEL AND ITS RATIONALE

Pattern-or-practice cases are designed to achieve organizational change within police departments 

where institutional failures have caused systemic police misconduct. As a result, the remedies 

associated with these cases are geared toward changing polices, practices, and culture across a law 

enforcement agency. Moreover, the Division is keenly aware, as many prominent policing scholars 

have noted, that its consent decrees can inform reform measures in police departments across the 

country.8

As a result, the Division regularly reflects on and applies the research and expertise of policing 

experts to inform its approach to police reform. The Division pays close attention to consensus 

opinions in the law enforcement profession regarding best practices for preventing police 

misconduct. The Division is actively engaged with national police experts and, as previously noted, 

weighs and, where appropriate, incorporates the feedback of communities, government leaders, 

rank-and-file officers, and police leadership in every jurisdiction it enters.

It is important to emphasize that the model of reform reflected in the Division’s consent decrees has 

changed over time as the Division has learned from its own experiences enforcing Section 14141, 

responded to feedback from law enforcement and community stakeholders, and incorporated 

developments in the social science of police reform. In 2010, the Department of Justice convened a 

roundtable of law enforcement officials, policing experts, advocates, and other stakeholders to

discuss the Division’s pattern-or-practice work. Although the participants acknowledged the positive 

impact of the Division’s consent decrees, the meeting also produced a number of important 

suggestions that are reflected in the Division’s current generation of reform agreements.9 

Although the Division’s reform agreements are informed by a consistent approach to police reform, 

the provisions of any given agreement will vary depending on the Division’s findings, the structure 

and operations of the particular agency, and other local dynamics. There is no “cookie cutter” 

Department of Justice police reform agreement. Every reform agreement contains unique provisions 

specifically tailored to that jurisdiction. Nonetheless, the structure and substance of the Division’s 

current generation of reform agreements generally reflect similar basic themes.

A) The Structure of the Division’s Police Reform Agreements

The Division’s current reform agreements commonly contain the following elements: 

Court-Enforceable Consent Decrees

Where the Division has found evidence of a pattern or practice of police misconduct, resolution 

generally will take the form of an order enforced by a federal court. These orders are usually called 

“consent decrees,” reflecting that the terms of the order were negotiated and agreed to by the 

United States and the law enforcement agency that was investigated. Although the Division has 

pursued several different approaches to the structure of its settlement agreements in the two decades 

since Section 14141 enforcement began, its experience demonstrates that court-enforceable consent 

decrees are most effective in ensuring accountability, transparency in implementation, and flexibility 

for accomplishing complex institutional reforms. Federal court oversight is often critical to address 
21

broad and deeply entrenched problems and to ensure the credibility of the reform agreement’s 

mandates. 

The Division may, in relatively rare cases, resolve a pattern-or-practice finding by a “memorandum 

of agreement” enforceable in federal court as a contract between the United States and the local 

jurisdiction, rather than as a consent decree actively overseen by a federal court. Such an outcome 

generally only occurs when the issues to be addressed are relatively narrow and there is significant 

evidence that the jurisdiction has the capacity to accomplish and sustain reform in a timely manner 

without ongoing court oversight. The Division has also on occasion entered into memoranda of 

agreement on specific issues when its findings do not rise to the level of a pattern or practice in 

violation of federal law, but there are problems that the federal government and local jurisdiction 

can work together to resolve. 

An Independent Monitoring Team

The appointment of an independent monitor—or, more accurately, an independent monitoring 

team—is a nearly universal feature of the Division’s reform agreements. Of 18 currently open 

reform agreements, all but four are overseen by independent monitoring teams. 

Sometimes the named monitor is a person, who works with a team; other times it may be an 

organization, firm, or corporate entity. Monitoring teams generally include diverse perspectives, 

including team members with real-world policing experience reflecting both a management and 

rank-and-file perspective. For example, in New Orleans and Cleveland, the monitoring teams 

comprise a diverse group of former police executives and officers, academics, attorneys, and 

community organizers. The Cleveland monitoring team includes a former legal counsel to police 

unions and a consultant with technical expertise in law enforcement information technology, 

appropriate to that agreement’s focus on that department’s data and technological capacity. The 

independent monitoring team is generally the agent of the court overseeing the reform agreement 

and is independent from the Department of Justice and the local jurisdiction, although, as discussed 

further below, most monitoring teams are jointly agreed upon by the Division and the local 

jurisdiction before being appointed by the court.

The core of the monitoring team’s role is to:

 Assess and report on the law enforcement agency’s progress in implementing the reform 

agreement; 

 Assist the agency in developing a plan to implement reforms and address any barriers to

implementation, including by providing technical assistance; 

 Evaluate whether the reforms mandated by the agreement are working and, if not, to 

recommend changes; 

 Constructively engage communities and stakeholders in the reform process; and 

 Assist the local jurisdiction and the United States in resolving any differences that might 

arise over the particulars of implementing the reform agreement. 

Each of these aspects of the monitoring team’s role is critical to the overall success of the Division’s 

reform agreements. Monitors act as an intermediary between the Division, the local jurisdiction, and 

the court and assist in resolving disputes. In this role, the independence of the monitoring team is 
22

key. The monitoring team’s credibility allows it to play the role of neutral broker and mediator, to 

ensure that disagreements over the meaning of a provision or the significance of a new initiative do 

not become distractions from the overall goal of achieving effective, constitutional policing. The 

independence of the monitoring team also bolsters the credibility, in the eyes of the public, of the 

final court determination that the reform agreement has been implemented.

At the most basic level, the monitoring team’s job is to monitor and report on progress under the 

agreement. To that end, the Division’s reform agreements ensure that the monitoring team has 

necessary access to the agency’s documents and data, as well as the ability to conduct on-site 

inspections and site visits without prior notice. Monitoring teams are empowered to conduct audits 

and reviews on all the topics covered by a reform agreement. And they are required to issue public 

reports detailing the status of implementing the reform agreement, usually on a quarterly or biannual basis. In the Division’s current generation of reform agreements, the monitor’s assessment of 

implementation is an objective task that turns on the achievement of specific, defined benchmarks 

and outcome measures. 

The monitoring team also assists the law enforcement agency in developing a framework for 

implementing the agreement, ensuring that deadlines are met and reforms are accomplished. The 

monitoring team advises and supports the law enforcement agency to define terms, refine outcome

measures, develop specific plans for implementation, and address any barriers to compliance. 

Monitors also support law enforcement agencies by, where appropriate, lending independent

credibility to departments’ and advocates’ efforts to obtain the community and political support

necessary to implement reforms.

As the Division’s reform agreements have come to emphasize substantive outcomes over procedural 

changes—a development discussed in greater detail below—the monitor has also come to play a 

critical role in assessing whether the reforms mandated by the agreement are accomplishing their 

underlying goals. The Division’s reform agreements now universally include a “look back” provision 

that mandates a comprehensive re-evaluation of the agreement to ensure that it is well-designed to 

achieve meaningful police reform, usually between one and three years after the agreement begins. 

Even outside of this institutionalized process, reform agreements generally require the monitor to 

constantly engage in an assessment of the effectiveness of particular provisions of the Division’s 

reform agreements and to propose new approaches to improve outcomes. 

EPIC Program in New Orleans

In New Orleans, the monitoring team worked with NOPD to develop an innovative peer 

intervention program called “Ethical Policing is Courageous” (“EPIC”) to give officers skills, 

training, and support to successfully intervene when another officer is about to commit 

misconduct. The program promises to improve officer and community safety, help rebuild policecommunity relations, and serve as a model nationwide. The Division’s reform agreement addressed 

the need for training and support to reduce patterns of police misconduct, but this peer 

intervention program was the result of collaboration between the monitoring team and NOPD in 

implementing the provisions of the reform agreement.
23

Monitoring teams also carry forth the community and stakeholder engagement necessary to build 

public confidence in the implementation of consent decrees. In the current generation of reform 

agreements, monitor reports are required to be public documents, which the Division generally 

posts to its website, and many agreements contain further provisions requiring the release of critical 

data—such as data about stops, searches and arrests or rates of use of force—that allow 

communities to participate in assessing the law enforcement agency’s progress toward reform. Many 

reform agreements—including those in Ferguson, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Puerto Rico, New 

Orleans, and Seattle—require that the monitor hold regular public meetings to directly engage 

communities in the monitoring process. The Division’s most recent consent decree, in Newark, 

additionally requires the monitor to hold regular meetings with representatives of rank-and-file 

officers, further ensuring that the monitor remains responsive to a broad range of critical 

stakeholders in reform.

Selection of a monitor generally begins as a joint process between the Division and the local 

jurisdiction. Usually following a public solicitation process, the parties screen and interview 

candidates and endeavor to make a joint recommendation for approval by the court. The Division 

has found that respecting the input of the local jurisdiction in selecting a monitor bolsters the

monitor’s credibility and increases stakeholder confidence in the monitor.10 Beginning with the 

Pittsburgh case in 1997, the Division has largely succeeded in coming to agreement with local 

jurisdictions and the court on the identity of the monitor. When the Division is unable to come to 

agreement, however, the parties typically will ask the court overseeing the consent decree to resolve 

the dispute and select the monitor, thus ensuring that the monitor is beholden only to the court.

The local jurisdiction generally bears the costs of supporting the monitoring team, but the Division 

takes steps to ensure that the cost is reasonable and sustainable. In some cases—for example, in 

Cleveland, Ohio and Meridian, Mississippi—the monitoring team itself absorbs some of the 

administrative costs and contributes significant amounts of time free of charge. The Division has 

made cost estimates a critical part of its screening process for selecting monitor candidates. The 

current generation of reform agreements emphasizes objective measures and a gradual narrowing of 

the scope of the agreement to ensure that the monitoring team remains focused and works 

efficiently. Where cost issues have arisen as a legitimate barrier to necessary reform, the Division has 

worked with the monitoring team, the local jurisdiction, and the court to address those concerns. 

The monitor has a difficult role—one of the most challenging roles in the complex undertaking of 

systemic police reform. The job of the monitor involves overseeing reform in agencies where the 

Division has found systemic failure and widespread police misconduct, generally the result of deeply 

entrenched cultural, political, and economic dysfunction. The monitor must earn the respect and 

trust of the law enforcement agency, the community, the Department of Justice, and the court. And 

the monitor must maintain that respect and trust as it tackles the root causes of systemic police 

misconduct. 

Outcome Measures to Assess Progress

With the first generation of police reform agreements, the Division assessed progress by a series of 

process measures: Did the law enforcement agency complete certain training requirements? Has it 

hired additional staff? Has it adopted new written policies? Although these measures accurately 

assessed the agency’s compliance with the terms of the reform agreement, they could not answer a 
24

more fundamental question: was the agency reducing or eliminating the pattern or practice of police 

misconduct that necessitated that reform agreement in the first place?

In more recent years, the Division has built outcome measures into its police reform agreements in 

order to measure not only whether the processes required by the Division’s reform agreements are 

actually implemented but also whether those processes lead to improvements in the quality of 

policing and reductions in patterns of misconduct. This innovation resulted from extensive 

consultation with policing experts, law enforcement leaders, and academics, as well as the 

application of the Division’s internal expertise, to identify the best and most viable ways to measure 

progress on police reform. 

Outcome measures vary from case to case, as they are tailored to the particular outcomes the reform 

agreement is trying to reach in that place. But certain outcome measures can be found in almost 

every reform agreement. For example, the Division routinely incorporates a community survey into 

its reform agreements to establish a baseline for and, over the course of reform, to measure 

improvements in community trust and how changes in police culture are reflected in the responses 

of affected communities. In Seattle, the community survey has allowed the Division to track steady 

improvements in community perceptions of the Seattle Police Department over the course of the 

reform agreement, including among African-American and Latino populations, as well as 

improvement in the ratings community members give based on police encounters with themselves, 

friends, family members, and neighbors, against a backdrop of overall reduction in crime.

The Division’s reform agreements also may track qualitative data to allow the independent monitor 

to assess how often stops, searches, and arrests are supported by the required level of reasonable 

suspicion or probable cause.

Stop, Search and Arrest Outcome Measures

In agreements addressing stops, searches, and arrests, the Division typically tracks data such as:

 The rate of stops, searches and arrests, including by location and by the subject’s race, 

ethnicity, gender, and age;

 “Hit rates” – i.e., how often stops and searches lead to citations, arrests, or the discovery of 

contraband; 

 How often stops, searches, and arrests are accompanied by sufficient documentation of 

suspicion;

 The number of civilian complaints regarding stops, searches, and arrests and how often 

those complaints are sustained or substantiated; 

 How often prosecutors decline to prosecute charges following arrests. 

For such data, the Division’s reform agreements require that the monitor develop a methodology 

for tracking such data and analyzing it in a manner that controls for factors that could explain or 

justify certain rates of stops, searches or arrests.
25

The Division’s reform agreements also may track qualitative data sufficient for the independent 

monitor to assess the reasonableness of uses of force or the quality of a department’s investigation 

and review of instances of force.

These are only some examples of the outcome measures incorporated into the Division’s reform 

agreements. In all cases, data related to the outcome measures are gathered and reviewed by the 

independent monitoring team, which uses the data to assess the law enforcement agency’s 

implementation of the reform agreement. The monitoring team also makes its analysis of outcome 

measure data available to the public to ensure transparency and accountability in the monitoring 

process. 

Outcome measures not only vary across reform agreements, they often change over the course of a 

particular agreement. Many of the Division’s reform agreements call for the independent monitor to 

review and recommend changes to the outcome measures set forth in the agreement in a three or 

six-month window following enactment of the agreement. The purpose of this provision is ensure 

that the outcome measures respond to the dynamic nature of policing and continue to properly 

assess whether the underlying goal of police reform—to restore community trust and promote 

effective, constitutional policing—is being accomplished.

B) The Substance of the Division’s Police Reform Agreements

In addition to the structural components described above, the Division’s reform agreements often 

reflect a common set of substantive reforms – namely, advancing a community and problemoriented policing strategy, promoting bias-free policing, addressing unlawful use of force, 

community engagement, departmental policy changes and re-training, reforming accountability 

systems, promoting officer wellness and support, and addressing the link between policing and other 

criminal justice and social systems. 

Use of Force Outcome Measures

In agreements addressing use of force, the Division typically tracks data such as:

 The rate of use of force—overall, by type of encounter (i.e., street stop, traffic 

stop, arrest, call for service); by type of force; by location; and by subject’s race, 

ethnicity, gender, and age; 

 The number of civilian complaints regarding use of force and how often those 

complaints are sustained or substantiated; 

 How often force reviews reveal that a use of force violated agency policy or the 

law; 

 The number of officers who have had more than one instance of force found to 

violate agency policy or the law; 

 How often officers or members of the public are injured during police encounters. 

As with stop, search, and arrest data, the Division’s reform agreements require that the 

monitor develop a methodology ensuring that analysis of such data controls for factors 

that could explain or justify certain rates of force.
26

Whether reforms falling into these categories appear in any given reform agreement depends on 

whether they address the specific findings made in the course of a pattern-or-practice investigation, 

but these are common threads among the Division’s agreements.

Advancing a Community and Problem-Oriented Policing Strategy

The Division’s reform agreements generally aim to shift law enforcement agencies toward a model 

of community and problem-oriented policing. The heart of this approach is a focus on strong

relationships and collaboration between police and the communities they serve; the application of 

modern management practices and organizational structures to create a culture of community 

partnership; transparency and accountability to communities and democratic government; and 

decentralized, proactive, community-based solutions to community public safety priorities.

11

In the current generation of the Division’s reform agreements, adoption of a community and 

problem-oriented policing strategy, as well as the staffing structure necessary to support such a 

strategy, is generally a central part of the agreement. For example, in Newark, New Jersey and 

Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Division’s reform agreement require the integration of community 

and problem-oriented policing concepts into management structures, resource deployments, 

policies, and training systems. 

The Division’s promotion of community and problem-oriented policing strategies helps make 

policing safer and more effective. Officers can only police safely and effectively if they maintain the 

trust and cooperation of the communities they serve.

Promoting Bias-Free Policing

Many of the Division’s reform agreements address patterns or practices of discriminatory policing. 

Combating discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity has been a long-standing priority. And

issues relating to language access and gender bias—particularly in the handling of sexual assault and 

domestic violence cases and the treatment of LGBTQ people—have also emerged as key areas of 

reform. The Division’s agreements have addressed these issues in many ways, including the 

following:

 Policies Prohibiting Bias-Based Policing. Several of the Division’s reform agreements have focused 

on the need for policies designed to prohibit and prevent bias-based policing. In many 

instances, law enforcement agencies where the Division has found indications of 

discriminatory policing have lacked the most basic policies and training designed to prevent 

the unlawful reliance on race or ethnicity in using force, making stops, searches or arrests, or 

other police activity. For example, in Puerto Rico and Steubenville, Ohio, the Division’s 

reform agreement requires the law enforcement agency to develop a comprehensive set of 

policies, procedures, and training initiatives to ensure that policing is not tainted by bias 

based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation or any other 

impermissible factor. In Suffolk County, New York, the Division’s reform agreement 

contains provisions designed to ensure that the Suffolk County Police Department 

adequately responds to crimes against Latinos, including hate crimes, to address findings that 

SCPD neglected reports of attacks and other incidents against Latinos.
27

 Ensuring Equitable Policing. In other departments, discrimination manifests as too little 

policing rather than too much – systemic failure to respond to calls for service in certain 

neighborhoods, or lack of attention to certain crimes or crime victims. In those places, the 

Division’s reform agreements have focused on tracking data about police activity, re-training 

and adjusting priorities to ensure that policing decisions are not based on racial, ethnic, or 

gender-based bias. 

 Disparate Impact Analysis. Many of the Division’s reform agreements require law enforcement 

agencies to analyze data about police activity to determine whether such activity is having a 

disparate impact on communities of color or other groups. Where such analysis shows a 

disparate impact, the agency is required to investigate whether the disparity can be explained 

by legitimate factors or reflects bias, and to take steps to ensure that such patterns do not 

erode relationships between police and communities. For example, in New Orleans, the 

Division’s reform agreement requires the New Orleans Police Department to assess all its 

programs and activities to ensure that none discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, 

religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other impermissible 

basis.

 Implicit Bias Training. Training on implicit bias has been a core feature of the Division’s 

reform agreements since 2012. In places such as Newark, New Jersey; Ferguson, Missouri 

Suffolk County, New York, and Los Angeles County, California, the Division’s reform 

agreements provide for comprehensive analyses designed to track and address patterns of 

policing that have a disparate impact on communities of color or people with limited English 

proficiency. In other places, the Division’s reform agreements promote targeted policy 

changes and training programs to improve responses to allegations of sexual assault and 

domestic violence, or to address the treatment of particularly vulnerable populations such as 

immigrant communities, people with limited English proficiency, or LGBTQ people. 

Use of Force Principles

Addressing systemic excessive force is one of the core functions of the Division’s pattern-orpractice cases. Many of the Division’s agreements involve comprehensive reform to a law 

enforcement agency’s policies and training about the use of force, while other provisions may focus 

on more specific problems such as the use of force against people with disabilities or in mental 

health crisis, the misuse of particular weapons, or the failure to properly document or review uses of 

force.

Although the remedies for a pattern or practice of unconstitutional use of force varies from place to 

place depending on the scope and nature of the problem, several core principles emerge from the 

Division’s reform agreements addressing force issues—principles that are reflected in best practices 

issued by national policing experts.

12 Among those core principles are the following:

 Proportionality and De-Escalation: The Division’s reform agreements universally include policies 

and training that instruct officers to use only force that is proportional to the threat faced, 

and to rely upon de-escalation tactics. Some of the Division’s agreements—such as the 

agreement in Ferguson, Missouri—emphasize officers’ responsibility to intervene to deescalate encounters or prevent unreasonable uses of force by other officers.
28

 Prohibiting the Use of Retaliatory Force: The Division’s reform agreements often explicitly 

prohibit the use of retaliatory force, such as force used after a threat has diminished, or to 

punish individuals for fleeing, resisting arrest, or disrespecting an officer.

 Limits on Choke or Neck Holds, and Head Strikes: The Division’s reform agreements frequently 

contain policies prohibiting the use of neck holds, also known as chokeholds, or head strikes 

with hard objects, except in situations where lethal force is authorized.

 Limits on Use of Force on Handcuffed or Restrained People: The Division’s reform agreements 

generally promote policies that prohibit the use of force against persons in handcuffs, except 

in limited circumstances such as to prevent imminent bodily harm to an officer or another 

person.

 Clear Policies on Specific Weapons, Including Firearms and Less-Lethal Weapons: Especially in places 

where the Division has found a pattern or practice of unlawful lethal force or unreasonable 

use of a particular type of force, the Division’s reform agreements emphasize the importance 

of clear policies governing specific weapons, often incorporating best practices from police 

experts on the use of a particular weapon. The Division’s agreements frequently address 

policies and training governing firearms, electronic control weapons (“ECWs,” also known 

as Tasers), oleoresin capsicum spray (“OC spray,” also known as pepper spray), canines, and 

other instruments of force.

 Systems for Handling Encounters with People with Disabilities or in Mental Health Crisis: Increasingly, 

the Division’s reform agreements have addressed the need for special steps to address force 

resulting from officers’ encounters with people with disabilities in crisis. Unofficial data 

representing one the best current sources on police shootings suggests that, in 2015, at least 

one in four people shot and killed by police showed signs of mental illness.13 The Division’s 

reform agreements often promote the creation of Crisis Intervention teams or units, 

specialized training for officers on crisis-intervention tactics, and community health 

collaborations designed to increase the diversion of people with disabilities out of the 

criminal justice system and into the health system.

 Providing Necessary Medical Assistance. The Division’s reform agreements often emphasize the 

need to train officers to administer necessary medical assistance following uses of force that 

cause injuries. 

 Documenting and Reviewing Uses of Force: From the earliest reform agreements, the Division has 

always promoted comprehensive documentation, data collection, investigation, and review 

of all uses of force to ensure that the agency’s practices are not unreasonable or 

discriminatory. Every reform agreement addressing use of force issues incorporates 

provisions requiring clear, specific, and complete reporting and requiring supervisory review 

of all significant uses of force. Often, this includes specialized review of incidents involving 

death or serious injury. In addition, the Division’s reform agreements emphasize 

comprehensive data collection and systemic review of an agency’s use of force data to 

identify patterns and trends in the unnecessary use of force.
29

Community Engagement

As has been discussed throughout this document, community engagement is an essential component 

of the Division’s police reform strategy. At the remedies stage, the focus shifts from the Division’s 

engagement with the community to the law enforcement agency’s engagement with the community, as 

well as the broader question of the agency’s accountability to democratic processes and the public. 

Community engagement, oversight, and democratic accountability go hand-in-hand in the Division’s 

current generation of reform agreements. All of the Division’s current generation of consent decrees 

require some form of community outreach and engagement, including mechanisms to 

institutionalize strong relationships between the law enforcement agency and the community it 

serves, ensure the community has a role in setting priorities for a police department, and make police 

practices and data transparent to the public.

 Community Outreach Plans. Nearly all of the Division’s current generation of reform 

agreements require law enforcement agencies to develop a plan for institutionalizing 

community engagement, whether by appointing community liaison officers, fostering policecommunity partnerships, holding regular community meetings, or tracking and rewarding 

positive interactions between officers and community groups. For example, in East Haven, 

Connecticut, the Division’s reform agreement requires the appointment of a Community 

Liaison Officer fluent in English and Spanish whose responsibilities include monthly 

community meetings, review of civilian complaints to identity trends in community 

concerns, and regular briefings on community engagement with police leadership.

 Community Committees or Councils. The Division’s current model emphasizes the creation of or 

investment in standing committees or councils of community members with authority to 

advise the law enforcement agency about community concerns and proposed reforms. For 

example, in Seattle, Washington, the Division’s reform agreement established a Community 

Police Commission with diverse membership and broad authority to review and provide 

input on police reform and to receive and incorporate community feedback.

 Civilian Complaint Review Boards. Civilian review boards, which are a focus of the discussion of 

accountability mechanisms in the section that follows, provide another mechanism for 

community members to engage with police practices.

 Community-Based Mediation Programs. Some agreements—notably those in Ferguson, Missouri 

and New Orleans—provide for neighborhood-based mediation programs to promote the 

diversion of community disputes out of the criminal justice system and into communitybased, community-run institutions.

 Data Collection and Transparency. Robust collection of data about police activity, as well as 

ensuring transparency and accessibility of that data—also discussed as part of accountability 

measures below—are important to ensure that communities have the tools to provide 

informed input.

 The Role of the Independent Monitoring Team. As previously discussed, laying the foundation for 

strong police-community relationships is one of the most critical roles of the independent 

monitoring team. The Division’s agreements generally institutionalize face-to-face meetings 
30

between the monitoring team and the public, to ensure that communities are engaged in the 

process of reform. 

The Division also maintains ongoing community engagement during the lifetime of a reform 

agreement, drawing upon the relationships established from the earliest days of an investigation. But 

the goal of the Division’s reform agreements is to ensure that once the Division and the 

independent monitor leave the jurisdiction, vibrant police-community relationships will remain as 

the foundation of sustainable constitutional policing.

Departmental Policy Changes and Re-training

Reform of written policies and improved or increased training have always been a central aspect of 

the Division’s police reform agreements. Policies incorporating each requirement of the reform 

agreement are necessary to ensure that reforms become part of the fabric of the law enforcement 

agency, rather than viewed as changes specific to the particular police chief in place when the reform 

agreement was implemented. Some consent decrees address law enforcement agencies’ lack of 

systems for updating policies to reflect developments in the law and best practices. Others address a

lack of any system for developing and distributing policies and policy updates. Some address specific 

policies, such as how police handle bystanders who record police activity, mass public protests and 

demonstrations, or encounters with persons with disabilities in crisis; or how police use particular 

forms of force, such as canines, ECWs/Tasers, OC/pepper spray, or vehicle pursuits.

Policy changes required by the Division’s reform agreements almost always extend beyond reform 

of the substantive rules of policing—e.g., when may an officer stop, search, arrest, or use force on a 

person—to include the procedural rules of policing—e.g., what documentation, supervisory review, 

or other institutional response is required when an officer engages in a stop, search, arrest, or use of 

force.

As many policing experts have noted for decades, policy changes alone are rarely adequate to 

accomplish durable police reform. The Division’s reform agreements nearly always link policies to 

action through training requirements necessary to overcome the institutional and cultural barriers to 

effective and constitutional policing that triggered the Division’s investigation in the first instance. In 

many cases, the Division’s reform agreements address not only specific training programs designed 

to accomplish a particular change in practice but also establish a foundational training program 

where none previously existed, whether an academy program for new recruits or in-service training 

programs necessary to ensure that officers are kept abreast of development in the law and best 

practices. 

 

Reforming Accountability Systems

Inadequate systems for holding law enforcement agencies accountable to communities and 

individual officers accountable for misconduct are at the heart of nearly every finding of a pattern or 

practice the Division has ever issued. As a result, improving accountability systems occupies a 

prominent place in the Division’s reform agreements. 

 Data tracking and Transparency. The Division’s reform agreements almost always address a law 

enforcement agency’s internal systems for recording, tracking, and reviewing police 
31

actions—whether uses of force; stops, searches and arrests; the issuing of warrants; 

resolution of misconduct complaints; or any other significant police activity. As noted above, 

such data is generally required to be tracked and analyzed by the independent monitor for 

purposes of assessing the agency’s compliance with a federal reform agreement. But the 

Division’s reform agreements also seek to institutionalize that kind of review within the 

agency so that it can continue after a reform agreement terminates. 

 The Division’s reform efforts also emphasize making data transparency part of the culture of 

the law enforcement agency. Reform agreements of the current era universally require law 

enforcement agencies make data available to the public in a responsible and accessible 

format. Public monitoring reports also provide a window into a law enforcement agency’s 

policies and practices, as well as an important source of information about progress toward 

reform. Participants in the Department’s 2010 convening emphasized the importance of 

ensuring that the consent decree implementation process was transparent and that data 

should be made available to the public throughout that process.14 That feedback is clearly 

reflected in recent reform agreement provisions requiring that not only monitoring reports 

but also critical data from outcome measures should be publicly available. 

 

 Early Intervention Systems. Early intervention systems (EIS)—also known as “early warning 

systems”—are a particular aspect of internal review that have been a consistent feature of 

the Division’s policing reform agreements since the beginning of the Division’s Section 

14141 enforcement. EIS refers to a system of electronically tracking individual officer 

performance for the purpose of identifying officers who appear to engage in an abnormal 

pattern of problematic behavior and intervening at an early stage to correct that behavior 

and prevent patterns of misconduct from emerging. Problematic behavior may include high 

rates of use of force, large numbers of citizen complaints, involvement in civil litigation 

alleging misconduct, and inordinate use of sick time leave, among many other criteria. EIS 

aims not to punish officers for misconduct but to allow for proactive management and 

administrative interventions before serious problems arise, such as training, counseling by 

supervisors, or referral to professional counselors. The Division’s reform agreements 

emphasize not only the creation of such systems, but also the requirement that police 

leadership and supervisors analyze the data gathered by these systems, address emerging 

patterns of police misconduct, and enhance individual officer accountability. Experts in 

policing have described EIS as one of the most important management tools for monitoring 

officer performance and as “central to the goal of changing the organizational culture of a 

police department to effect long-term, sustainable police reform.”15

 Video Technology. The Division’s reform agreements have also promoted the use of video 

technology to support internal supervision and increase police accountability. As far back as 

1999, the Division incorporated the use of in-car cameras into its reform agreements to 

provide for greater transparency and accountability around traffic stops and other police 

encounters that can be observed from a patrol car. Policing experts and empirical studies 

strongly support the positive effects of in-car cameras on accountability and officer safety.16

More recently, the Division has encouraged expanded access to body-worn cameras as part 

of broader approach to improving accountability and trust between police and the citizens 

they serve, as well as public safety. Although research into the effect of body-worn cameras 

is ongoing, evidence to date strongly suggests that body-worn cameras improve the quality 
32

of police interactions and reduce both the number of citizen complaints and instances of 

police use of force.17

 Supervisory Systems. The Division’s reform agreements also frequently address a law 

enforcement agency’s supervisory systems, including ensuring that an agency has sufficient 

numbers of supervisory officers, that those officers have adequate supervisory training, and 

that they have workloads that permit them sufficient time to be effective supervisors. 

 Misconduct Complaints. The Division’s reform agreements also generally address internal 

systems for responding to civilian complaints of police misconduct. Fair, transparent, and 

efficient investigation and resolution of civilian complaints is an important element of 

institutional accountability. Moreover, civilian complaints are a valuable source of 

information for police managers and supervisors responsible for identifying and intervening 

to prevent officer performance problems. Reforms have focused on facilitating the filing of 

complaints by civilians; ensuring that civilian complaints are recorded, tracked, and used as 

feedback by police leaders; guaranteeing that all complaints are fairly and thoroughly 

investigated; and ensuring the integrity of the review process. 

 Many of the Division’s reform agreements also create, expand, or reform independent 

civilian complaint review boards or other independent civilian review systems, such as an 

Inspector General. A frequent focus of the Division’s reforms to civilian oversight systems is 

to increase the community’s role in developing such systems and creating more 

opportunities for community feedback on their operation. The Division’s reform agreements 

also may address reforms designed to ensure that a law enforcement agency’s response to a 

validated complaint—including officer disciplinary systems—are transparent and consistent 

with basic principles of procedural justice and properly balance the need for effective 

responses to misconduct with the need for fairness to individual officers. 

 Recruitment, Hiring, and Promotion Systems. Finally, the Division’s recent reform agreements 

recognize that inadequacies in law enforcement agencies’ recruitment, hiring, and promotion 

systems are significant drivers of police misconduct. Misguiding staffing priorities may 

prevent a law enforcement agency from carrying out a community-centered, problemoriented policing strategy and increase the pressure to resort to zero-tolerance tactics, as well 

as straining officer health and wellness by imposing unreasonable workloads on individual 

officers. A failure to use recruitment, hiring, and promotion systems to attract, retain and 

reward highly qualified officers capable of carrying out the complicated mission of 

constitutional policing—including, for example, by requiring law enforcement agencies to 

investigate the employment history of new hires—impedes efforts to shift police culture to 

one of accountability and public service. Poorly designed hiring and promotion policies also 

damage officer morale and may lead officers to react to a perceived lack of procedural justice 

in their own workplace by failing to implement procedural justice in their policing.

Where the Division’s findings indicate a link between these issues and patterns or practices 

of police misconduct, the Division’s reform agreements address them by, for example, 

requiring new staffing plans, requiring greater investment in recruitment and retention 

systems, and ensuring that an officer’s disciplinary history and history of civilian complaints 

is accounted for in promotion and lateral hiring decisions. 
33

Officer Wellness and Support

As the Division has often recognized, police officers today are burdened with responsibility for 

social problems that extend far beyond a traditional focus on responding to and solving crimes. We

ask police to put their lives on the line in situations that include resolving family disputes, dealing

with mental illness, and addressing alcohol and drug addiction. Police officers must handle these 

complex problems against a backdrop of systemic inequalities and policy failures—including 

poverty, a lack of jobs and education, and inadequate housing—all of which can increase in crime 

place enormous stress on individual officers. 

In the law enforcement agencies the Division is called upon to investigate, this stress is often 

magnified by inadequate resources and malfunctioning systems. At the most basic level, fatigue and 

stress impact officers’ health, judgment, and performance, and thereby increase the risk of police 

misconduct. The Division’s experience in police reform underscores how individual instances of 

police misconduct occur amidst institutional failures to provide officers with the resources and

training necessary to carry out the enormous responsibilities placed on police officers. 

Many of the Division’s reform agreements—include those in Ferguson, Missouri; Albuquerque, 

New Mexico; Cleveland, Ohio; Puerto Rico; and New Orleans, Louisiana—address this problem 

by requiring that law enforcement agencies provide officers with access to health and wellness 

programs, physical fitness programs, stress management tools, confidential crisis counseling, or 

other support services necessary to address the heavy burdens placed on today’s police officers. 

Some of these agreements place limits on agencies’ ability to assign back-to-back shifts or excessive 

overtime, to ensure adequate rest and recovery periods. 

Other reform agreements address the possible link between inadequate officer support and police 

misconduct—including the failure to provide necessary equipment and technology needed to 

support constitutional policing or the failure to provide basic training to ensure that officers are 

equipped to handle the demands placed upon them. The Division’s reform agreement in Cleveland, 

Ohio, for example, requires the police department to complete a comprehensive equipment and 

resource study and implement a plan to provide the basic resources—such as computers, patrol cars 

equipped with linked computers, and first aid equipment—necessary to police safely and effectively.

Recognizing the Link Between Policing and Other Criminal Justice and Social 

Systems

Another of the ways the Division’s reform agreements have attempted to more effectively and 

sustainably address police misconduct is by focusing on the links between such misconduct and 

institutional failures outside of police departments, in areas such as social services, medical and 

mental health care, jails, and court systems. The Division’s reform agreements have begun to tackle 

this issue in a number of ways. For example:

 In Ferguson, Missouri, recognizing the impact of the City’s court practices on police 

misconduct, the Division’s reform agreement requires the City to revise its municipal code to 

ensure that it comports with the U.S. Constitution, and to make changes in its municipal 
34

court to address the discriminatory imposition of court fines and fees and the city’s reliance 

on police officers to generate revenue for the City. 

 In Portland, Oregon, the Division’s reform agreement recognizes that the absence of 

adequate community mental health services places enormous burdens on law enforcement to 

respond to people in mental health crisis and contributes to the use of excessive force in 

police interactions with such individuals. The agreement therefore requires the City of 

Portland to engage community mental health organizations in designing better systems to 

improve health services and reduce the burden on law enforcement. 

 In New Orleans, the Division’s reform agreement convenes a regular meeting of law 

enforcement, public defenders, prosecutors, and judges to identify problems in the criminal 

justice system and develop solutions that extend beyond reform of the police. These efforts 

reflect the reality that policing problems cannot be isolated and cured; they are connected to 

broader criminal justice and social systems. 
35

VII. CONCLUDING THE CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION’S POLICE 

REFORM AGREEMENTS

A federal police reform agreement will be terminated when the law enforcement agency has fully 

implemented the terms of the agreement, often including sustained implementation of the 

agreement for the amount of time agreed upon by the parties (usually two consecutive years). In the 

case of court-enforced consent decrees, the federal judge determines when the agreement has been 

fully implemented and the law enforcement agency has sustained compliance for the agreed-upon 

time period. 

As noted above, the Division’s current generation of reform agreements focuses on defined 

outcome measures to ensure that the court and the independent monitoring team have concrete, 

objective benchmarks for assessing whether a law enforcement agency has effectively implemented

an agreement. Those outcome measures are designed to eliminate guesswork and reduce subjectivity 

in the determination of whether an agency’s reform efforts are resulting in constitutional policing. 

They are also designed to validate the reforms mandated by an agreement, and ensure that new 

policies, training, and organizational change accomplish the underlying goals of eliminating patterns 

of police misconduct. 

The Division does not impose a specific term of years on the duration of its reform agreements, 

because the decision about when a consent decree ends is up to the judge, not the Division or the 

law enforcement agency, and in agreements not overseen by a court the Division will determine 

whether to terminate an agreement based on whether the agency has actually implemented the 

agreement not on whether some particular period of time has passed. However, some agreements 

describe a goal or expectation among the parties for how long it will take to achieve sustained 

compliance, usually somewhere between two and four years. 

While some of the Division’s reform agreements terminate in a short number of years, others have 

been in place for over a decade. This variation reflects the fact that institutional change presents 

different challenges to different institutions. Some law enforcement agencies are primed for change 

and others are face greater challenges grappling with deeply rooted, longstanding issues. Some 

jurisdictions enjoy strong support from stakeholders and local government leaders and others face 

significant political or economic challenges. One of the most important factors in determining the 

length of time a reform agreement lasts appears to be the commitment to and ability of local 

leadership to make and sustain changes.
36

No matter what dynamics surround a reform agreement, meaningful and sustainable police reform 

takes substantial time. For communities and families suffering the effects of police misconduct, the 

time required to implement the Division’s reform agreements can feel like another unreasonable 

demand, or an empty promise. But when the Division finds a pattern or practice of police 

misconduct, it usually finds that pattern or practice is the product of many decades of dysfunction 

that has become engrained in police culture. Reversing that process requires enormous effort and 

commitment. And, in the Division’s experience, reform agreements must contain realistic and fair 

deadlines for implementation to be effective. 

Given the complexity and comprehensiveness of the Division’s reform agreements, the Division 

incorporates several measures designed to increase efficiency and reduce the cost of reform. The 

Division’s current generation of reform agreements generally provide that the independent monitor 
37

should stop reviewing the agency’s compliance with certain provisions of the agreement once the 

agency has fully implemented those provisions, allowing the scope of the agreement to be narrowed 

over time and for the monitoring team to focus its efforts on areas where the agency is still 

struggling. In a number of instances where a law enforcement agency has accomplished significant, 

sustainable reform but discrete issues remain, the Division has terminated a court-supervised 

consent decree prior to full compliance and entered into a separate transition agreement to address 

the remaining issues. Such transition agreements reduce the overall burden of compliance and 

acknowledge the progress the agency has made toward effective, constitutional policing.

Beyond the express terms of reform agreements, the Division’s practice is to approach the 

monitoring and compliance stage of reform with flexibility and an understanding of the need to 

consider the costs and burdens of reform, while acknowledging that resource constraints cannot 

excuse unlawful police practices. The Division has a strong interest in ensuring the sustainability of 

the reforms in its agreements and understands that sustainability often, as a practical matter, requires 

attention to the financial condition of the local jurisdiction. Financial and staffing challenges often 

arise in the course of implementation of the Division’s reform agreements. Provided those 

challenges are genuine, approached in good faith, and not pretexts for non-compliance, the 

Division—and, in the Division’s experience, the independent monitor and the court—are 

committed to working with local jurisdictions to overcome those challenges. The Division has a 

demonstrated record of working cooperatively with local governments, monitors, and the court to 

ensure that reforms address systemic police misconduct issues while supporting and enhancing the 

capacity of police officers to protect public safety. 

The Division also works with law enforcement agencies to provide technical assistance and access to 

opportunities for grants to support reform and advance constitutional policing. 

The aim of the Division’s reform agreements is to build capacity within the law enforcement agency 

to sustain the outcomes of the reform agreement after the court, the independent monitor, and the 

Division have moved on. For example, in March 2016, the federal district court in Detroit, 

Michigan, terminated its oversight of the Detroit Police Department (DPD) pursuant to a reform 

agreement originally entered in 2003. DPD Assistant Police Chief James White noted that “the 

reforms that we have engaged in over the course of the past 13 years are . . . embedded in our 

police.”18 Likewise, in closing the Division’s reform agreement with the Missoula, Montana Police 

Department within two years of its entry, the Department of Justice noted that the agency was 

“poised to become a model” and “transform the way their city police department responds to 

reports of sexual assault.”19

Ultimately, the Division’s goal is for its reform agreements to leave a law enforcement agency with

an enduring ability to self-correct when misconduct occurs and a culture that strongly supports 

constitutional and effective policing—and to make these changes as quickly and efficiently as 

possible. The Civil Rights Division does not have a magic formula to create a perfect law 

enforcement agency. But the Division’s decades of experience in police reform, and its record of 

bringing change to law enforcement agencies from California to Connecticut and many places in 

between, demonstrates the capacity of pattern-or-practice cases to be a critical tool in the nationwide 

effort to reform police practices.
38

VIII. Conclusion: Assessing the Impact of Pattern-or-Practice 

Enforcement on Police Reform

It has been slightly more than two decades since Congress created the Department of Justice’s 

authority to investigate and remedy systemic police misconduct. In that time, many experts, 

academics, and stakeholders have weighed in on the question of what impact the Civil Rights 

Division’s pattern-or-practice authority has had on the nationwide movement toward police reform.

In 2010, the Department of Justice convened a roundtable of law enforcement officials, policing 

experts, and advocates to discuss the Division’s pattern-or-practice work. The report from that 

convening noted that, “[w]ithout exception, everyone providing comments during the roundtable 

meeting acknowledged the efficacy of pattern-or-practice litigation to reforming policies and 

practices in local police organizations.”20 Earlier, in 2002, a conference convened to examine the 

Division’s model of independent monitoring reached a consensus that “monitoring, if done 

correctly, can bring about rapid and responsible police reform without an undue challenge to the 

authority and autonomy of the police chief.”21 In 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum 

(PERF) issued a comprehensive review of DOJ’s role in monitoring local law enforcement noting 

some of the challenges of reform and prompting calls for re-examining some aspects of the work. 

The review also quoted “many police chiefs who have been through the process of a DOJ 

investigation” as saying “that the end result was a better police department—with improved policies 

on critical issues such as use of force, better training of officers, and more advanced information 

systems that help police executives to know what is going on in the department and manage their 

employees.”22 It further noted that, in many places, the reform agreement provided essential leverage 

to obtain the funding and political support necessary for reform.

To date, four independent studies have assessed the impact of the Division’s reform agreements, 

focusing in particular on the agreements in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and 

Washington, DC.

23 These studies provide strong evidence that reform under the Division’s reform 

agreements generally succeed in bringing about more effective constitutional policing practices and 

improved police-community relations. 

 The Harvard Kennedy School’s study of the Los Angeles consent decree found that, 

following implementation of the decree and other reforms initiated by LAPD leadership in 

the wake of the decree, “public perceptions of the LAPD are improving, the satisfaction 

among police officers themselves is growing, management and oversight of the police 

department is stronger, and the quality as well as the quantity of enforcement activity are 

rising.”24 

 An academic analysis of the Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Cincinnati consent decrees 

concluded that the “best evidence on the DOJ’s pattern or practice initiative suggests that 

after implementing mandated reforms, affected departments will likely possess a stronger, 

more capable accountability infrastructure, more robust training and a set of policies that 

reflect best practices.”

25

 The Vera Institute of Justice’s study of the Pittsburgh consent decree noted that the decree 

“is a success story for local police management and for federal intervention.”26
39

These studies also suggest that some of the common concerns about consent decrees are overstated. 

Both the Vera Institute study and the Harvard Kennedy School study specifically tested the theory 

that police enforcement reduces in the wake of consent decrees and found no evidence of such “depolicing”— indeed, the latter study suggested, to the contrary, a positive effect on both the quantity 

and quality of police activity.27 Those same studies similarly found no objective evidence that 

consent decree implementation had a negative effect on officer morale.28

Those studies also dispute the notion that implementation of consent decrees risks increasing crime. 

On the contrary, they suggest the opposite. As the Harvard Kennedy School study of the Los 

Angeles consent decree concluded:

In the first years, when the Department was led by officials who failed to implement 

the decree (perhaps because they had resisted and resented it from the start), crime in 

Los Angeles increased. Then, when new leadership in the Department began to drive 

implementation of the consent decree, the crime trend turned and fell. The pattern is 

unmistakable: recorded crime fell after 2002 during the period in which the decree 

was embraced by the leadership of the LAPD, after rising during the period in which 

implementation was stalled.29

These studies also provide some insight into the durability of the Division’s reform agreements. For 

example:

 In a study conducted 15 years after the initiation of reforms in Washington, D.C., the 

monitor appointed to oversee that agreement revisited the department and found that “in 

large measure, the D.C. police department’s use of force policies remain consistent with best 

practices in policing, and the data show that there has been no surge in any type of use of 

force, including firearms. The number of officer-involved shootings has remained low, and 

there is no evidence that excessive force has reemerged as a problem within the 

department.”30

 The monitor for the New Jersey State Police, in his final compliance report concluded that 

as a result of the consent decree, “[a]mple evidence exists to suggest that the agency has 

become self-monitoring and self-correcting to a degree not often observed in American law 

enforcement.”31

 A recent academic study of reforms in both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati found that while 

there was evidence that advances in Pittsburgh had eroded since the implementation of that 

first police reform agreement, the reforms in Cincinnati accomplished “significant and 

lasting change within the CPD” and that “[s]ix years removed from DOJ and monitor 

oversight, [CPD] has experienced little or no backsliding, a finding supported by consistent 

reductions in undesirable outcomes, including use of force incidence and allegations of 

abusive or unlawful behavior.”32

 A different study of the Pittsburgh consent decree concluded that years after the 

termination of that decree, and despite personnel changes and budget pressures, “reforms 

remain firmly in place today, and both community leaders and citizen surveys reflect 

significant improvements in service” and “there is no question that the implementation of 
40

the consent decree requirements in Pittsburgh dramatically changed the culture of the 

Bureau of Police.”33

Much remains to be studied about the Division’s approach to police reform in pattern-or-practice 

cases. The four existing assessments of the Division’s consent decrees in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, 

Cincinnati, and Washington, DC, examine the first generation model of police reform that 

prevailed in the first decade following enactment of Section 14141. And these reviews—as well as 

other commentary from academics and stakeholders—pointed to areas where the Division’s reform 

efforts could improve. As this report makes clear, the Division’s model has evolved in response to

such feedback, as well as lessons from its past efforts and the incorporation of new thinking from 

the cutting edge of police reform. In contrast to the first generation of police reform agreements,

the current generation emphasizes:

 Community engagement from the earliest stages of an investigation and throughout the 

course of a case, including incorporation of community engagement strategies and 

community-based solutions into reform agreements;

 Incorporating the input of rank-and-file officers at both the investigatory stage and in the 

development of reform agreements, through engagement with police labor organizations and 

face-to-face meetings with officers from all ranks, and recognizing the link between officer 

support and constitutional policing;

 Issuing appropriately detailed findings letters or reports at the conclusion of every 

investigation, to publicly document the evidence obtained by the Division, explain the 

Division’s conclusions about the existence of a pattern or practice of police misconduct, and 

set a framework for negotiating a reform agreement;

 Bringing diverse perspectives and real-world policing experience to the independent 

monitoring teams overseeing court-enforceable consent decrees;

 Defined outcome measures to create objective, evidence-based benchmarks for assessing the 

value of reforms and the law enforcement agency’s compliance with the agreement.

The impact of the Division’s work cannot be measured solely by the results in the particular 

jurisdictions where reform agreements have been implemented, however. The Division’s pattern-orpractice cases contribute to nationwide police reform by promoting a model of constitutional 

policing applicable to any size department, in any part of the country. The Division’s findings letters 

and reform agreements are closely scrutinized by law enforcement agencies that have never been, 

and likely never will be, the subject of a pattern-or-practice investigation. Pattern-or-practice cases

are not a panacea for problems in American policing. But, combined with other federal tools, as well 

as with state and local reform efforts within both law enforcement agencies and the communities 

they serve, as well as ongoing efforts by organizations such as the International Association of 

Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the Division’s work is 

laying the foundation for more positive and effective policing practices across the country. 
41

APPENDIX A: SUMMARIES OF THE DIVISION’S PATTERN-ORPRACTICE CASES

The Division has entered into 40 total reform agreements in pattern-or-practice policing cases. 

Twenty of those agreements have been court-enforced consent decrees, and 20 have been 

settlement agreements, typically known as memoranda of agreement, between the United States and 

the local jurisdiction. Of the eighteen reform agreements resulting from investigations opened since 

2008, all have been consent decrees but for those in four jurisdictions (Missoula, Montana; Suffolk 

County, New York; Miami, Florida; and Alamance, North Carolina). At the time of this publication, 

the division had 18 open reform agreements, 14 of which are court-enforced consent decrees. Each 

of the Division’s 40 reform agreements is described briefly below.

In addition to these descriptions, as part of this report we have created an interactive Police Reform 

Finder. This is a guide to the Division’s police reform agreements. Using the Police Reform Finder, 

you can see examples of: 

 How the Division’s reform agreements have addressed specific kinds of policing issues,

 The Division’s police reform by date, and

 The Division’s police reform agreements by location.

Pittsburgh Police Bureau, Pennsylvania (1997-99)

In April 1996, the Division opened an investigation into the Pittsburgh Police Bureau (PPB). In 

January 1997, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force; unlawful stops, 

searches and arrests, linking these findings to insufficient accountability systems and failure to 

supervise officers. In April 1997, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree. The 

consent decree was terminated in September 2002, with ongoing monitoring of a backlog of 

investigations of civilian complaints by the city’s independent auditor through 2005. 

Steubenville Police Department, Ohio (1997-2005)

In September 1996, the Division opened an investigation into the Steubenville Police Department 

(SPD) in Ohio. In June 1997, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force; 

unlawful stops, searches and arrests; and witness and evidence tampering linked to inadequate 

policies and training, insufficient supervision, and inadequate systems of accountability. In 

September 1997, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which terminated in 

March 2005. 

New Jersey State Police, New Jersey (1999-2009)

In April 1996, the Division opened an investigation into the New Jersey State Police (NJPD). In 

December 1999, the United States filed a complaint alleging a pattern or practice of unlawful traffic 

stops, searches and arrests, linked to inadequate policies and training, insufficient supervision, and 

inadequate systems of accountability. Simultaneously, the parties entered into a court-enforced 

consent decree, which terminated in October 2009. 

Los Angeles Police Department, California (2000-09)

In July 1996, the Division opened an investigation into the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). 

In May 2000, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, 
42

searches and arrests linked to inadequate training, supervision, and accountability systems. In 

November 2001, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree. The consent decree 

terminated in July 2009, although a transition agreement between the Division and the City of Los 

Angeles remained in effect until May 2013. 

Highland Park Police Department, Illinois (2000-2004)

In May 2000, the Division opened an investigation into the Highland Park Police Department in 

Illinois focusing on discrimination based on race and national origin. In the fall of 2000, the parties 

entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) incorporating the terms of a court-supervised 

consent decree settling Ledford, et al. v. City of Highland Park, No. 00 C 4212 (N.D. Ill), litigation 

brought by private plaintiffs raising similar issues. The MOA was terminated in December 2004. 

Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C. (2001-2008)

In February 1999, the Division opened an investigation into the Metropolitan Police Department 

(MPDC) in Washington, D.C. In June 2001, the Division identified a pattern or practice of 

excessive force linked to inadequate use of force policies and training; deficient supervision of 

officers; and inadequate systems of accountability. The parties entered into a memorandum of 

agreement (MOA), including the appointment of an independent monitor. The independent 

monitorship terminated in April 2008, although under a transition agreement MPDC provided ongoing reporting on certain provisions of the MOA until February 2012. 

Buffalo Police Department, New York (2002-2008)

In December 1997, the Division opened an investigation into the Buffalo Police Department in 

New York, focused on the use of “chemical agent propellant” sprays, such as pepper spray or tear 

gas. The Division and the City of Buffalo entered into a memorandum of agreement in 2002, which 

was modified in June 2007 and terminated in July 2008.

Columbus Police Department, Ohio (2002-2004)

In March 1998, the Division opened an investigation into the Columbus Police Department in 

Ohio. In October 1999, the Division filed suit against the City of Columbus, alleging a pattern or 

practice of excessive force; and unlawful stops, searches and arrests linked to inadequate policies and 

training; inadequate supervision of officers; and failures to investigate misconduct and hold officers 

accountable. The Division and the City of Columbus resolved the litigation by agreement in 2002, 

which terminated in May 2004.

Cincinnati Police Department, Ohio (2002-2008)

In May 2001, the Division opened an investigation into the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) in 

Ohio. In October 2001, the Division identified the need for improvements in use of force policies, 

reporting and review; accountability systems, officer discipline, data collection, and transparency; 

and training. Negotiations were integrated with ongoing negotiations regarding a lawsuit brought by 

private plaintiffs. In April 2002, the Division entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with 

the City of Cincinnati. The Division’s MOA was incorporated into a consent decree settling the 

private lawsuit, which together became known as the “Collaborative Agreement.” The Collaborative 

Agreement provided for a single monitoring team to oversee implementation of the reforms in both 

the Department’s MOA and the broader Collaborative Agreement. The Division’s MOA was 

terminated in April 2007 and the broader Collaborative Agreement was terminated in August 2008. 
43

Mt. Prospect Police Department, Illinois (2003-2006)

In April 2000, the Division opened an investigation into the Mt. Prospect Police Department in 

Illinois, focusing on discrimination based on race and national origin in traffic stops. In 2003, the 

parties entered into a memorandum of agreement, which terminated in December 2006. 

Montgomery County Police Department, Maryland (2003-05)

In June 1996, the Division opened an investigation into the Montgomery County Police Department 

(MCPD) in Montgomery County, Maryland, focused on racially discriminatory traffic stops, searches 

and arrests. The Division and Montgomery County entered into a memorandum of agreement

(MOA) in 2002, which was terminated in February 2005. 

Villa Rica Police Department, Georgia (2003-2006)

In January 2003, the Division opened an investigation into the Villa Rica Police Department 

(VRPD) in Villa Rica, Georgia focusing on discriminatory policing and unlawful traffic stops and 

searches. On December 23, 2003, the parties entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) 

including appointment of an independent monitor. The MOA was terminated in December 2006. 

Detroit Police Department, Michigan (2003-2014)

In May 2001, the Division opened an investigation into the Detroit Police Department (DPD). In 

March, April, and June 2002, the Division sent letters to DPD identifying areas in need of reform, 

including reporting and investigating uses of force; officer supervision and discipline; and arrest and 

detention policies. In July 2003, the court approved a consent decree between the Division and the 

City of Detroit. (On the same day the Division and the City entered into a separate consent decree 

addressing a related investigation into the conditions of police lock-ups and holding cells). In 

August 2014, the court terminated the consent decree and the Division and the City of Detroit 

entered into a separate transition agreement under which the Division would continue to monitor 

DPD’s efforts to comply with certain provisions of the prior consent decree that had not yet been 

fully implemented. In March 2016, the Division found DPD in full compliance with the terms of the 

transition agreement and closed the case. 

Prince George’s County Police Department, Maryland (2004-2007; 2004-2009)

In July 1999, the Division opened an investigation into the Prince George’s County Police 

Department (PGPD) in Maryland, focusing on its canine unit. In October 2000, the Division 

opened a second investigation into broader issues of use of force by PGPD. In January 2004, the 

parties entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) addressing the broader use of force issues 

and a consent decree addressing the use of canines, which was approved by the court in March 

2004. The consent decree was terminated in March 2007 and the MOA was terminated in January 

2009. 

Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Florida (2008-2013)

In January 2007, the Division opened an investigation into the Orange County Sheriff’s Department 

(OCSD) in Florida. In August 2008, the Division identified concerns regarding the excessive use of 

conducted energy devices (also known by the brand name Tasers). In September 2010, the Division 

and OCSD entered into a memorandum of agreement, which terminated in April 2013. 

Virgin Islands Police Department, U.S. Virgin Islands (2009-OPEN)
44

In March 2004, the Division opened an investigation into the Virgin Islands Police Department 

(VIPD). In October 2005, the Division issued a letter identifying needed reforms to VIPD’s general 

policies and training; use of force policies, including those governing specific types of force; use of 

force reporting systems; use of force investigation and review; conditions in police lock-ups and 

holding cells; internal complaint systems; officer disciplinary systems; and internal supervisions 

systems, including the creation of an early intervention system. In March 2009, the parties entered 

into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect.

Easton Police Department, Pennsylvania (2010-2015)

In October 2005, the Division opened an investigation into the Easton Police Department in 

Pennsylvania, focusing on use of force, including less-lethal weapons, vehicle pursuits, and canines. 

August 2010, the Division and EPD entered into a memorandum of agreement, which terminated in 

July 2015. 

Beacon Police Department, New York (2010-2016)

In June 2005, the Division opened an investigation into the Beacon Police Department (BPD) in 

New York, focusing on use of force. In December 2010, the Division and the BPD entered into a 

memorandum of agreement, which terminated in August 2016.

Seattle Police Department, Washington (2012-OPEN)

In March 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in 

Washington. In December 2011, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force and 

raised concerns about racially discriminatory policing. In September 2012, the parties entered into a 

court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect. 

East Haven Police Department, Connecticut (2012-OPEN)

In September 2009, the Division opened an investigation into the East Haven Police Department 

(EHPD) in East Haven, Connecticut. In December 2011, the Division identified a pattern or 

practice of discriminatory policing against Latinos, particularly in traffic enforcement. In December 

2012, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect. 

Warren Police Department, Ohio (2012-OPEN)

In December 2004, the Division opened an investigation into the Warren Police Department 

(WPD) in Ohio focusing on use of force and strip-search practices. In January 2012, the parties 

entered into a court-enforced consent decree which remains in effect.

Portland Police Bureau, Oregon (2012-OPEN)

In June 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) in 

Oregon. In September 2012, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force against 

persons with mental illness. In 2012, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which 

remains in effect. 

Missoula Police Department, Missoula County Attorney’s Office, and University of 

Montana Office of Public Safety, Montana (2013-2015)

In May 2012, the Division opened an investigation into the Missoula County Attorney’s Office 

(MCAO), Missoula Police Department (MPD), and University of Montana Office of Public Safety 

(UM-OPS) in Missoula, Montana, focused on gender bias in the handling of sexual assault 

complaints. In May 2013, the Division issued findings letters to the MPD and UM-OPS identifying a 
45

pattern or practice of failing adequately respond to and investigate allegations of sexual assault 

against women. In February 2014, the Division issued a separate findings letter to the Missoula 

County Attorney’s Office, identifying a pattern or practice of failing to ensure unbiased and effective 

investigation and prosecution of reports of sexual assault by women. In May 2013, the Division 

entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the MPD and UM-OPS, including 

appointment of an independent monitor. In June 2014, the Division entered into a separate 

“memorandum of understanding” (MOU) with MCAO. In May 2015, the Division terminated the 

MOA with the MPD and in July 2015 the Division terminated the MOA with UM-OPS.

New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana (2013-OPEN)

In May 2010, the Division opened an investigation of the New Orleans Police Department 

(NOPD). The Division had previously opened an investigation into NOPD in June 1995, which 

closed in March 2004. In March 2011, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive 

force; unlawful stops, searches and arrests; discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, and 

LGBT status; and gender discrimination in the failure to adequately respond to and investigate 

violence against women. In January 2013, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, 

which remains in effect.

Puerto Rico Police Department (2013-OPEN)

In July 2008, the Division opened an investigation into the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD). 

In September 2011, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive force, violations of the 

First Amendment right to observe and record police activity and unlawful searches and seizures 

resulting from inadequate policies, supervision, training, accountability, and community engagement. 

The findings letter also raised concerns about patterns of discriminatory policing. In July 2013, the 

parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect. 

Albuquerque Police Department, New Mexico (2014-OPEN)

In November 2012, the Division opened an investigation into the Albuquerque Police Department 

(APD) in New Mexico. In April 2014, the Division issued a findings letter identifying a pattern or 

practice of excessive force, including deadly force. In late 2014, the parties entered into a courtenforced consent decree, which remains in effect. 

Suffolk County Police Department, New York (2014-OPEN)

In September 2009, the Division opened an investigation into the Suffolk County Police 

Department (SCPD) in New York, focused on patterns of biased-based policing against Latinos and 

person with limited or no English proficiency. In January 2014, the parties entered into a 

memorandum of agreement, which remains in effect. 

Cleveland Division of Police, Ohio (1999-2005) (2015-OPEN)

In August 2000, the Division opened an investigation into the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) 

in Cleveland, Ohio. The Division and the City of Cleveland entered into a memorandum of 

agreement in 2004, which was terminated in March 2005. In March 2013, the Division opened a new 

investigation into CDP. In December 2014, the Division identified a pattern or practice of excessive 

force, and raised concerns about search and seizure practices, resulting from insufficient 

accountability, inadequate training and equipment, flawed policies, and inadequate community 

engagement. In June 2015, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains 

in effect. 
46

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, California (2015-OPEN)

In August 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 

Department (LASD) in California. In June 2013, the Division identified a pattern or practice of 

harassment and profiling of black and Latino residents of Palmdale and Lancaster, California. In 

May 2015, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect.

Meridian Police Department, Mississippi (2015-OPEN)

In December 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Meridian Police Department as 

part of a broader investigation into the administration of juvenile justice in Meridian, Mississippi. In 

August 2012, the Division identified a pattern or practice of arresting children in schools without 

probable cause. In September 2015, the parties entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which 

remains in effect. 

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, Arizona (2015-OPEN)

In March 2009, the Division opened an investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office 

(MCSO) in Phoenix, Arizona. In September 2010 the Division filed suit seeking to compel MCSO 

to provide information relevant to the Division’s investigation. In June 2011, MCSO settled that 

litigation by agreeing to cooperate in the Division’s investigation. In December 2011, the Division 

identified a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing against Latinos; unlawful stops and arrests; 

and unlawful retaliation against people who make complaints or criticize MCSO. (The Division also 

made findings with regard to MCSO’s operation of jails.) In May 2012, after attempts to reach 

agreement on a consent decree were unsuccessful, the Division filed litigation under Section 14141. 

In June 2015, the court granted summary judgment in the Division’s favor on the discriminatory 

policing claim. In July 2015, the parties entered into a consent decree addressing issues concerning 

worksite raids, retaliation, and language access requirements. That consent decree remains in effect. 

Separately, the parties entered into a memorandum of agreement regarding MCSO’s operation of 

local jails, which also remains in effect. In August 2015, the Division intervened in parallel private 

litigation, Melendres v. Arpaio, in which MCSO is under an injunction to reform discriminatory law 

enforcement practices. Litigation in that matter is ongoing.

City of Miami Police Department, Florida (2016-OPEN)

In November 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Miami Police Department (MPD) 

in Florida. (The Division had previously opened an investigation into MPD in May 2002 but closed 

it without findings in May 2006.) In July 2013, the Division identified a pattern or practice of 

excessive deadly use of force in discharging firearms. In February 2016, the Division and the City of 

Miami entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) resolving the Division’s claims, including 

appointment of an independent monitor. That MOA remains in effect. 

Ferguson Police Department, Missouri (2016-OPEN)

In September 2014, the Division opened an investigation into the Ferguson Police Department 

(FPD) and the municipal court in Ferguson, Missouri. In March 2015, the Division identified a 

pattern or practice of unlawful stops and arrests, including violations of the First Amendment right 

to observe and record police activity; excessive force; and discriminatory policing. The Division 

further determined that FPD and the municipal court focused on revenue generation at the expense 

of public safety and constitutional law enforcement. In March 2016, the parties entered into a courtenforced consent decree, which remains in effect.

Newark Police Department, New Jersey (2016-OPEN)
47

In May 2011, the Division opened an investigation into the Newark Police Department in Newark, 

New Jersey. In July 2014, the Division identified a pattern or practice of unlawful stops, searches 

and arrests; discriminatory policing; excessive force; and theft by officers. The Division further 

identified concerns about gender bias in policing, discriminatory policing against members of the 

LGBTQ community, and failure to protect from harm in police lock-ups. In April 2016, the parties 

entered into a court-enforced consent decree, which remains in effect.

Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, North Carolina (2016-OPEN)

In June 2010, the Division opened an investigation into the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office in 

North Carolina. In September 2012, the Division identified a pattern or practice of unlawful 

discrimination against Latinos and unlawful stops and arrests in violation of the Fourth 

Amendment. In December 2012, the Division determined that it was unable to resolve its claims 

cooperatively and filed a complaint under Section 14141. In August 2015, a federal district court 

dismissed the United States’ claims after trial. The United States appealed this judgment, and in 

August 2016, while the appeal was pending, the United States and Alamance County entered into a 

memorandum of agreement, which remains in effect. 

Yonkers Police Department, New York (2016-OPEN)

In August 2007, the Division opened an investigation into the Yonkers Police Department (YPD) in 

New York. In June 2009, the Division addressed the need for reform of YPD’s use of force policies, 

reporting uses of force, investigations of uses of force, handling of civilian complaints, officer 

supervision and discipline, creation of an early warning system, improved training, and expanded 

community engagement. In November 2016, the United States and the City of Yonkers entered into 

a memorandum of agreement, which remains in effect. 

Other Open Pattern-or-Practice Cases

In addition to the 40 cases leading to reform agreements described above, the Division has five open 

investigations and one case that remains in active litigation. Those cases are described below.

Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah

In April 2011, the Division opened an investigation into law enforcement agencies in the 

neighboring cities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. In June 2012, the Division filed a 

complaint alleging that the cities and other entities under their control were engaged in a pattern or 

practice of discrimination against people who are not members of the Fundamentalist Church of 

Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In March 2016, the Division prevailed at trial. Litigation on the 

issue of remedying violations of law found by the court and jury is ongoing.

Ville Platte Police Department and Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office, Louisiana

In April 2015, the Division opened investigations into the Ville Platte Police Department and the 

Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office, both of which operate in Ville Platte, Louisiana. In December 

2016, the Division identified a pattern or practice in both departments of so-called “investigative 

holds”—illegally jailing people who police think may be witnesses to or otherwise associated with a 

crime, but who police do not have any probable cause to arrest, often for the purpose of coercing 

the person into confessing or providing information about the crime. 

Baltimore Police Department, Maryland
48

In May 2015, the Division opened an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) in 

Baltimore, Maryland. In August 2016, the Division identified a pattern or practice of unlawful stops, 

searches and arrests; discriminatory policing; excessive force, including use of force against people 

with disabilities in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act; and violations of the First 

Amendment right to observe and record police activity. The Division also identified concerns with 

BPD’s handling of sexual assault investigations and transport practices. The Division and the City 

of Baltimore are engaged in ongoing discussions to resolve these issues.

Chicago Police Department, Illinois 

In December 2015, the Division opened an investigation into the Chicago Police Department in 

Chicago, Illinois. The Division’s investigation is ongoing.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Office of the District Attorney, California

In December 2016, the Division opened an investigation into the Orange County Sheriff’s 

Department and Office of the District Attorney. The Division’s investigation is ongoing. 
49

APPENDIX B: OTHER DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE POLICE REFORM 

TOOLS

Criminal Civil Rights Prosecutions

The Civil Rights Division and the United States Attorney’s Offices have authority to criminally 

prosecute any law enforcement officer who willfully deprives a person of a Constitutional or federal 

right or engages in a conspiracy to deprive a person of a Constitutional or federal right.34

Criminal civil rights prosecutions differ significantly from civil pattern-or-practice cases in both 

purpose and result. Whereas pattern-or-practice cases focus on a law enforcement agency’s 

responsibility to cure systemic or institutional failures that lead to widespread police misconduct, 

criminal civil rights prosecutions focus on an individual officer’s culpability for a particular instance 

of misconduct. And whereas pattern-or-practice cases seek a court order compelling state or local 

governments to institute a wide range of reforms over time under the supervision of the court and 

an independent monitor in order to promote constitutional policing practices, criminal civil rights 

prosecutions seek to convict and sentence an officer in order to punish and deter individual 

wrongdoing.

Despite these differences, calls to open civil and criminal civil rights investigations can arise from the 

same instances of police misconduct, particularly when a troubling individual incident galvanizes 

public attention to or sheds light on systemic problems in a law enforcement agency. Even when the 

relevant facts overlap, however, the decision to open a civil pattern-or-practice investigation and the 

decision to open a criminal civil rights investigation are made independently, based on the different 

legal standards applicable to each type of case. Civil pattern-or-practice cases are handled by the 

Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, whereas criminal civil rights prosecutions are 

handled by the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division and/or a local United States Attorney’s 

Office. Both the Special Litigation and Criminal Sections report to the Assistant Attorney General 

for Civil Rights, and the United States Attorney’s Manual requires the United States Attorneys to 

consult with the Civil Rights Division on all criminal civil rights matters.

In many cases, however—even in cases where police shootings or other uses of force informed the 

Division’s decision to find a pattern or practice of police misconduct in a law enforcement agency—

the Division cannot bring criminal charges against individual officers. To prosecute an officer under 

the criminal law for violating someone’s rights, the government must prove beyond a reasonable 

doubt that the officer’s actions, such as shooting a person or otherwise using force, was objectively 

unreasonable based on all of the surrounding circumstances. Additionally, and unlike in the civil 

context, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer acted willfully. This 

high legal standard – one of the highest standards of intent imposed by law – requires proof that the 

officer acted with the specific intent to do something the law forbids. It is not enough to show that 

the officer made a mistake, acted negligently, acted by accident or mistake or even exercised bad 

judgment. For this reason, even where the evidence is sufficient to find a pattern or practice of 

police misconduct and hold a law enforcement agency civilly responsible for its failure to provide 

the support or accountability mechanisms needed to avoid violations of civil rights, the evidence 

may not be sufficient to support holding individual officers criminally responsible under existing 

federal law for specific instances of such violations.
50

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) Collaborative 

Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance

The COPS Office—a separate component of the U.S. Department of Justice from the Civil Rights 

Division—is responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation’s state, 

local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources. 

COPS’s Collaborative Reform Initiative advances police reform by undertaking assessments of a law 

enforcement agency’s operations, providing recommendations for reform, and assisting the agency 

in implementing those reforms. The COPS Office has undertaken Collaborative Reform Initiatives 

in several cities, including Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Fayetteville, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.

Although the aims of COPS’s Collaborative Reform Initiative and the Civil Rights Division’s 

pattern-or-practice cases are similar, their means are significantly different. Whereas pattern-orpractice cases are initiated by the Assistant Attorney General upon a finding of cause, Collaborative 

Reform must first be requested by the subject law enforcement agency. Both approaches require the 

careful review and vetting across the U.S. Department of Justice. Pattern-or-practice investigations 

and the resulting remedies are compelled by threat of litigation and court order, whereas agencies 

participating in Collaborative Reform agree to implement reforms voluntarily at the outset. In any 

given jurisdiction, these differences could be strengths or weaknesses. For that reason, the 

Department of Justice considers COPS Collaborative Reform and the Civil Rights Division’s 

pattern-or-practice cases to be complementary strategies to achieve police reform.

In addition to Collaborative Reform, since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 

billion to advance community policing nationwide. Working in partnership with major law 

enforcement organizations, COPS has conducted research and development, including executive 

sessions on topics such as use of force, constitutional policing, and officer safety. These efforts 

provide assistance and perspectives on substantive policing issues affecting law enforcement 

professionals and communities across the country. 

OJP Bureau of Justice Assistance and Diagnostic Center

The Department’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) provides resources and technical assistance to 

support policing through a variety of programs, particularly through the work of the Bureau of 

Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Diagnostic Center. BJA programs have trained thousands of law 

enforcement officials and provided equipment, technology and other resources for effective policing 

through millions of dollars in grants to local and tribal agencies across the country. Furthermore, 

BJA supports 45 sites through its Smart Policing Initiative, a program that brings together law 

enforcement leaders and researchers to employ evidence-based practices that target local crime 

challenges.

OJP’s Diagnostic Center tackles discrete policing and other criminal justice challenges identified by a 

local law enforcement agency that requests help from the Center. The Center provides hands-on 

technical assistance with a focus on data analysis and evidence-based solutions for specific, known 

problems. The Center has helped law enforcement agencies across the country with a variety of 

objectives, such as improving homicide clearance rates and assessing and identifying weaknesses in 

officer supervision and discipline processes. 
51

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at OJP ensures that recipients of financial assistance from OJP,

COPS, and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) comply with federal laws that prohibit 

discrimination in both employment and the delivery of services or benefits based on race, color, 

national origin, sex, religion, disability and age.

 

1 Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (Christopher Commission 

Report) (July 9, 1991).

2 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. § 14141(a).

3 42 U.S.C. §14141(b).

4 U.S. Const. Am. I; U.S. Const. Am. IV; U.S. Const. Am. XIV; Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 

U.S.C. § 2000d; the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. §3789(c); the Americans 

with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12131; and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794.

5 Robert C. Davis, et al., Can Federal Intervention Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent 

Decree, Vera Institute of Justice (April 2005) at i.

6 The 18 open reform agreements are in: the U.S. Virgin Islands; Seattle, Washington; East Haven, 

Connecticut; Warren, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; New Orleans, Louisiana; Puerto Rico; Albuquerque, New 

Mexico; Suffolk County, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Los Angeles County, California; Meridian, Mississippi; 

Maricopa County, Arizona; Miami, Florida; Ferguson, Missouri, Newark, New Jersey; Alamance County, 

North Carolina; and Yonkers, New York. The five open investigations are in: Ville Platte, Louisiana; 

Evangeline Parish, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; and Orange County, California. The case 

in active litigation involves the cities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. A complete list of the 

Division’s 14141 cases is appended to this report.

7 The scope of any investigation and the manner in which it is conducted is inherently dependent on the facts 

and circumstances of a given situation. Thus, the Division may not necessarily take a particular investigatory 

step described below in every instance. Nor are the description of possible investigatory steps meant to be 

exhaustive. 

8 Samuel J. Walker and Morgan Macdonald, An Alternative Remedy for Police Misconduct, 19 Civ. Rights L.J. 479, 

480 (2009) (“[I]n terms of the long-term process of police reform, the various outcomes under Section 14141 

embody a set of ‘best practices’ that serves as a model for other police reform efforts.”). See also Debra 

Livingston, Police Reform and the Department of Justice: An Essay on Accountability, 2 Buff. Crim. L. Rev. 

815, 845 (1999) (“[E]nforcement of Section 14141 may have the beneficial effect of further stimulating the 

articulation and dissemination of national standards governing core police managerial responsibilities.”); 

Myriam E. Gilles, Reinventing Structural Reform Litigation, 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1384, 1407 (2000); Richard 

Jerome, Police Reform: A Job Half Done, ACS Issue Brief (2004) at 5 (noting that “the Justice Department’s 

potential ‘hammer’ prompted many police departments to review their policies and procedures and 

implement additional systems for accountability, in order to avoid a Justice Department investigation. 

Agencies have also looked to the measures that were incorporated into the Justice Department agreements as 

progressive and necessary accountability practices.”).

9 U.S. Department of Justice, Taking Stock: Report from the 2010 Roundtable on the State and Local Law Enforcement 

Police Pattern or Practice Program, NCJ 234458 (Sept. 2011).

10 The Vera Institute’s assessment of the Pittsburgh consent decree identified the Division’s efforts to allow 

the city to “play the primary role in making the selection” of the monitor as an important factor in the success 

of that decree, as it “likely increased the confidence of city officials in the monitor and facilitated his work.” 

Robert C. Davis, et al., Turning Necessity Into Virtue: Pittsburgh’s Experience With a Federal Consent Decree, Vera 

Institute of Justice (September 2002) at 11.

11 U.S. Department of Justice, Community Oriented Policing Services, Community Policing Defined (2014), 

available at www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/vets-to-cops/e030917193-cp-defined.pdf. 

12 Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), Guiding Principles on Use of Force, Critical Issues in Policing Series 

(March 2016).

13 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/
52

 

14 U.S. Department of Justice, Taking Stock: Report from the 2010 Roundtable on the State and Local Law Enforcement 

Police Pattern or Practice Program, NCJ 234458 (Sept. 2011) at 4. 

15 Samuel J. Walker and Morgan Macdonald, An Alternative Remedy for Police Misconduct, 19 Civ. Rights L.J. 479, 

508 (2009).

16 International Association of Police Chiefs and the U.S. Dep’t of Justice Office of Community Oriented 

Policing Services, The Impact of Video Evidence on Modern Policing: A National Study on the Use and Impact of In-Car 

Cameras (2005), available at https://www.bja.gov/bwc/pdfs/IACPIn-CarCameraReport.pdf. 

17 Up to date studies on the implications of body-worn cameras are available through the United States 

Bureau of Justice Assistance Body-Worn Camera Toolkit, available at https://www.bja.gov/bwc/topicsresearch.html. Studies supporting the conclusion that body-worn cameras improve outcomes include William 

Farrar, Operation Candid Camera: Rialto Police Department’s Body-Worn Camera Experiment, The Police Chief 81 

(2014); Harold Rankin, End of Program Evaluation and Recommendations: On-Officer Body Camera System, Mesa, AZ 

Police Department (2013); Katz, et al., Evaluating the Impact of Officer Worn Body Cameras in the Phoenix Police 

Department, ASU Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety (December 2014); Michael D. White, 

et al., Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras: Assessing the Evidence, OJP Diagnostic Center (2014).

18 Tresa Baldas, Detroit Police Finally Rid of Federal Oversight, Detroit Free Press (Mar. 31, 2016).

19 Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Justice Department Announces Missoula Police Department Has 

Fully Implemented Agreement to Improve Response to Reports of Sexual Assault, (May 11, 2015) (available at 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-missoula-police-department-has-fullyimplemented-agreement). 

20 U.S. Department of Justice, Taking Stock: Report from the 2010 Roundtable on the State and Local Law Enforcement 

Police Pattern or Practice Program, NCJ 234458 (Sept. 2011) at 2.

21 Police Assessment Resource Center, The Monitors and the Monitored Conference Summary (October 11, 2002) at 

1.

22 Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned, Critical 

Issues in Policing Series (July 2013).

23 Michael R. Bromwich, et al., The Durability of Police Reform: The Metropolitan Police Department and Use of Force: 

2008-2015, Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (Jan. 28, 2016); Joshua M. Chanin, Examining the 

Sustainability of Pattern or Practice Police Misconduct Reform, 18 Police Quarterly 163 (2015); Christopher Stone, et 

al., Policing Los Angeles Under a Consent Decree: The Dynamics of Change at the LAPD, Program in Criminal Justice 

Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School (May 2009); Robert C. Davis, et al., Can Federal Intervention 

Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent Decree, Vera Institute of Justice (April 2005). See 

also Robert C. Davis, et al., Turning Necessity Into Virtue: Pittsburgh’s Experience With a Federal Consent Decree, Vera 

Institute of Justice (September 2002).

24 Christopher Stone, et al., Policing Los Angeles Under a Consent Decree: The Dynamics of Change at the LAPD, 

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School (May 2009) at 2.

25 Joshua M. Chanin, Examining the Sustainability of Pattern or Practice Police Misconduct Reform, 18 Police Quarterly 

163, 185 (2015).

26 Robert C. Davis, et al., Can Federal Intervention Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent 

Decree, Vera Institute of Justice (April 2005)at i.

27 Christopher Stone, et al., Policing Los Angeles Under a Consent Decree: The Dynamics of Change at the LAPD, 

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School (May 2009) at i, 22, 31-32 

(finding “no objective sign of so-called ‘de-policing’ since” implementation of the LAPD consent decree and 

that “[a]t the end of our analysis of de-policing claims, the meaning of the data seems clear, especially from 

2002 onwards: both the quantity and quality of enforcement activity have increased.”); Robert C. Davis, et al., 

Can Federal Intervention Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent Decree, Vera Institute of 

Justice (April 2005) at i (noting that “performance data provided by the Bureau and our citizen survey do not 

support” the belied that reforms made police “less active and aggressive in fighting crime”).

28 Christopher Stone, et al., Policing Los Angeles Under a Consent Decree: The Dynamics of Change at the LAPD, 

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School (May 2009); Robert C. Davis, 

et al., Turning Necessity Into Virtue: Pittsburgh’s Experience With a Federal Consent Decree, Vera Institute of Justice 
53

 

(September 2002) (finding that “indicators of officer morale . . . did not show negative trends following the 

decree.”).

29 Christopher Stone, et al., Policing Los Angeles Under a Consent Decree: The Dynamics of Change at the LAPD, 

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School (May 2009) at 6.

30 Michael R. Bromwich, DC is Proof that Police Reforms Can Work, Washington Post (Jan. 29, 2016); Michael R. 

Bromwich, et al., The Durability of Police Reform: The Metropolitan Police Department and Use of Force: 2008-2015, 

Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (Jan. 28, 2016) at 114.

31 Public Management Resources, Monitors’ Sixteenth Report (2007) at iv (available at 

http://www.state.nj.us./lps/monitors-report-16.pdf). 

32 Joshua M. Chanin, Examining the Sustainability of Pattern or Practice Police Misconduct Reform, 18 Police Quarterly 

163, 170, 179-80 (2015).

33 Robert C. Davis, et al., Can Federal Intervention Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent 

Decree, Vera Institute of Justice (April 2005) at I, 40-41.

34 18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242.