There is a brand new sheriff in town who was appointed by President Biden. He vows to clean up the messes made by that last guy.
Merrick Brian Garland is a USA attorney and a jurist serving as the 86th United States attorney general since March 2021. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1997 to 2021.
The former federal judge and now Attorney General, Merrick Garland has just rescinded a Trump-era memo that curtailed the use of consent decrees federal prosecutors used in investigating police departments.
Garland rescinds Trump-era restrictions on federal investigations of police departments. In a four-page memo, he eliminated a policy enacted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2018 and followed by Barr that essentially blocked broad Justice Department inquiries of police forces and to enter into legal agreements for oversight.
According to published reports, such oversight can be costly and last for years. Los Angeles police entered such a decree in 2001 that didn’t end for more than a decade and cost taxpayers $300 million.
Attorney General Garland rescinded Trump-era memo curtailing consent decrees. The previous Justice Department didn’t totally ban a pattern or the practice investigations under Trump, but former Attorney General Bill Barr said they may have been previously overused.
