Consent and dissent

An impressive group of people gathered at the Wayne State University School of Law last week to talk about the two federal consent decrees the Detroit Police Department has been under since 2003.

In the room were one current and two former U.S. attorneys, ranking members of the city administration and Police Department, current and former City Council members, members of the Board of Police Commissioners, and victims of police abuse along with their advocates and lawyers.

Getting them all to sit down was in itself quite an achievement.

But News Hits left the event wondering, "What, exactly, did they accomplish?"

The questions asked were certainly valid. We wrote a cover story about many of the same issues last week, looking at reasons why the oversight has dragged on for nearly eight years. And why, after eight years, much work still remains for the department to be in compliance.

The decrees — sought by the U.S. Department of Justice following a 30-month investigation into the Police Department's excessive use of force, dangerous lockups and illegal roundups of potential witnesses — were necessary. Few would dispute that.

The main question behind the so-called "Day of Inquiry" — sponsored by the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Detroit/Michigan Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and the Damon J. Keith Center for Human Rights — was this: Can the courts protect us from police abuse?

But we already know the answer to that.

For the first six years of oversight, little was accomplished in the way of protecting the citizens of Detroit from police abuse. That's an undeniable fact.

Some, like attorney Ron Glotta, noted from the outset that the effort was flawed because it involved privatization. Instead of having government officials directly involved, the task was assigned to a "monitor" who was handsomely paid to perform the task. Pay someone $1 million to $2 million a year — especially a private corporation whose mission is to maximize profits — and the tendency is to want to keep the gravy train rolling.

And then there's the fact that the people most responsible for implementation of the consent decrees were never allowed to be part of the formal process.

With the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality leading the way, members of the community spent years, beginning in 1996, trying to raise awareness about the issue of police shootings and other problems that were rampant in the department.

But they were excluded from participating in the DOJ investigation. And, with attorneys for the National Lawyers Guild representing them, they were kept out of the process when they formally petitioned U.S. Judge Julian Cook to be part of the consent decree process.

"At every juncture we welcomed and wanted citizen participation," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Levy, who has been the Justice Department's lead person in the reform effort since its onset.

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