Lawyer Basic Merrick B. Garland introduced on Monday a sweeping Justice Division investigation into the Louisville, Ky., metro police and the county authorities there, the second time in every week that the division has opened a civil investigation right into a police pressure that prompted nationwide furor for the killing of an unarmed Black particular person.
The Louisville police got here beneath fireplace after officers raided the house of a Black medical employee named Breonna Taylor final March and shot her to dying. Her killing helped gas nationwide racial justice protests final yr.
Critics have decried the tempo of the investigation into her dying. A grand jury indicted Brett Hankison, a former Louisville detective concerned within the raid, for wanton endangerment of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors, whose house was hit when he fired his gun. Nobody was charged for the dying of Ms. Taylor. (An earlier model of this merchandise misspelled Mr. Hankison’s identify.)
“In the present day’s announcement relies on an in depth overview of publicly obtainable data,” Mr. Garland mentioned in short remarks on the Justice Division. He mentioned that the inquiry into each the police and the Jefferson County authorities can be performed by the division’s Civil Rights Division and that it’ll assess whether or not the police division “engages in a sample or follow of utilizing unregulated or unreasonable pressure.”
Mr. Garland mentioned final week that the Justice Division had opened an investigation into the Minneapolis Police Division, a day after the previous officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of homicide within the dying of George Floyd.
The inquiries present that the Biden administration is searching for to use stricter oversight of native departments amid a nationwide outcry over police abuse.
Derrick Johnson, nationwide president of the N.A.A.C.P., applauded Monday’s announcement, saying “true justice comes with accountability and motion.”
“The connection between regulation enforcement and our group has been deeply fractured and shattered by the dearth of belief and the little-to-no accountability enforced when police commit a criminal offense,” he mentioned. “For much too lengthy, killings by the hands of police have solely led to 1 hashtag after one other.”
Such investigations into whether or not a division’s policing practices are unconstitutional are sometimes the precursors to court-approved agreements between the Justice Division and native governments that create and implement a street map for operational adjustments at police departments.
The investigation into the Louisville Police Division that Mr. Garland introduced on Monday is separate from the Justice Division’s ongoing legal investigation into the dying of Ms. Taylor, announced last May.