WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced on Wednesday a sweeping investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, signaling that the Biden administration will seek to combat police abuses around the country and apply stricter federal oversight to local forces.
The Justice Department will examine whether the Minneapolis police routinely use excessive force or treat minorities unfairly. The inquiry will also scrutinize police training and accountability practices, among other issues. Mr. Garland’s announcement came a day after the conviction of former Officer Derek Chauvin in the murder last year of George Floyd, a Black man whose death spurred the largest racial justice protests in decades.
“Good officers do not want to work in systems that allow bad practices,” Mr. Garland said in brief remarks delivered at the Justice Department. “Officers welcome accountability because accountability is an essential part of building trust with the community and public safety requires public trust.”
The Minneapolis police have long faced accusations of racism. Black residents are more likely to be pulled over, arrested or roughed up than white residents. Black people, who account for 20 percent of the city’s population, made up more than 60 percent of the victims in city police shootings from late 2009 through May 2019, police data shows.
testified against Mr. Chauvin this month.
President Biden had vowed as a candidate to fight excessive force by the police, and he called on lawmakers on Tuesday to resurrect the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a measure by Democrats aimed at curbing police misconduct and racial discrimination. Lawmakers in both parties said on Wednesday that they hoped Mr. Chauvin’s conviction could help revive the bill, which seeks to curtail qualified immunity for officers, ease the way for prosecutions and mandate more changes for departments.
Mr. Chauvin is being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in the state’s only maximum-security prison, according to the authorities. Though officials at the prison in a suburb of St. Paul say Mr. Chauvin is being isolated for his own safety, prisoners are often sent to the wing as a punishment.
The Justice Department inquiry is a return to robust federal oversight of local policing that had been a hallmark of the Obama era. During the Trump administration, the Justice Department largely stopped opening civil investigations into broad police misconduct, known as pattern-or-practice investigations.
Such inquiries sometimes end in consent decrees, court-approved deals between the department and local governments that create and enforce a road map for training and operational changes. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions had curbed the use of consent decrees, calling them unfair to police departments.
restored the Justice Department’s use of consent decrees last week and called pattern-or-practice investigations “an important tool of the Justice Department to ensure police accountability” in a recent interview with ABC News.
He has also characterized civil rights issues, including addressing police misconduct, as one of his top priorities. He has said that he sees Vanita Gupta, a well-known civil rights lawyer who was confirmed on Wednesday to serve as the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, as crucial to that mission, along with Kristen Clarke, Mr. Biden’s choice to run the department’s Civil Rights Division.
“They have skills that I do not have,” Mr. Garland told civil rights leaders last week. “They have experiences that I do not have.”
But overhauling police departments has always been a balancing act for the department, which relies heavily on state and local police forces to help fight crime. Mr. Garland and his top deputies were confirmed with broad support from police groups, and they have all said they do not support progressive proposals like defunding the police.
Civil rights activists have pressed federal law enforcement officials to do more to curb abuses, but Mr. Biden dismayed activists by reversing course on a promised police oversight commission.