On May 21, Trump’s Department of In-Justice announced that it was canceling two proposed settlements reached during the Biden administration that would have put the cities of Minneapolis and Louisville under federal oversight of their police departments (known as consent decrees). They also said they were withdrawing reports that came out under Biden on patterns of discrimination and excessive violence on the part of six other police departments.¹

Please note: The Trump regime chose to end those police reform efforts on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the horrific strangling murder of George Floyd by pigs on a Minneapolis street. It is very hard to believe this was coincidental.

Consent decrees are court-approved arrangements in which local police agree to be under federal supervision, including various reforms putting some official restraints on cops, like “better supervision,” “more transparency” about use of force, etc. In Minneapolis, a consent decree was drafted after a federal report found the city’s police department engaged in “a pattern of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and the federal law,” including repeated use of “unjustified deadly force,” discrimination against Black and Native people, and violation of the right to free speech.

An Unprecedented Uprising

The murder of George Floyd was caught on video. People across the country and the world saw a cop cold-bloodedly shove George Floyd's head onto the pavement and hold his knee on George Floyd’s neck until the 47-year-old Black man was dead. For those 9 minutes and 39 seconds, we all saw and heard George Floyd gasping for air and struggling to utter his last words, “Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill. I can’t breathe.”

The murder of George Floyd came not long after the police killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville pigs. She had been asleep in bed before they smashed down the door to her apartment unannounced (on what turned out to be a “mistake”) and then opened fire.

As people watched the video of the police murder of George Floyd, images and direct experiences flashed across their minds of decades of similar outrage after outrage—and it was finally too much. First in their thousands and then in their millions, people came out into the streets—Black people, and people of all nationalities and ages—to demand an end to police terror and systematic racism. They did this in the face of the violent repression of the police and armed fascist thugs, and through their determination drove the cowardly bully Donald Trump into his White House basement bunker. Over 20 people—Black, white, Latino and others—were killed fighting for justice in that uprising. People around the world joined in this beautiful uprising.

This unprecedented uprising shook this system of capitalism-imperialism in this country to its foundations, as people bravely stood up, night after night, against  the forces of violent repression over Black and other oppressed people. Local, state and federal authorities scrambled to come up with “reforms” they promised would limit racist police brutality and murder. The Biden Justice Department began investigations into 12 state and local police forces, with the aim of negotiating some federal oversight of police training and “accountability.” The consent decrees for the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments weren’t even submitted for approval to judges until the last few weeks of the Biden presidency. And now Trump has thrown them out completely.

Consent Decrees Don’t End Police Murder—but Ending Them Sends a Clear Signal to the Pigs to Cut Loose on People

Consent decrees and other reforms haven't stopped—and won't stop—police brutality and murder. As is brought out in Bob Avakian on Police Brutality and Murder: Consent Decrees Won’t Stop This—We Need a Revolution! consent decrees and other “police reform” measures are mainly intended to pacify and control the anger of masses of people, and have no fundamental impact on the police. Still, for the Trump fascist regime, any federal oversight or other restraints on local police is “too restraining” for the full-out fascist policing they are moving quickly to put into effect. 

The reality is that wanton violence and terror against the people is essential to the actual role of the police—of serving and protecting the system that rules over us. In fact, every year since 2020 the number of people killed by police has increased, disproportionately targeting Black, Latino and Native American people. In 2023, police across the country killed 1,226 people—an 18 percent increase compared with the year before the murder of George Floyd.

A recent New York Times article points out that the increases in killings by police are not uniform across the country: since the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014 that sparked a nationwide uprising, rates of killings by police in Democratic-controlled states have dropped slightly while the rates in fascist-controlled states have increased 23 percent. 

Yes, Derek Chauvin, the pig who choked the life out of George Floyd, was tried and sentenced to prison. But, as the Times article points out, “even as the number of police killings has risen in the years since, it has remained exceedingly rare for officers to be charged with crimes for those deaths.” And now, prominent fascists like Ben Shapiro are campaigning for Derek Chauvin’s release!

Fascists Step Up Repression of Anti-Brutality Protesters

Even as killings by police have increased, states have passed new laws with stiffer prison sentences and higher fines for protesters, especially in the fascist-controlled states. In the year after the beautiful uprising, Republicans introduced 81 anti-protest bills in 34 states; and just in the first three months of this year, there have been 41 anti-protest bills in 22 states. There are also bills that would protect drivers who hit, and even kill, protesters.

It was no accident the fascist Dept. of In-justice chose this moment to end the consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police. Trump's message to Black people, and to all those determined to stand with them, is: “Fuck you, your lives don't matter.” 

The ending of the consent decrees is part of Trump's recently issued executive order aimed at further “unleashing” and militarizing the police—and bringing them more directly under the command of the Trump fascist regime—to carry out more unrestrained brutality and murder, and forceful repression of protest and dissent.

As we wrote last week in the article on that executive order: 

Just five years ago, millions took to the streets day after day and night after night to demand: "Stop killing Black people!" This shook this system to its foundations. Those millions may be demoralized and disoriented, but five years later, as the very thing that gave rise to that uprising promises to get much, much worse, the potential power of those millions needs to be felt—urgently. 

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA! 
THE FASCIST TRUMP REGIME MUST GO NOW!

THIS WHOLE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN AND ILLEGITIMATE—WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM!