Washington D. C. – Federal officials investigating the fatal January 7th shooting of Renée Good in Minneapolis have sidelined the Justice Department unit that typically handles civil-rights reviews of officer-involved shootings, according to multiple reports.
The shooting involved a federal immigration officer, and the inquiry is now being led by the FBI alongside the local U.S. attorney’s office, as reported by The Washington Post. In many high-profile uses of deadly force, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, particularly its Criminal Section, assesses whether a federal civil-rights prosecution is warranted, including potential violations under 18 U.S.C. § 242.
But in this case, CBS News reported that career prosecutors who offered to deploy were told the division would not participate.
While various reports discuss the frustration within the DOJ over the denial, one expert, who has studied the division’s practices, says they shouldn’t be deployed on any cases until they are held accountable for their past transgressions.
Dr. Travis Yates completed an exhaustive study on the agency’s investigation of law enforcement agencies and, in one case, found that the division lied or misled in 97% of the cases discussed.
In the report, Yates said that a major issue in the deceit was that DOJ Investigators didn’t understand basic case law or the constitutional grounds for the use of force.
According to the research, “the DOJ descriptions evidence misinterpretations of case law, constitutional law, public safety best practices, and proven law enforcement policies, training, and tactics, and demonstrated hindsight bias far beyond the scope of extant case law.”
According to Yates, no law enforcement investigative body would still exist after they lied on such a grand scale, and until the division has proven they have corrected course, no one should trust them with a law enforcement investigation.
After reading Yates’ research, it’s hard to argue. You can read the full research document here.
