Police Unions Want Trump to Renegotiate Consent Decrees

Emboldened by Trump's election, some of the country’s biggest police groups want to renegotiate "consent decrees" agreed to under President Barack Obama, the police labor groups said in interviews.

Consent decrees are agreements between a police force and the Justice Department that can prescribe changes to use of force, recruiting, training and discipline. They are enforced by a federal court with the oversight of court-appointed monitors.

Currently 14 police departments, including Seattle and Miami, are operating under the decrees, Reuters reports.

The police groups want to discuss the decrees with Jeff Sessions, Trump's designee for attorney general who has voiced criticism of them, although any renegotiation would be legally complicated because all parties as well as a federal judge must approve any changes.

“There are certainly decrees that are inartfully applied that we’d like to see revisited,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union with 330,000 members. It endorsed Trump in September and has worked with Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, for years while lobbying Congress for pro-police policies.