Friday, November 20, 2020

NOW they're jumping ship

Donald Trump’s Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice lost another member on Thursday when [Kansas’s Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree] requested that the Department of Justice remove his name from a report addressing police reform recommendations[, saying he believed the commission’s work was “smothered by a pernicious political agenda.”].

[...]

Dupree’s letter, a copy of which was viewed by Reuters, also expressed concerns over the commission’s refusal to address systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Dupree, who is Black, is the second member of the commission to have resigned while a third has said the DOJ is refusing to take the concerns of all parties involved in its operation seriously.

[...]

[A] federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled in October that the commission was operating in violation of a several facets of federal statutory law, prohibiting it from even releasing reports and other work product until the myriad violations were remedied.

[...]

District Judge John Bates reasoned that the commission’s composition—consisting exclusively of current and former law enforcement officials—and a lack of transparency violated multiple provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Barr had stacked the commission’s 18 members exclusively with law enforcement professionals who were employed as police, prosecutors or federal officials while none had any background in criminal defense, civil rights, academia, or social work areas.

[...]

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in April sued the administration after Barr ignored its request to appoint additional commissioners that would help balance the law enforcement-only viewpoints of the commission’s make-up.

[...]

Judge Bates said earlier this month that the commission would be permitted to release its final policing reforms report on the condition that it be marked with a disclaimer stating that the commission broke the law in failing to be “fairly balanced” in its members and not giving the public “timely notice” of its meetings.

  Law and Crime
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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