I agree with this editorial by the New York Times (which the President has called 'fake news')
"There is no need to reopen the Obama Justice Department’s painstaking investigations of nearly two dozen police departments accused of widespread abuse, or the court-enforced agreements the department reached requiring cities like Cleveland, Seattle and Ferguson, Mo., to enact reforms. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that he might back away from those agreements, he was playing to police officers who have bristled at calls to root out racist and unconstitutional practices that have been well documented by the Justice Department."
If you look back at American history, the local and state police were the main enforcement arm of white supremacy and Jim Crow. It is naive to think that white supremacy is dead in the U.S. Sessions' and the adminstration's approach appeal to white supremacists and others who think that police brutality helps keep the poor and blacks in their places. Perhaps this is the Trump version of Nixon's 'southern strategy.'
The court orders in the 'pattern and practice' lawsuits are one of the few reform mechanisms that have a chance to clean up the police. Research shows that these settlements can be effective although there tends to be backsliding once court supervision ends and the agency returns to its prior approaches.
http://samuelwalker.net/issues/federal-pattern-or-practice-litigation/
http://samuelwalker.net/2017/04/ag-sessions-review-doj-investigations-police-walker-comments/
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