FILE - Police and protesters converge during a demonstration, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Recent revelations about the search warrant that led to Breonna Taylor's death have reopened old wounds in Louisville's Black community and disrupted the city's efforts to restore trust in the police department. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
FILE - Police and protesters converge during a demonstration, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Recent revelations about the search warrant that led to Breonna Taylor's death have reopened old wounds in Louisville's Black community and disrupted the city's efforts to restore trust in the police department. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
STWLOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A federal judge in Kentucky has dismissed Louisville’s proposed settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over police reforms after the department withdrew its support of the plan earlier this year.
The Justice Department it was canceling proposed consent decrees with Louisville and Minneapolis that sought to curb police racial bias and abuses after the killings of and that spurred nationwide protests in the summer of 2020.
U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton wrote in a Dec. 31 ruling that “the responsibility to lead the Louisville Metro Police Department in compliance with federal law must remain with the city’s elected representatives and the people they serve.”
A judge in May dismissed Minneapolis’ proposed consent decree, which places a federal officer in charge of tracking the progress of reforms laid out in the agreement.
Justice Department officials under President Joe Biden's administration prompted by the fatal shooting of Taylor and police responses to public protests in 2020. A draft of the investigation was released in early 2023, alleging the Louisville Police Department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants.
New DOJ leadership accused the Biden Justice Department of using flawed legal theories to judge police departments and pursuing costly and burdensome consent decrees.
The consent decrees with Louisville and Minneapolis were approved by the Justice Department in the final weeks of the Biden administration, but the settlements had to be approved by a judge.
Beaton wrote that his ruling “doesn’t prevent the parties from undertaking the hard work of reform themselves.”
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg pledged to continue to pursue reform after the Justice Department's withdrawal of support in May. The city created a and hired an independent law enforcement consulting group as monitor. Greenberg said some of the progress in 2025 included addressing a backlog of open records requests and making police shooting body camera videos public within 10 business days.
In a statement Friday, a spokesman for the mayor said Greenberg is “committed to ongoing reforms” and “did something no mayor in the country has done — he voluntarily created and implemented” Louisville's own reform plan.
The city initiated some reforms after Taylor’s death in March 2020, including a city law the use of “no-knock” warrants. The warrants were typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that sends behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls.
The city also to Taylor’s family.
Earlier this year, former Louisville Police Detective Brett Hankison became the first officer involved in the Taylor raid to go to prison. A to nearly three years in prison on an excessive force conviction despite the Justice Department’s efforts to reduce his sentence to one day of time served.
Hankison shot 10 rounds after police were fired on by Taylor’s boyfriend from inside her apartment. Hankison shot blindly into Taylor’s windows but didn’t strike anyone inside or in a neighboring apartment.
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