Gupta Gets Religion: What Have The Feds Done About It?

Whenever someone who once held a position of power speaks out, there is a gush of appreciation by those who feel validated by the words, the acknowledgement that they weren’t wrong, weren’t crazy. After all these years.

Of course, it usually happens after they’ve left their position of power, when they can no longer do anything about it other than complain and tacitly admit their failure.

But not Vanita Gupta, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She may be part of a very lame duck administration, but she still gets to sit at the big desk at DoJ until next January. And give the occasional talk at an academic conference, where she “explains” what’s wrong:

But we know that the true causes – the real reasons – for unrest run far deeper than any individual incident.  And we know that while public attention to these issues might be new, these causes are long-standing and systemic.  We’ve found these causes time and again through several of the 23 civil pattern-or-practice investigations we’ve opened into local police departments during this administration.  These cases focus not on individuals but on systems.  Broken systems – plagued by unlawful practices and tainted by bias – can devastate a community and corrode public trust, letting down not just the victims of police misconduct but the officers who seek to proudly wear the badge.

Broken systems? Whatever that means, okay. But if you know the “true causes – the real reasons,” then it raises a really big question. Why haven’t you done anything about it? You’ve written reports? You’ve gotten consent decrees from police departments to stop being bad boys from now on? Tepid, palliative measures that make for half-baked press releases and change nothing on the street?

But police are “plagued by unlawful practices and tainted by bias,” and you did nothing until the shit hit the fan, there were dead bodies in the street, and chaos in the community. After the mess, you came in and wrote a term paper explaining what everybody already knew? Aren’t you special.

While each of these communities struggled with unique problems, the broken systems and police misconduct caused residents to view the police, the courts or even government itself as arbitrary, biased and unfair.  And when residents didn’t trust law enforcement, they became less willing to share information – information critical to solving and preventing crimes.  Entire communities felt that the justice system was not protecting or serving them, perpetuating disillusionment and exacerbating tensions.  Simply put, unconstitutional policing threatens the security and well-being of our communities.  And that hurts us all.

Gupta runs through a list of familiar names, cities where tensions exploded after corpses could no longer be ignored. If she knew of “unconstitutional policing,” then where was she, where was the DoJ Office of Civil Rights, for the past eight years to fix the problems, clean up the cops, end the unconstitutional policing?

While Gupta didn’t personally come aboard the Obama administration until 2014, her office was there. What has it done since 2008?

Of course, broken systems and unconstitutional policing practices don’t operate in isolation from other inequities in our justice system.  Indeed, throughout the justice system – from arraignment to sentencing – when people experience a two-tiered system of justice that stacks the deck against those living in poverty, these broader failures erodes trust, too.  The entire Department of Justice – including our team at the Office for Access to Justice, led by Director Lisa Foster – has helped lead the charge against criminal justice policies that punish poverty.  We’ve sent a dear colleague letter to state and local judges to help end unlawful fine and fee practices that result in inescapable cycles of debt and incarceration.  We’ve shined a light on the right-to-counsel crisis by filing briefs around the country – arguing that if due to underfunding and high workloads, public defenders can’t meaningfully test the prosecution’s case, that violates the Sixth Amendment.  We’ve taken on the criminalization of homelessness, arguing that because every human being must sleep at some time and in some place, arresting and punishing a person for sleeping in public – when there aren’t enough shelter beds in the city and she has nowhere else to go – criminalizes the status of being homeless.  We’ve addressed unlawful bail practices that result in jailing presumptively innocent people solely because of their poverty, without consideration of their ability to pay or alternatives to incarceration, causing people to lose their jobs, their health benefits or their homes without any benefit to public safety.  As with the issue of systemic police misconduct, addressing these issues – by preventing the punishment of poverty and by ensuring access to justice for all – is critical to restoring and maintaining the public’s faith in the legitimacy of our institutions and the integrity of our democracy.

A long, tedious paragraph in desperate need of breaks, comprised entirely of bullshit. Public defenders are still ridiculously underfunded. The poor are still warehoused in debtors’ prisons and held on needless bail. Police misconduct continues unabated. Yes, these are “critical to restoring and maintaining the public’s faith in the legitimacy of our institutions,” and you’ve accomplished squat. Hope you didn’t get hurt patting yourself on the back for your great accomplishments.

At no point did OCR get ahead of the curve, deal with known problems before there were dead bodies in the street. At no point did OCR use its clout to force the “broken systems” to change, to shut down unconstitutional police practices. Where were you when Judge Shira Sheindlin held New York City’s “stop and frisk” program unconstitutional? But you knew all of this was wrong and did nothing to prevent it from happening?

In use-of-force cases, federal law requires us to prove both that the officer used “objectively unreasonable” force and that she or he acted willfully – “for the specific purpose of violating the law” – the highest standard of criminal intent in the federal code.  Mistake, misperception, negligence and poor judgment are not prosecutable at the federal level.  That said, during this administration, we have charged more than 580 law enforcement officials for committing willful violations of civil rights and related crimes.

To the unaware, charging 580 law enforcement officials may seem like a big deal, although you neglect to mention the dispositions. But when millions of people suffered constitutional deprivations during the same period, and you knew it was happening and did nothing, or worse, their actions were on your shoulders. It was your job to prevent this before it happened, not just prosecute a piddling number of cops after the fact.

Oh wait. You did get ahead of the curve on one issue.

For the past eight years, the Civil Rights Division has also worked tirelessly to make the promise of equal protection real for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.  Just last month, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  This law expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation.  It marked the first time that the words, “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” appeared in the United States Code.  It enhanced the legal toolkit available to prosecutors.  And it increased the ability of federal law enforcement to support our state and local partners.  In the years since, the Civil Rights Division has vigorously enforced this landmark statute.  And we continue to work with our partners on the federal, state and local levels to ensure the robust enforcement of hate crime statutes.

You were right on top of the big issue of transgender bathrooms, pushing your agenda ahead of the curve.  While the broken systems that put the poor into prison and left dead black bodies in the street didn’t merit your attention until after there was nothing left to do, at least you found the time to deal with where transgender kids pee while cops continued to kill.

9 thoughts on “Gupta Gets Religion: What Have The Feds Done About It?

  1. Jim Cline

    “Taking on” and “addressing problems” must not mean what I think it means. Maybe addressing problems refers to writing the address on the dear colleague letters?

  2. rojas

    [Ed. Note: Long anecdote deleted.]

    I know you don’t like anecdotes and this single anecdote of rednecks out in fly-over-ville does not prove the rule. But i think there was a time when the thought of a stint at club fed, had the potential at least, to have a moderating effect on the boys in blue. At least that was the impression many of us in the south had.

  3. Allen

    It never ceases to amaze me what some people see as progress. Who needs to fix-up the old family home when there are shiny new toys to look at.

  4. DaveL

    There’s an old joke about how many bureaucrats it takes to screw in a light bulb. The answer is two: one to reassure the public that everything possible is being done to restore the light fixture to full normal function, and the other to screw the light bulb into a water faucet.

    So the question is, while Ms. Gupta is here, who’s messing with the faucets?

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