US DOJ abandons police reform settlements over deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor

NEW YORK -- The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is dropping negotiations for court-approved settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville police agencies, despite previously finding that authorities routinely violated the civil rights of Black people.

"The two cases sparked worldwide outrage over fatal police encounters in 2020, during President Donald Trump's final year in office," said USA Today in its report about the move on Wednesday.

Federal authorities are also closing investigations and retracting findings of wrongdoing against police departments in Phoenix, Arizona, Memphis, Tennessee, Trenton, New Jersey, Mount Vernon, New York, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and the Louisiana State Police, according to the report.

"Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda," Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The announcement came days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, when then-police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck as he pleaded that he couldn't breathe. The Louisville case involved the March 13, 2020, killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death by police executing a no-knock warrant.