How the Police Lobby Impedes Public Safety

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union sent a public records request this week to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), seeking information related to federal reform efforts with police departments in Memphis, Minneapolis, and Phoenix, that the Trump administration abruptly and prematurely ended last year. The request is part of the ACLU’s Seven States Safety Campaign, an initiative to hold police accountable in jurisdictions where Biden administration investigations found that police engaged in unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing. From 2021 to early 2025, the DOJ documented repeated civil rights violations in cities across the country, including officers using excessive force, targeting people of color, and violating constitutional rights as a matter of practice. In May 2025, the Trump administration rescinded near-final agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville that would have ensured police departments addressed the misconduct uncovered by the DOJ and withdrew findings from investigations in Arizona, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. In doing so, it claimed that the Biden administration’s reports “were based on faulty legal theories, incomplete data and flawed statistical methods,” and it disavowed “dubious legal theories of disparate impact” in police investigations. “Ensuring police are transparent, accountable, and trustworthy has never been more urgent, especially as the Trump administration works to shield police from accountability and let misconduct run rampant,” said Brandon Buskey, director of the Criminal Law Reform Project at the ACLU. “The administration has tried to discredit the findings of these investigations, but it cannot erase the truth. By keeping a spotlight on what federal investigators uncovered, we can hold local officials accountable to the communities they serve and to the Constitution.” The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has historically played a critical role in ensuring police departments comply with the Constitution. The Trump administration has abandoned that responsibility, walking away from sorely needed efforts to remedy documented civil rights violations and declining to open new ones. In many of the same cities where the DOJ previously found unconstitutional policing, the administration has deployed armed and masked federal agents who are using the very tactics federal investigators warned violated individual’s constitutional rights. These new FOIA’s will allow the ACLU to evaluate the validity of the Trump administrations claims about the previous administration’s findings, including whether Trump officials conducted any substantive review of the Biden-era reports before publicly criticizing them.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Today, Stand for Children Tennessee and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the city of Memphis for unlawfully denying access to public records that would shed light on the police department’s use of force policies and practices. The request, sent in May 2025, seeks to uncover whether the Memphis Police Department (MPD) has taken any steps to address misconduct and civil rights violations identified in the 2024 Department of Justice (DOJ) report. The ACLU filed similar requests in six other jurisdictions across the country that received DOJ findings reports about unlawful policing. MPD is the only department to issue a blanket denial. “This lawsuit is necessary because the public deserves answers,” said Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children Tennessee. “The DOJ confirmed that MPD engaged in excessive force, racial profiling, and discriminatory policing. More than a year later, Memphians still don’t know whether those findings have been addressed. “At a moment of expanded policing and federal involvement, transparency from our local police department is more important than ever. This lawsuit is about ensuring the public can access information that the law says should be available — so communities, journalists, and policymakers can understand what’s happening and respond accordingly.” The records denial comes amidst an alarming surge of federal law enforcement into Memphis. In September, the Trump administration issued a memo establishing a regressive policing task force made up of various federal law enforcement agencies. Over the past several months, armed and masked federal law enforcement have been working closely with the Memphis Police Department to patrol neighborhoods across the city, detaining Black and Brown residents at a disproportionate rate. “When police operate in the shadows, it allows misconduct to flourish and communities pay the price,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy director of policing at the ACLU. “That is exactly what we are seeing in Memphis today. Armed and masked federal agents are working hand in hand with MPD, reportedly using the same aggressive and unconstitutional tactics that led to the killing of Tyre Nichols and the subsequent DOJ investigation. We cannot afford to wait for another tragedy to happen before the city willingly increases transparency. The people of Memphis deserve answers about what is happening in their own streets.” Since the DOJ’s December 2024 report documenting MPD’s pattern of excessive force, racial discrimination, and unconstitutional policing, the city has not made sufficient reforms. Without more access to data and public records, the public has no meaningful way to assess whether the department has made any changes at all. The records request seeks existing documentation such as use‑of‑force reports and field investigation memos, which are routine records departments are required to maintain under MPD policy. MPD’s refusal to release the documents makes them an outlier among police departments in cities like Lexington, Mississippi and Louisville, Kentucky, which have already complied with similar requests. This denial reflects a broader pattern of resistance to public records requests by the city of Memphis. In a separate case last year, a judge found the city had willfully violated the Tennessee Public Records Act by unlawfully denying records and imposing improper barriers to access, underscoring ongoing concerns about transparency. Original Records Request (Sent May 21, 2025): https://stand.org/tennessee/memphis-police-department-official-records-request/