Milwaukee’s Chief of Police Ed Flynn asked the feds to review his department after it was announced that no federal civil rights charges would be pursued in the case of Dontre Hamilton, who was shot and killed by a former MPD officer in April 2014.
Officer Chris Manney
AP
Dontre Hamilton
Hamilton family
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Milwaukee Police Department have agreed to a federal review of the city's force, officials announced Tuesday.
The DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) said Milwaukee's police will undergo a voluntary process — known as a "collaborative reform initiative" — led by federal officials. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the city is only the ninth department in the country to apply for the voluntary review.
The decision to review the MPD comes after the department's chief, Edward Flynn, put in a request with the DOJ last month requesting the review of his department.
Flynn announced that he put in the request on the same day that the Justice Department announced it would not pursue federal civil rights charges over the April 2014 shooting death of mentally ill Milwaukee man Dontre Hamilton by former MPD officer Chris Manney.
Hamilton family attorney Jonathan Safran told BuzzFeed News that he welcomes the federal review, but added that the process "really does not have anything to do with Dontre Hamilton's case, other than the fact that Chief Flynn announced it the same day that the Civil Rights Division announced that it was not going to pursue charges against Christopher Manney."
The Journal-Sentinel reports that the COPS review takes a less adversarial approach than a consent decree — or a formal monitoring program of police like the investigation announced last week in Chicago.
"I suspect that the COPS process is at least the MPD's attempt to avoid such a full investigation from being undertaken," Safran said.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1UvoEDE
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