The same day Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in St. Louis not talking about the Ferguson consent decree, he quietly sent a memo to U.S. Attorneys across the country that critics fear will undo that agreement and others aimed at reforming abusive police departments.The March 31 memo, obtained by the Washington Post, revealed plans to "immediately review" the pacts to make sure they fit with the Justice Department's new guiding principles — which include goals to promote "officer morale, and public respect for their work."
In St. Louis, Sessions made it clear he thinks that cops have gotten a bad rap lately and that reports of abuse are grossly overblown.
"Unfortunately, in recent years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the crimes and unacceptable deeds of a few bad actors," Sessions told an audience of metro area officers inside the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse downtown. "Amid this intense public scrutiny and criticism, morale has gone down, while the number of police officers killed in the line of duty has gone up."
The "few bad actors" assessment clashes with the findings of Sessions' Justice Department predecessors, who spent months documenting "a pattern or practice" of unconstitutional police conduct in Ferguson.…