Through years of broken promises, foot-dragging, millions of dollars in oversight fees and payouts in police misconduct lawsuits, U.S. District Judge Julian Cook has been patient as three Detroit police chiefs failed to comply with most federally mandated reforms, says the Detroit Free Press. The judge has extended deadlines and modified requirements since 2003, when the city signed agreements pledging to clean up the police department. He may have reached the end of his tolerance.
Now Cook has sent out a news release inviting the media to a hearing Friday to talk about the city’s progress in correcting massive problems uncovered by a 2000 Free Press probe of shootings by police, dragnet arrests and mistreatment of prisoners. Detroit cops promised to clean up their department years ago. But the legal agreements city officials signed in 2003 with the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division over questionable shootings of civilians, illegal dragnet arrests and inhumane treatment of prisoners, have remained unfulfilled for six years with no end in sight.