month, aggressively pushed away from the kind of federal interventions his predecessors had embraced for investigating departments accused of widespread racism or excessive use of force.

In his last act as Trump’s attorney general, Sessions made it harder for the US justice department to monitor troubled local police departments, by curtailing the attorney general’s ability to enforce court mandated reforms known as consent decrees.

Consent decrees had been used under the Obama administration to rein in a number of departments, including in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, following violent unrest in the wake of the killings of unarmed black men by police officers.

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Sessions frequently argued as attorney general that consent decrees increase crime and decrease officer morale. But the CCR report found that incities such as Los Angeles, where a consent decree had been in place until 2013, there was a 3o% decrease in use of force, a marked decrease in crime rates, and an increase in officer morale.

In a letter to Trump, the CCR chair, Catherine Lhamon, stated: “The United States Department of Justice should return to vigorous enforcement of constitutional policing … and the use of consent decrees where necessary to ensure that constitutional policing standards are upheld.”

The 60 year-old bipartisan commission is appointed by the president’s office and Congress but no longer has statutory authority to force any of its recommendations.

Lhamon was appointed by Obama during his last months in office and the CCR had commenced its investigation into police violence during Obama’s tenure as president.

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