ACLU wants review of St. Anthony police department released, but Sessions may not let that happen

Back in September, the Department of Justice announced that its Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, would make changes to its "Collaborative Reform Initiative," which had been working with the St. Anthony department for many months.

In late 2016 — after St. Anthony officials made an unsolicited request to the feds — the COPS office announced that it would conduct a "collaborative reform" review of the city's police. The request came after a now-former St. Anthony police officer fatally shot African-American motorist Philando Castile during a traffic stop in July 2016, triggering protests nationwide.

The COPS office, under the Obama administration, held several listening sessions in St. Anthony, a suburb of St. Paul where citizens attended and voiced concerns.Those sessions wrapped up in January of last year, and the report was expected by community observers — based on their contacts with the COPS office — to be finished by October 2017.

To date, the review has not been released.

The Justice Department's September announcement regarding changes to the COPS office came months after Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo in March to his department heads ordering staff to review all Department of Justice programs to make sure they promoted "officer safety, officer morale, and public respect for their work."

Local community groups involved in the process have speculated that the St. Anthony review — given the tenor of Sessions' memo — will now probably never come. In addition to St. Anthony, no other "collaborative reform" reports have been released nationwide since Sessions took over the Justice Department.

On Jan. 4, the ACLU issued a request under the Freedom of Information Act for any documentation relating to any "existing or contemplated" reviews — including any review drafts, or documented debate on what to do with them. The request does not name the St. Anthony department's review specifically; ACLU officials noted there were several departments with unreleased reviews — so it asked for all of them, rather than list them individually.

"Depending on this FOIA request outcome, we may then follow up on specific jurisdictions," said Kanya Bennett, the ACLU's legislative council, who added that the request was "exhaustive," and included the unreleased reviews themselves — whatever state they were in.

The Justice Department's September announcement said the COPS office was being revamped to offer "technical assistance" to departments, including police training programs in a variety of subjects, from responding to active shooters to de-escalation to responding to mass demonstrations.

While collaborative reviews included recommendations on the types of assistance police departments might need, requests for "technical assistance" would have to come from local departments, which are expected to identify their own needs.

"These changes will return control to the public safety personnel sworn to protect their communities and focus on providing real-time technical assistance to best address the identified needs of requesting agencies to reduce violent crime," the Justice Department's September announcement read.

The ACLU's information request also included any documentation relating to those "technical assistance" requests.