Trump administration to scrap police reform measures in some US cities

The Trump administration said it will roll back Biden-era police reform efforts in cities where there has been controversy over high-profile police killings and brutality.

The US justice department said on Wednesday it will be dismissing oversight agreements reached with the police departments in Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis, Missouri.

It will also be scraping investigations into police constitutional violations in other cities, including Phoenix and Memphis.

The announcement comes just days before the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in 2020 after being arrested outside a shop in Minneapolis, sparking a wave of protests.

The police office involved, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder charges and is serving a 22 year prison sentence.

Announcing the move to roll back the reform efforts, the Department of Justice criticised the Biden administration for enacting "sweeping" oversight agreements "that would have imposed years of micromanagement" of local police by federal courts.

"We are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division's failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments," said Harmeet K Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the justice department's civil rights division.

The justice department said it will also move to dismiss two lawsuits filed against police in Louisville and Minneapolis that accuse law enforcement in the two cities of unconstitutional police practices.

Investigations into several other police departments will also be closed.

The Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden had opened civil investigations into 12 state and local law enforcement agencies since 2021.

They were a result of mounting public pressure to address instances of police brutality after several high-profile cases of police killings of black Americans, which led to accusations of systemic racism against law enforcement agencies across the US.