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This statute was created to give the department of justice, the attorney general, the authority to investigate unconstitutional policing, misconduct by law enforcement and to sue local police departments for those constitutional violations and then to engage in consent decrees to resolve the disputes. this is a legal obligation. this is not about the policy of mr. trump, the president, or the opinion about crime fighting by attorney general sessions. the statute, 42 usc 14141, is the law enforcement misconduct statute. that's the focus. it's not focussed on illegal immigration or drug traffick...

Don't have the data for doing more reform and i think that's what he is actually doing here. >> steven, you represent cleveland. go ahead. >> yes, sir. i appreciate being on this panel. and i can tell you this. these consent decrees are very, very dangerous. there is not a police officer or police agency out here that doesn't always want to move forward and do the best practices. here in the city of cleveland we have done that. what we can't tolerate as police officers is large -- large-scale changes based on false narrative out there. i have heard several times cons t tution -- constitutional...

Commitment to issues of equity, justice and definitely not race. we know the federal government has been an important party in intervening to ensure that civil rights are held at the state level, that states, left to their own devices, have never been good on these issues. think about the voting rights act. the consent decrees would not have been necessary if there had been not an established pattern of wrong doing. you think about new orleans where officers were calling hits on people. baltimore, where there was clear discriminatory practices. ferguson where police were sicking dogs on people...

And chicago. releasing findings about it, and in case of some of these jurisdictions, enter into consent decrees which are essentially agreements that are judicially enforced that require police departments to make certain kinds of changes to ensure they're engaged in constitutional policing. what the attorney general has done is in the middle of this momentum, he's dropped into it with a kind of retro 1980s perspective about policing and crime, and he's determined, specially, to pull the department of justice out of the reform and the momentum of the reform effort. >> now, i think part of the...

What this means for the attorney general to now order review of consent decrees, and of police reform that many of us helped to work with and even push the obama administration to begin. >> thank you, reverend al. it has to be put in context. you and i know what's happened over the last few years, and the way in which an issue that has long been living within the american community has come to the front of american life. that's the important issue of unconstitutional policing, police brutality and the need for police reform. and that conversation has really moved to the forefront, and reform i...