At the outset, let me say that I consider the overwhelming majority of police officers to be dedicated professionals,who serve our communities well and faithfully. That said, there are enough who abuse the authority given them that violation of rights of citizens by police has become a major problem in major US cities. I have seen examples even here in progressive Portland. I know one woman personally, a blind women with great grand children. For arguing with officers she was tased, shoved to the ground and beaten with night sticks. She sued the city and won a judgment in the $hundreds of thousands. I am most pleased that the Obama administration is taking this problem seriously.

In a marked shift from the Bush administration , President Obama’s Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force. In interviews, activists and attorneys on the ground in several cities where the DOJ has dispatched civil rights investigators welcomed the shift. To progressives disappointed by Eric Holder’s Justice Department on key issues like the failure to investigate Bush-era torture and the prosecution of whistle-blowers, recent actions by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are a bright spot. In just the past few months, the Civil Rights Division has announced "pattern and practice" investigations in Newark, New Jersey and Seattle. It’s also conducting a preliminary investigation of the Denver Police Department, and all this is on top of a high-profile push to reform the notorious New Orleans Police Department — as well as criminal prosecutions of several New Orleans officers. The "pattern and practice" authority comes from a 1994 law passed by Congress after the brutal beating of Rodney King by white Los Angeles police officers, who allegedly yelled racial slurs as they hit him. The law allows the DOJ to sue police departments if there is a pattern of violations of citizens’ constitutional rights — things like an excessive use of force, discrimination, and illegal searches. Often, after an investigation, the police department in question will enter into a voluntary reform agreement with the DOJ to avoid a lawsuit and the imposition of reforms. "Under the Bush administration, the Justice Department disappeared here in terms of federal civil rights enforcement. You could see the shift to counterterrorism at the ground level after Sept. 11," says Mary Howell , a New Orleans civil rights attorney who has been working on police misconduct cases for more than three decades. "Now they’re back doing criminal prosecutions of police and the civil rights investigation, which is huge."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Salon>

While this does not excuse Obama’s prosecution of whistleblowers and failure to pursue Bush, Cheney, et al, for their many crimes against humanity and against the citizens of the US, it is yet another area in which his administration is superior to anything Republicans have to offer.