How does success or failure in Los Angeles affect the U.S. Department of Justice at this juncture?
Stone: Congress granted the Justice Department this power in 1994. The Department used that power extensively during the Clinton administration’s second term, and continued to do so during the first term of the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2003. But since 2003, those powers have been dormant. Congress didn’t repeal them; they remain on the books, but the Department of Justice has not been using them. The Obama administration now has to decide whether or not to revive that program, and that depends in part on whether the Department’s intervention can really solve the problems in a police agency. So Los Angeles is a test of that question: a test of the efficacy of the Department’s powers. If the effort to restructure the police department in Los Angeles does not succeed, then it’s very unlikely that these powers are going to be useful anywhere. The case in Los Angeles is the biggest ever brought against a city police department and has had the most resources devoted to it. It has al
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