Remedies: Should U.S. take over the Newark Police Department?

Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 inaugurated the era of the structural injunction.  The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit took on the task of forcing recalcitrant southern legislators and school officials to comply with the mandate of desegregation.  Judge John Minor Wisdom's leadership is brilliantly chronicled in Joel Friedman's Champion of Civil Rights (LSU 2009).  The desegregation effort eventually foundered on the rocks of residential segregation, as seen most bitterly in the Boston school busing controversy, discussed in this NPR story. 


But there were successes too.  One was the receivership imposed on the Essex County (NJ) jail by the late District Judge Harold Ackerman.  That litigation - a 25 year effort - ended with the construction of the new Essex County jail.

Essex County executives announce end of federal judicial supervision of county jail in 2007

Now the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has boldly petitioned the United States Department of Justice to effectively take custody of the Newark Police Department whose culture of lawlessness - a triggering factor in the Newark riots of 1967 - continues to impose great financial and personal burdens on the struggling city and its citizens.  
There are many reasons for the Department of Justice to hesitate to engage in the massive civil litigation the ACLU proposes.  One of them is the uncertain result of the New Jersey state takeover of the Newark public schools a decade ago.  Practicality but not federalism is probably the biggest question mark hanging over the effort.