Civil rights-era government agency in Justice Department to be purged
Source: CBS News
Updated on: April 6, 2025 / 11:11 PM EDT
A landmark Justice Department office created in the 1960's during the civil rights movement is marked for closure by the Trump administration, raising fears of a loss of generations of work tamping down and working to prevent unrest in the nation's major cities. An internal Justice Department memo reviewed by CBS News said Trump appointees are considering closing the Community Relations Service, which was created as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The mission of the office is to be "America's peacemaker," tasked with "preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, conflicts, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony."
The Community Relations Service does not investigate or prosecute crimes and has no law enforcement authority, and according to the Justice Department, its services are both confidential and free of charge to communities that accept or request them. In 2021, the agency said of its mission that it sought to help realize Martin Luther King Jr.'s "inspiring dream of a vibrant, all-embracing nation unified in justice, peace, and reconciliation."
The office has a history of intervening during periods of heightened national unrest. It was credited with helping prevent another riot in 1993, as racial tensions re-emerged following the second trial of police who beat Rodney King in California. It also worked to ease rising racial tensions after the 1997 fatal police shooting of a Chinese-American man in Rohnert Park, California, in Akron, Ohio in 2022 after the shooting of a Black man by police and deploying twice to Minneapolis during the trial of Derek Chauvin after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 in Minnesota.
Former leaders of the Community Relations Service worry that shuttering the office could lead to a surge in disputes between police departments or city leaders and minority communities nationwide. "We would find and stop brush fires, before they became forest fires," said Ron Wakabayashi, a former regional director of the Community Relations Service. Wakabayashi told CBS News he fears the nation will be at greater risk of unrest, boycotts and lawsuits without the agency's Community Relations Service deployed regionally across nation.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/civil-rights-era-government-agency-to-be-purged/
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