The Obama Justice Department on Friday announced its findings of a yearlong investigation into possible civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department. Critics contend the timing of the findings and the action DOJ will pursue in light of them are politically motivated, and symptomatic of a drive to vilify police.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the investigation uncovered a “pattern or practice” of excessive force and racial bias, and Lynch announced that the city entered into an “Agreement in Principle” with federal officials to work to craft a consent decree or “Settlement Agreement” — a binding court agreement which compels local police departments to make changes to their practices on pain of legal penalty.

“It is my hope that soon-to-be President Donald Trump will reverse this anti-cop attitude, and his nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions is a step in that direction.”

“One of my highest priorities as attorney general has been to ensure that every American enjoys police protection that is lawful, responsive, and transparent,” Lynch said “Sadly, our thorough investigation into the Chicago Police Department found that far too many residents of this proud city have not received that kind of policing.”

Critics believe the investigation and subsequent findings were driven by political considerations and reflect a longstanding problem of priorities for Obama’s Justice Department.

“This is a boilerplate finding that the race-obsessed, Obama-led Department of Justice has reached each and every time they have gone on this witch hunt against police departments throughout America,” said Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke in a statement provided to LifeZette.

“The Chicago police officer is not the problem in Chicago. A dysfunctional black underclass subculture leading to obscene rates of black on black crime is the problem,” Clarke said.

The report released by the department’s civil rights investigators appeared to entirely ignore uncomfortable realities about crime and race in Chicago. “C.P.D.’s own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color,” the task force wrote.

“Stopped without justification, verbally and physically abused, and in some instances arrested, and then detained without counsel — that is what we heard about over and over again,” the report said.

But what C.P.D’s crime data truly shows is Chicago is an effective war zone, ruled by gangs and riddled with violence.

Last year saw its highest murder rate in nearly two decades. A total of 762 homicides were recorded in Chicago in 2017 — a rate of two a day. There were 3,550 shooting incidents — nearly ten per day — and over 4,330 shooting victims.

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Given the blood-drenched and crime-ridden year that just passed, it is almost inconceivable that the Obama Justice Department considers it a top priority to go after the police.

The Justice Department has “adopted the battle cry over and over again that we are disproportionately stopping African-Americans, and their conclusion is that we are biased and racially profiling,” said former Chicago police superintendent Gary McCarthy during an interview with the Chicago-Sun Times on Thursday. “They’re wrong.”

“We profiled crime, not people. We went to the places, locations, and times when crime was most likely to happen,” McCarthy said.

“Time is running out on the anti-police echo chamber that has been the hallmark of the Barack Obama administration,” said Sheriff Clarke. “It is my hope that soon-to-be President Donald Trump will reverse this anti-cop attitude, and his nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions is a step in that direction.”

Robert Romano, senior editor at Americans for Limited Government, charged the Obama administration has aggressively sought to regulate local police departments under the false flag of civil rights violations.

“Once again, this is vast overreach by the Justice Department to regulate local policing,” Romano said. “Unfortunately, so long as 42 U.S.C. § 14141, a section of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which gives the attorney general the power to prosecute police misconduct, is the law of the land, this can continue to happen,” Romano continued.

“In addition to executive action by incoming Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Congress needs to act to repeal this section of law to truly get the Justice Department out of the business of regulating local police departments,” Romano continued.

Trump’s nomination of Sessions could very well explain the timing of the Justice Department’s announcement. Sessions is not only an outspoken proponent of law enforcement, but he is also a fierce critic of consent decrees.

“One of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, exercises of raw power is the issuance of expansive court decrees,” he wrote in 2008 long before the Obama administration had politicized their use to an unprecedented degree. “Consent decrees have a profound effect on our legal system as they constitute an end run around the democratic process,” he wrote.

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The Obama Justice Department may see an opportunity to set a political trip wire for Sessions.

The Alabama senator has been bombarded with debunked accusations of racism from Democrats and liberal activists during his confirmation hearings. Outgoing Democratic officials at DOJ likely know Sessions will want to tackle violence in Chicago without vilifying police and therefore is not likely to continue the policy set Friday.

That policy will in effect put Sessions in the position of having to oversee that decree or else cancel the federal takeover of a police department the Obama administration declared systemically racist only weeks before.

Such a reversal of the Obama administration’s late move would give liberals the chance to claim Sessions was acting out of racial animus, allowing civil rights-challenged police a free pass.