It`s a difficult thing for a city to be sued by the department of justice and to be told that your police department is systematically failing to serve the people of the state or the city.

Senator [Jeff] Sessions says people, cities sign these decrees because they don`t want to be sued by the justice department, as if he is, in some ways, questioning whether the things that are in these decrees are necessary and warranted.

Let me just say that we are under the consent decree. There are people in our city [Baltimore] along with the police department and advocates who believe that this is absolutely the right thing to do.

Jeff Sessions, the person who`s likely to become our next attorney general, is striking a very different tone from our current attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who announced a consent decree with the city of Baltimore.