How Trump’s DOJ could severely curtail oversight of police

A new Justice Department investigation has revealed that officers in the Memphis Police Department use excessive force, discriminate against Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities, and engage in unlawful searches and arrests. 

The harrowing findings, part of a report released Wednesday, are the result of a 17-month investigation into the department, launched after Memphis police killed 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in a traffic stop last year. But for now, Memphis isn’t required to act on the findings. 

Any legally binding commitment to reform would require more action by DOJ, including a possible lawsuit and settlement with the city. It’s not guaranteed that the agency will — or would be able to — take that action before President-elect Donald Trump starts his second term, however. And if it doesn’t, the Trump administration could choose not to pursue oversight of Memphis at all. Trump, as well as his allies at the Heritage Foundation and elsewhere, have made clear that they’re less interested in efforts to hold police accountable than President Joe Biden has been. 

That much was evident during the first Trump administration, when the DOJ significantly dialed back its oversight of police. Over Trump’s four years in office, the DOJ opened just one new investigation into potential departmental civil rights violations, far less than the 25 it opened during former President Barack Obama’s tenure and the 12 it has opened under Biden. Additionally, it was much more reluctant to enter into legal agreements with cities about required police reforms — one of the department’s best tools for enforcing changes to policing. 

“Based on the first Trump administration, I would expect that in the second Trump administration, civil or criminal investigations into police will decrease,” Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the ACLU, told Vox.  

What federal oversight of police entails

There are two key avenues for DOJ oversight of police departments: civil pattern-or-practice investigations and criminal investigations of individual offenses.  

The Memphis investigation was the former. Pattern-or-practice investigations can be triggered by a specific incident, but seek to examine whether there is a pattern of systemic civil rights violations by a locality’s police department. The DOJ’s Memphis inquiry was prompted by the brutal police killing of Nichols — a Black man who was tased and beaten by five officers after getting pulled over for a traffic stop in the city last year — and aimed to examine just how widespread such problems are. (That incident is also the subject of its own separate federal criminal inquiry.) 

Once the DOJ concludes its investigation and announces its findings, it typically files a lawsuit if it identifies misconduct. A judge will then impose what’s known as a consent decree, or a court mandate, for the city to implement reforms that both the locality and DOJ agree upon. These changes can include requirements that a police force reduce the frequency of use of force incidents and improve community trust in police, among other possible provisions.

The court also appoints an independent monitor to oversee the department’s efforts, who will keep an eye on progress or violations of the consent decree. Cities that don’t comply with consent decrees can be fined and face other penalties.

Memphis has said it won’t enter into negotiations with DOJ about potential reforms until it has an opportunity to review and push back on the report’s findings. And if the Trump administration decides not to pursue the typical lawsuit, Memphis likely won’t need to enter a consent decree at all.

A similar scenario transpired in 2017 after the Obama administration identified police abuses in Chicago following a pattern-or-practice investigation, and Trump’s DOJ chose not to pursue the process further. (In that case, the state of Illinois stepped in to finalize a consent decree with the city.)

The Trump administration could walk away from these investigations

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly signaled an intent to empower police, often making remarks that suggested a reduction in federal oversight of law enforcement.  

“We will give our police back their power, protection, respect that they deserve,” he said in July, pledging to end Democrats’ so-called “war on … police.” 

He’s talked, too, about emboldening officers to use force, rather than curbing the practice: “They have to be extraordinarily rough,” Trump has said about police’s response to shoplifters, claiming, too, that one “violent day” of policing would end crime. Other policies that Trump has advocated for, like the return of stop and frisk, which has led to racial profiling in the past, and the provision of military-grade equipment to local police, also stress an interest in empowering law enforcement. 

Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation policy wish list put together by Trump allies, has projected a similar message, urging the elimination of existing consent decrees.

And Trump’s first term also offered a preview of how the DOJ could take a much laxer approach to police oversight once the president-elect is back in office. It could do so in several ways, experts told Vox. 

The first way is that it could pull back on existing consent decrees that have already been put into place. In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to delay the implementation of a consent decree that the Obama administration had already negotiated with Baltimore, but such efforts were blocked by the courts. Given this precedent, it would likely be difficult for the DOJ to drop the decrees entirely, though it could dedicate fewer resources to oversight or helping the local department craft policies for training and other needs. 

The second way is that it could effectively abandon investigations that have not yet resulted in consent decrees. Cities like Memphis and Phoenix, for example, have yet to enter into settlements with the DOJ. If they fail to do so prior to the end of the Biden administration, it’s unlikely that the Trump administration will pursue them. At that point, state governments, or civil rights organizations like the ACLU, could potentially step in and use the DOJ investigation to file lawsuits of their own, with the goal of forcing courts to require changes by these cities. In the interim, however, these cities won’t face binding requirements to pursue police reforms. 

During Trump’s first term, Sessions explicitly instructed DOJ staff to “exercise special caution” when agreeing to a consent decree with local governments and effectively told them to do so sparingly. Sessions also required DOJ lawyers to “get permission from many of the Justice Department’s most senior officials before entering into a consent decree,” Vox’s Ian Millhiser wrote. 

“Technically … the Attorney General is supposed to be somewhat independent from the President. But in reality … if the President says, you know, I’m not sure we need to be involved in these cases as aggressively as the prior administration [was], I think any attorney general would see the tea leaves there,” Michael Gennaco, a former DOJ civil rights attorney and principal at OIR Group, an independent auditor that works with cities to review police practices, told Vox.

The third way the Trump administration could reduce oversight is by opening up fewer new investigations altogether. The lower number of pattern-or-practice investigations opened in Trump’s first term, compared to Biden’s and Obama’s, underscores the likelihood of this possibility. 

The DOJ has a unique authority and access when it comes to looking into misconduct by local police departments and doing a deep dive on their day-to-day operations. State governments also have this capacity, but they tend to have fewer resources than the federal government — and they aren’t backed by the same laws that empower federal investigations. 

That means if Trump’s DOJ takes a step away from police oversight, there will be no comparable authority that can scrutinize departments to the same degree. 

“The horrific attack on Tyre Nichols, that kind of police violence never comes out of nowhere,” Borchetta said. “It always results from some kind of department-wide problem, but understanding what problem leads to that kind of tragedy requires looking under the hood of the police department.”