“Five years ago, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot a young Black man, Michael Brown, and decades of frustration over racially biased and unconstitutional policing exploded in the streets as the world watched.”

“In the months and years that followed, the Obama administration helped draw national attention to the utility of federal investigations into patterns of unconstitutional conduct by police departments. But now the Trump administration has all but abandoned that work. The Justice Department has backed away from its mandate to rein in systemic police abuse and deserted even those police departments that asked the feds for help.”

“The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is charged with investigating and litigating any unconstitutional “pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers,” virtually halted new investigations. Political appointees of President Donald Trump tried to sabotage one reform agreement in Baltimore and block another in Chicago.”