“After serving as an aggressive watchdog for police misconduct during the Obama administration, the Department of Justice could see its role diminished under Donald Trump, analysts say.
“Such a shift would drastically alter the federal response to the ongoing debate around policing in American cities at a time when many local departments are ill-equipped to tackle reforms on their own, they said.
“‘This is a cataclysmic change,’ said Jonathan Smith, a former chief of special litigation in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where he oversaw more than 20 investigations into police agencies. ‘The world really did change under our feet.'”