By Emma Trucker, Peter Nickeas, and Christina Carrega, CNN US, September 25, 2021
In the past month, attorneys general in three states have sought a court-ordered overhaul of local police departments, increasingly filling the role the federal government has played for decades of holding accountable police departments that are deemed to be behaving badly.
State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can't take on every case nationwide. Their move into this area of police reform is in part filling a gap created by the Trump administration, which all but stopped opening pattern or practice investigations into local police departments.
While these investigations are regarded as even more important amid heightened public scrutiny of law enforcement, there is disagreement on whether federal involvement in local policing leads to tangible reform, experts say.
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