Regressive Policing Under President Trump

Though police in the United States are largely under local control, the Trump administration’s regressive approach to policing has used the DOJ’s power to rollback progress on police reform and undermine protections against police abuse.

But the ACLU and its partners were ready. The ACLU anticipated that the Trump administration would seek to undermine progress on police reform in its second term, including by revoking the DOJ’s prior agreements and findings against law enforcement agencies.

About one hour after the DOJ’s announcement, the ACLU and its partners launched the Seven States Safety Campaign to keep accountability and reform moving forward in the seven states where the DOJ found excessive force and racial targeting: Arizona, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, and Tennessee.

This report provides a year-end update on the Seven States Safety Campaign. Through the Campaign, the ACLU, ACLU affiliates including the NYCLU, and local partners coordinated requests for public records from agencies in each of the seven states. The primary goal in seeking records was to understand whether the problems with excessive force and racial targeting that the DOJ identified under President Biden were continuing—a visibility that could immediately be useful in pushing local reforms and advancing accountability.