Trump’s message to abusive cops: ‘We’ve got your back’

Fortunately, real reform continues at local levels

While less than 2% of police-involved homicides result in criminal charges, more than 280 police officers are or have served prison sentences for excessive use of force. The number has been steadily ticking upward over the last decade.

In 2020, when Louisville police gunned down Breonna Taylor during a botched raid, the incident helped galvanize the ascendant Black Lives Matter movement. Along with the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, Taylor’s killing spurred nationwide outrage and brought police reform tantalizingly close to reality.

How times have changed.

Five years after Taylor was killed, the only officer convicted for his role in the raid was sentenced to roughly three years in federal prison. But the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump wanted him to serve just one day.

Though a judge ignored the recommendation, it marked yet another setback for police accountability and signaled that abusive officers have a friend in the White House. From Trump’s campaign promise of immunity for police misconduct to his pardoning of two Washington, D.C. officers convicted in a fatal chase cover-up, the message is clear. An April executive order rolling back Biden-era reforms, and the DOJ’s withdrawal from consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, add to the list.

Trump’s vocal support of aggressive policing, coupled with the ongoing drumbeat of police killing unarmed Black people, leaves many wondering whether the Black Lives Matter movement’s push for reform is already over.

But experts who study police accountability say the #BLM era is still active; just not at the federal level.

A smaller role than people think

“I definitely do not think this is the end of efforts to hold police accountable or even efforts to prosecute police officers,” says Rachel Moren, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

While the Trump administration appears eager to excuse police brutality, Moren emphasizes that “the federal government’s efforts to pursue police accountability are a pretty small piece of the overall accountability picture.”

Most police prosecutions, she explains, happen at the state level, where charges like murder, manslaughter, or reckless homicide are more likely to be brought. “Typically, officers are almost always prosecuted [federally] for civil rights violations, and those are hard to prove.”

Thaddeus Johnson, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University, agrees. States, he says, are “where reform happens,” even though they’re often left out of the conversation because police abuse is framed as a national crisis.

“Only about 1.6% of police homicides end up getting prosecuted, so it’s a very small percentage,” Moren notes. “But on the other hand, it’s more than some people think. There are 281 officers that have been prosecuted for on-duty homicides in this 10-year period.”

Growing accountability

Although around 1,000 people die at the hands of police each year, the number of officers being held accountable is rising. Moren, who has studied a decade of data, says the trend line is slow but moving upward.

“Still,” she adds, “there’s no doubt Trump has wrapped the Black Lives Matter movement and police reform into his so-called war on ‘wokeness.’” Both Moren and Johnson say the DOJ’s resistance to police accountability under Trump, along with the former president’s public endorsement of excessive force, is likely to have real consequences.

A dangerous federal stance

In April, Trump issued an executive order to “unleash high-impact local police forces” and protect officers “wrongly accused and abused by state or local officials.” The order vowed to ensure that police focus on ending crime, “not pursuing harmful, illegal race- and sex-based ‘equity’ policies.”

Just months earlier, Trump pardoned two Washington, D.C. officers convicted for their roles in a 2020 chase that left a young Black man on a moped dead. The officers also attempted to cover up their involvement. These actions, the professors say, send a chilling message to abusive cops: We’ve got your back.

At a May 2024 rally in Wisconsin, Trump doubled down, promising to restore “police power” and grant officers immunity from prosecution. “Does it suck? Yes, it sucks,” Johnson says, “because it will almost certainly cause harm.” The administration, he believes, is essentially encouraging officers who are already prone to use excessive force.

An exception to the rule

The DOJ sparked outrage when it recommended that Brett Hankison, the Louisville officer involved in Taylor’s death, serve just one day in prison. Hankison had been tried in federal court under the Biden administration after Kentucky prosecutors declined to bring charges. A judge ultimately sentenced him to 33 months, ignoring the Trump-era DOJ’s recommendation.

But Moren sees the Hankison case as an outlier. “The federal government doesn’t step in as often as perhaps some people imagine,” she says. His conviction “is one of a very small number of cases where the federal government chose to prosecute and was successful, where the state either wasn’t successful or didn’t prosecute.”

The real reformers

For Johnson, the future of police reform doesn’t rest with Washington. “The success of the movement lies with state and local activists who likely weren’t pushing the federal government anyway.”

Those activists are focusing on solutions like creating police accountability boards, hiring progressive police chiefs, and investing in social services to address root causes of crime. These approaches, Johnson says, help enhance public trust.

“They boost the legitimacy not just of police,” he says, “but of the entire local government.” Still, Johnson emphasizes that success ultimately depends on whether communities and local prosecutors are willing to treat police brutality like any other serious crime.

“As citizens, we hold [police] accountable,” he says. “That’s where the real power is.”

This piece was originally published in Word In Black. It has been edited for length and to reflect a change in photo. For the original version, or more information, visit wordinblack.com.