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Under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice has insinuated that it will that regularly followed high profile acts of police violence during the Obama and Biden era. President Trump also signed by former President Biden in 2022 that established use-of-force restrictions for federal law enforcement and created a national database for tracking misconduct, which all federal law enforcement agencies were required to submit to.

In February, the Trump administration , The Washington Post reported. Because of its short lifespan, it's difficult to , or could have been, at its stated goal: preventing officers with a history of serious misconduct from finding new jobs in law enforcement. The single report released about the database in December 2024 found that were made by agencies seeking information on an officer from outside their own department.

The in the database were generated by border enforcement agents and corrections officers in federal prisons, The Appeal reported in February.

The executive branch isn't the only part of the federal government to sidestep a role in police accountability. In early March, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case that to ensure they have the correct address when conducting raids on the homes of crime suspects. These "wrong home" raids can create lasting trauma for the people they ensnare. A lawsuit filed on Feb. 25 in Denver, for example, in apartment 307, instead raided apartment 306, and wound up locking a mother and her 5-year-old and 6-year-old daughters in a police car for an hour.

In March,  Anjanette Young marked the six-year anniversary of a wrong-home raid that made national news in Chicago. Young was handcuffed and left naked despite explaining to officers that they were in the wrong place. She has since become an advocate for changing the way police approach these kinds of arrests. Young said at a news conference outside City Hall at the end of February, WBEZ Chicago reported. "And yet I stand here again, afraid and demanding for justice, accountability, still demanding that those in power would keep their promise."

Beyond changes in how law enforcement is (and isn't) subject to oversight and accountability, developments in late February have also raised some questions about who enters the profession and how they are trained.

In New York City, the NYPD announced that it's in response to what officials describe as a recruitment crisis. With new applications down by more than half since 2017, the department is reducing its college credit requirements from 60 to 24 credits—while also reinstating a timed 1.5-mile run requirement that the department , partly based on the belief it would help more women meet the qualifications.

The return of that requirement comes just days after The Associated Press published an investigation which found that at least 29 police recruits have , often from heatstroke, excessive physical stress, or underlying medical conditions that were exacerbated by training activities. A disproportionate number of the deaths occurred in Black trainees with the sickle cell trait, a genetic condition which can cause fatal complications under high physical stress in otherwise healthy people.