Opinion: Five years after Floyd, civilian police oversight is dying on the vine

"Civilian oversight of law enforcement is dying. Not in statute, not in mission but in impact, in execution, in public faith. What began as a bold democratic intervention into the secretive world of policing has become, in too many jurisdictions, a hollow performance. Oversight bodies meet, they vote, they issue recommendations. They no longer wield power. They no longer compel compliance. They are tolerated, not respected. Just ghosts at the table."

"Civilian oversight refers to independent, civilian-led bodies that review, investigate, audit, monitor or use a combination of these tools to assess law enforcement practices, with the goal of increasing transparency, accountability and public trust. But across the country, that promise is eroding. Oversight today occupies a space of liminality the threshold between legitimacy and irrelevance, between promise and abandonment. In sociology and the social sciences, liminality describes the inbetween state when old structures are unraveling but new ones have not yet taken hold."

"But there is something more insidious at play here: legal violence that is, the normalized but cumulatively harmful effects of laws and their implementation that undermine well-being. This is not just the violence of batons or bullets, but the quieter devastation inflicted by law through denial, deferral or bureaucratic neglect. When city attorneys block oversight boards from accessing police records, that is legal violence."

Civilian oversight of law enforcement is losing practical power, impact, and public trust across many jurisdictions. Independent, civilian-led bodies that review, investigate, audit, or monitor police actions increasingly perform formal procedures without compelling compliance. Oversight occupies a liminal space between legitimacy and irrelevance as institutional authority unravels and new mechanisms fail to emerge. Legal violence manifests when laws and implementation practices deny access to records, de-fund boards, limit staffing, or curtail oversight through legislative restrictions. Celebrated reforms can be undermined by behind-the-scenes obstruction, producing cumulative harm that weakens oversight infrastructure and leaves accountability measures ineffectual.

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