the power of the justice department can be used to investigate police departments for patterns of abuse and bring charges whose outcome could see those departments come under federal oversight that would establish benchmarks for accountability that must be met in order to avoid penalties.
this has occurred in small and insufficient measure under merrick garland. obama was well within his right to go much further, but neither he nor eric holder and loretta lynch took that step.
and, in an attempt to shore up hillary’s credentials as an ally of the badge, he signed the ‘blue alert’ bill into law before leaving office. that legislation was a meaningless “all lives matter” gesture to police and a rebuke of the burgeoning black lives matter movement that began under his presidency.