Elected on the heels of global protests over police brutality, President Joe Biden promised broad reform to American policing.

He pledged to step up the use of the strongest tool for overhauling problem-plagued police departments, beginning sweeping civil rights investigations into a dozen police forces, including in Minneapolis; Trenton, New Jersey; and Louisville, Kentucky.

So far, those investigations have produced 551 pages of findings full of shocking examples of brutality, racial profiling, illegal arrests and impunity for officers who had committed misconduct.

But the Justice Department is running out of time to convert those reports into binding plans of action.

The Biden administration has produced only one final oversight agreement, in Louisville. President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to pursue more.

During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department turned away from seeking new oversight agreements and pulled back from enforcing those already in place. On the 2024 presidential campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said that he wanted to give officers “immunity from prosecution, so they’re not prosecuted for doing their job.”

The lack of progress under Biden has frustrated residents of places like Minneapolis, where the Justice Department began an investigation after the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, but has not yet reached an agreement with the city on federal oversight.

“Here we are, 4 1/2 years after the torture and murder of George Floyd that ignited the longest worldwide protest ever,” said Stacey Gurian-Sherman, a founder of Minneapolis for a Better Police Contract, a police accountability group. She added, “The clock is ticking and we fear that come Jan. 20, President Trump will come in and pull the plug on Minneapolis.”

Gurian-Sherman blamed the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, and not the Justice Department, for the lack of an agreement. While some residents blame their city officials for being slow to negotiate, the Justice Department has taken longer than normal — in some cases more than two years — to complete investigations.

In a written statement, the Minneapolis city attorney, Kristyn Anderson, said the city would continue to “work in earnest” toward an agreement.

The White House pointed to a host of changes Biden ordered for federal law enforcement agencies.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is enforcing 15 court-ordered oversight agreements from previous administrations. Under Biden, it has also used lesser tools, such as a resolution with a sheriff’s department in Georgia where deputies stopped and searched a women’s lacrosse team from a historically Black university.

“Ensuring lawful, nondiscriminatory, transparent, and effective policing remains a top priority for the Justice Department,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who leads the Civil Rights Division, had said in a written statement it gave. “The Justice Department is steadfast in its commitment to using every tool available to ensure that the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans are protected.”

Federal police oversight was made possible by legislation passed after Los Angeles police officers were videotaped savagely beating a motorist, Rodney King, in 1991. But it was used infrequently until the Obama administration.

The agreements have often been propelled by a single high-profile event, like the 2020 death in Louisville of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old medical worker killed during the botched execution of a search warrant.

But the goal is to address systemic abuses. The agreements typically require departments to rewrite policies, beef up training and improve disciplinary procedures.

First, federal investigators determine whether a police department has a “pattern or practice” of constitutional violations and issue their findings.

At that point, most jurisdictions sign a letter of intent to enter into an oversight agreement known as a consent decree, rather than face a federal civil rights lawsuit.

While consent decrees can last for years and be costly, many mayors and police chiefs have welcomed them.

The agreements can give officials leverage to allocate funds and push police unions to renegotiate contract provisions that shield officers from accountability for misconduct.

But Memphis, Tennessee, which was presented with the federal findings earlier this month, has so far declined to agree to a consent decree. In January 2023, police officers in Memphis pulled Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black FedEx worker, from his car during a traffic stop. They pepper-sprayed and beat him, and he died three days later.