State and Local Law Enforcement: Trends in Policing and the Law and Technology Surrounding It

n the four years since nationwide protests against police misconduct rocked the nation, momentum for police reform has stalled. At the same time, state and local law enforcement entities are constantly seeking to upgrade their abilities to conduct various forms of surveillance—whether using traditional human informants or emerging digital or forensic technologies. These developments arguably represent major day-to-day threats to individual rights.

What changes, if any, have we seen in policing practices at the federal, state, and local levels since the George Floyd murder protests in the summer of 2020, particularly as they pertain to monitoring protests and civil society groups? To what extent are law enforcement organizations using human informants to infiltrate groups engaged in First Amendment–protected activities? How have federal courts been dealing with cases involving surveillance, human or technical, since the summer of 2020? Our panel will discuss these and related issues.

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