What To Expect in 2025

December 28, 2024

Recently I wrote a short piece for Democracy Docket about what we might be able to expect from sheriffs (and law enforcement generally) in 2025. Below, I wanted to touch on a few topics besides “mass deportation,” which I’ve written about previously and expect to do more.

Abortion access

As part of the carceral state, sheriffs and their deputies are playing a role in investigating individuals accused or suspected of receiving certain types of abortion care. While this was certainly happening before the Dobbs ruling, state laws are making it even easier for law enforcement to arrest people seeking care. Many appear to be motivated by religious beliefs, specifically Evangelical Christianity. While strains of Christianity have always played a role in sheriffs’ offices along with other government agencies – “In God We Trust” increasingly appears on many law enforcement vehicles – there are no real limiting principles on the intersection of religion and policing (and there are unlikely to be any).

Pregnant and potentially pregnant people also go to jail. Jail health care is already abominable, but will get only more so for pregnant people Even further, now that abortion and birth control are on shaky legal grounds in some states, individuals being booked into jail may not know or explain their pregnancy status – nor are they guaranteed abortion care. As a result, not only do we not know how many pregnant people are in county jails, but we also cannot properly evaluate what kind of care they do (or do not) receive. Access to abortion care and the type of care is controlled in jails almost exclusively by sheriffs, who can and do decide that they will not facilitate abortions based on personal views.

As Trump 2.0 looks to expand the incarceration of immigrants, we can expect the treatment of pregnant immigrants in detention also to get worse. (Remember, there are no laws protecting access to abortion care in detention, even where abortion is nominally legal, so forced birth will also happen.)

Protests

Law enforcement agencies have been honing in on pro-Palestinian student protests and describing them as a form of “terrorism,” potentially linked to Hamas. Over the past year, the FBI has issued various warnings to law enforcement agencies, like the ones described in this Jewish Currents piece about Yale’s campus police department. Christopher Wray spoke to the National Sheriffs’ Association this year and filled the heads of county sheriffs with visions of terrorist attacks by student groups.

LEOs have already shown themselves willing to use excessive force and surveillance to monitor, harass, intimidate, and arrest protestors. The college campus is far from a “safe space.” Under Trump 2.0, I expect this policing to escalate, with the added concern of some protestors facing deportation proceedings because of aggressive arrests and sweeping criteria about who may be eligible for deportation.

Enforcement of Consent Decrees and Limits on Excessive Force

The Department of Justice is one of the few government entities that can oversee law enforcement agencies through the consent decree process. Now, that process is flawed and has questionable effectiveness; that said, there are not a lot of other options when a state attorney general refuses to intervene. (Individuals can file lawsuits, of course, but those are fraught with other issues.)

Donald Trump has been very clear from the beginning that his greatest gift to law enforcement will be his refusal to place limits on their behavior. Since 2020, this has been a major complaint among all law enforcement and, in my view, is the source of the dramatic realignment between law enforcement and the GOP. All major law enforcement organizations (except, of course, groups that aligned with racial justice, like the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives) endorsed Trump, continuing a trend that started in earnest in 2016.

(Note: Democrats, as I have said repeatedly, have funded the police more than the GOP, and Democrats dropped reducing police violence from their platform in 2024 while running a prosecutor for president. Despite this fearmongering stance, police have largely shifted to the right.)

In my view, political commentators have underestimated the force of this political alignment. It also helps to explain the drift of Latinos to the right, as Latinos are a growing segment of sworn officers while the number of Black sworn officers is moving downwards. Similar to the way the “white working class” (even those in unions) have moved to the right, law enforcement has done the same, especially elected sheriffs and all line officers (e.g. city cops, Border Patrol agents, rural deputies, etc.). The expressed beliefs of rank-and-filed LEO are also aligning with the GOP, including anti-abortion, pro-gun, and anti-immigration views. (There’s also a convenient joint focus on “disorder.”) Nearly one million people work for law enforcement agencies, with around a third of them civilian. (Civilian personnel do not get enough scrutiny, in my view, because they are one of the fastest-growing segments of LEO hiring. These include jobs like 911 operator, administrative assistant, and some patrol or jail workers. Women are more likely to be in his category than they are to be sworn officers.)

We already know that law enforcement at all levels is shifting quickly to the right, including sympathizing with far-right militia-style groups, whose members perceive themselves to be legitimate law enforcement. To them, high-profile trials of white guy vigilantes like Daniel Penny, who was acquitted, prove that government officials are punishing not just law enforcement officers with a badge but also their community fanboys. Law enforcement relies upon the perception that they are “supercitizens”, a baronial class above the rest of us, and threats to that status are more powerful than threats to funding.

Homelessness

The June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Grant’s Pass case means that states and localities across the country are now free to arrest people for sleeping outside, in tents, or in cars. We already see the negative consequences of police enforcement of such laws: violence, harassment, and loss of belongings. Yet, law enforcement agencies are rubbing their palms together in anticipation of exerting more control and the ability to make more arrests. (Everyone supporting these arrest laws points out that the police have “discretion.” Very comforting.) All the while, houselessness is rising and there has been little appetite in politicians for the comprehensive reform that would make affordable housing a reality for people.

In the next year, I expect that more law enforcement agencies will use the criminalization of houselessness as an excuse to ramp up arrests and patrols in areas where people are known to camp. LEO and politicians will argue, with the help of copaganda purveyors, that people living in encampments are suffering from substance use disorder and mental illness. This just isn’t true and detracts from the real problem, which is access to housing. Criminal reform rollbacks, like Prop 36 in California, will make it easier to hold those people in jail, especially for those with a history of arrests.