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By Joe Domanick | November 21, 2016 In 2014, President Barack Obama responded to nationwide demonstrations protesting deadly police violence by commissioning a study on police reform. In May 2015, the 11-member “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” reported back with a series of six good, detailed policing policies and guidelines aimed at easing the sizzling tension between the police and poor communities of color. Chief among its recommendations was one focused on seriously building neighborhood trust and support through best-practices community policing. Another called for creating “de-escalation strategies” to decrease confrontations, police violence and officer-involved shootings. While some leading police managers welcomed the recommendations, they were not well received by the vast majority of America’s police departments. That’s is unfortunate, because it’s clear now that the massive 2014 protests against deadly police violence were only a prelude to worse to come. We saw that this summer with the assassinations of eight police officers (and the wounding of ten others) by an African-American sniper in Dallas—followed 10 days later by the killing of three Baton Rouge cops and the wounding of three others by a second black sniper. Both assassins were reportedly retaliating for police-killings of unarmed black men. In the aftermath of one of the most contentious and divisive presidential elections in our nation’s modern history, the momentum begun by the Task Force recommendations is now in doubt—even as it has become crystal clear that what’s now required is a fundamental transformation of the oppressive policing that’s been the profession’s modus operandi over the past 30 years, together with an equally fundamental re-imagining of its mission, officer-selection criteria and training. In many ways, Donald Trump’s election is about turning back the clock, and it appears likely his administration might kill off many justice reform efforts nationwide.