A major challenge of effective policing is the balancing of professionalism and public accountability with bold, proactive enforcement of the law.

This balance has become harder to strike in recent years with the rightful arrival of police body cameras and greater accountability, but also increasingly populist and often unfairly critical anti-police attitudes by certain political leaders and advocacy groups. In turn, where officers feel that the criminals they arrest and collect prosecutable evidence against are unlikely to ever face appropriate justice, they have less incentive to risk their own careers and livelihoods to protect the public by enforcing the law. This leads to particular problems in cities such as Washington, D.C., where legal structures are generally deferential to criminals and politicians are generally deferential to anti-police activists.