More than two years after millions of Americans took to the streets following the murder of George Floyd, familiar stories about police violence persist. By the numbers, 2021 was the deadliest for police shootings since The Washington Post began tracking them in 2015. The database Mapping Police Violence found similar results.

That doesn’t mean nothing has changed. According to a database kept by researchers at Bowling Green State University, the number of officers being charged with homicide or manslaughter for on-duty killings may be on the rise. Seven officers were charged in 2017, with a small increase each year through 2021, when a record 21 were charged. However, Professor Philip Stinson, who has been tracking the data since 2005, cautioned NBC News that the sample is too small to consider the change statistically significant.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also gotten more engaged in policing departments. On Thursday, four current and former Louisville police officers were charged with federal crimes related to the investigation and raid that led to the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in 2020.

At the local level, many departments have begun experimenting with new approaches, like alternative response programs that send unarmed counselors or social workers to certain calls. The Marshall Project took a look at one such program in Olympia, Washington, which has become a model for other cities, back in 2020. Other local departments have attempted cultural change at the hands of new charismatic leaders. Our recent podcast “Changing the Police,” produced with NPR’s Embedded, walks through one case study on this path of reform — and its limits — in the Yonkers Police Department.

At the state level, legislatures have passed hundreds of police reform laws since the summer of 2020. Politico tallied 243 as of May 2021. One common reform target has been banning or restricting police use of “chokeholds” (although states all define that term differently). In Massachusetts, where Johnson alleges he was pinned down by an officer’s knee on his neck, that move had been explicitly banned two months earlier. It’s unclear what that would mean for the officer accused in the lawsuit if the allegations were proven.

Read the full article about changes in policing by Jamiles Lartey at The Marshall Project.