Millions of average Americans marched in the streets last summer to oppose racism, police brutality, and the assassination of George Floyd.

Many people have directed their anger and passion into action in the year since. Civilians on police units and elected representatives in legislative bodies around the country are fighting for reforms to solve the root causes of police brutality affecting minority groups, according to analysts. In the last year, changes at the state and local levels have included the establishment of independent review commissions that are not beholden to police forces or labor groups.

“You can't expect the cops to do their changes; it won't ever happen,” said Robert Davis, a pastor who leads a civilian-led task force in Denver that is planning a report on expected police reforms. “We need to give the group the ability to take responsibility for public safety.”

Community movements have existed for decades, and revamping America's nearly 18,000 police forces is a chaotic, fractured, and challenging challenge. Even so, the police experts say that new efforts go far beyond discussing techniques, such as the prohibition of chokeholds.

“There is a deeper questioning about not just money and strategies, but what are we trying to achieve?” said Tracie Keesee, who worked as a police officer in Denver for 25 years before co-founding the Foundation for Policing Equity. “People are sincerely attempting to do something different.”

In areas like Ithaca, New York, where she collaborated with the mayor's office to consider replacing the police force with a "community options" public security agency — a proposal that was dismissed by the local police union — Keesee sees residents making change. She also mentioned a plan in Austin, Texas, to slash the police budget by a third and use the savings to solve social problems such as poverty.

Austin is a left-leaning region in a conservative state, where the governor, Greg Abbott, is pursuing legislation that would restrict state tax revenue from cities that slash police budgets. This indicates that reformers will face challenges in the future.

As per Jeffrey Fagan, a criminal justice scholar at Columbia University, the federal government plays a significant role in police reform. Even so, he is progressively persuaded that state-level efforts have a better chance of addressing the root causes of police brutality.

He praised legislation forced through the Massachusetts state legislature and put into law by another Republican governor, Charlie Baker, in December, including a police oversight committee. The fact that they emerged from elected officials in the state “has a rather strong justifying effect,” according to Fagan.

Maryland's Democratic-led legislature approved aggressive police legislation on Saturday, ignoring three Republican Governor Larry Hogan vetoes. People frequently look to Washington for help with large, structural issues, according to Jonathan Blanks, a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity who works on policing. Officials in DC, do not have much influence over local police forces, he claims.

The "George Floyd Justice in Policing Act" was approved with very little Republican support in the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives just days before ex Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went on trial for the murder in Floyd's case.

The bill proposes limiting some grants to municipal jurisdictions that allow police officers to use chokeholds, compelling law enforcement agencies to provide information on the use of lethal force, and changing "qualified immunity" to allow for further litigation against cops who use excess violence. In the Senate, where Democrats have a small majority and some moderate Democrats have embraced Republicans in raising concerns that the proposal would redirect funds needed by police and make communities less secure, the bill's prospects were unclear.