The Justice Departments top watchdog said Wednesday that the erosion of public confidence in law enforcement after the high-profile deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police officers is one of the most pressing challenges facing federal law enforcement.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz , in a letter to Attorney General William Barr, also chided the Trump administration for cutting back on police oversight. And he wrote that strengthening public confidence in law enforcement and protecting civil liberties would require appropriate and swift action from the Justice Department.

His report , which mentions two Black Americans killed by police this year as well as a Black man slain by a white man while jogging in Georgia, calls for urgent action to improve community trust in law enforcement.

One of the most pressing challenges facing the Department of Justice ... in the wake of nationwide protests following the deaths of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery , among other incidents, is how it can most effectively work to strengthen public confidence in law enforcement and protect individuals civil liberties, the report says.

Floyd, who was in handcuffs, died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against Floyds neck for several minutes in late May, a killing that sparked a wave of nationwide protests. Taylor was fatally shot in her apartment in March during a botched police raid in Louisville, Kentucky, and Arbery was gunned down in February after a father and son began following him in a truck as he jogged through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia.

Horowitz notes that the Justice Department has numerous tools at its disposal to safeguard individual rights and promote constitutional policing practices at the state and local levels. But he also says that the department, under President Donald Trump , has significantly curtailed its police oversight work , writing that it has not fully effectuated the tools at its disposal and, in some cases, has cut back on their use.

We believe that among the most significant challenges facing the department is responding to the potential erosion of confidence in law enforcement ... as well as embracing its leadership role and using all available tools to address these issues to the fullest extent practicable, the report says.

Horowitzs report points out that this is not a new challenge for the DOJ, saying it was an issue in a similar 2015 report, which followed the police killings of unarmed African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in 2014 that reignited the Black Lives Matter movement .