As demonstrations over police brutality rocked the country in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, Newark was held up as a model of police reform, a department so transformed by federal intervention that its officers had not fired a single shot that year.

The department had revamped its disciplinary process, established New Jersey’s first civilian complaint review board and kept the peace during local protests even as the police in other cities clashed violently with demonstrators.

Then, just minutes into 2021, the streak of no shots fired was broken. A Newark detective responding to reports of gunfire shot and killed an unarmed Black man.

Amid the swirl of questions and demonstrations surrounding the shooting, there was one thing everyone involved knew: The federal government was watching. Within weeks, the department’s body cameras policy was amended to include them for plainclothes officers like the detective in the shooting.

Oversight of local law enforcement agencies in the form of consent decrees — legally binding, court-enforced agreements — is the federal government’s marquee method for overhauling the nation’s most troubled police departments, often after high-profile incidents of police brutality.

On Friday, the Justice Department released the findings of its investigation of police abuses in Minneapolis, where Mr. Floyd was murdered on the street by a veteran officer. With the withering 89-page report, the department has taken the first step toward...

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