U.S. Justice Department. Douglas Rissing/Canva
The names of federal police officers guilty of misconduct will now be available in a national database, intended to prevent them from being rehired at other agencies, President Joe Biden announced this week.
Created by the U.S. Justice Department, the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database is a step toward police accountability and was part of President Joe Biden’s May 2022 executive order on policing, which included dozens of measures aimed at increasing accountability for federal law enforcement officers.
“This database will ensure that records of serious misconduct by federal law enforcement officers are readily available to agencies considering hiring those officers,” Biden said in a statement.
Vice President Kamala Harris in a statement also said, “Every person in our nation has a right to be safe. And trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is essential for public safety. Police misconduct undermines that trust and threatens the right to equal justice under the law. “As a United States Senator, with Senator Cory Booker and Representative Karen Bass, I authored the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. And last year, President Biden and I issued an Executive Order banning chokeholds, restricting no-knock warrants, and strengthening use-of-force policies for federal law enforcement, in addition to other critical reforms.”
The database will only contain records for federal officers and not be open to the public. Critics also say it falls short of a tougher national misconduct database that some police reform advocates want.
The new database includes only former and current Justice Department officers who have records of serious misconduct over the last seven years. Justice Department officials said the database will be expanded in the next two months to include other federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service and United States Park Police.
Officials said federal agencies will be responsible for reporting and updating records for officers who faced criminal convictions, civil judgments, terminations and suspensions. The database will also include officers who are resigning or retiring while under investigation and sustained complaints or disciplinary actions for serious misconduct, officials said.
Serious misconduct includes the use of excessive force, obstruction of justice, findings of bias or discrimination, making a false report, making a false statement under oath, theft and sexual misconduct.
Only Justice Department employees can use the database, which will eventually be accessed by users in other federal law enforcement agencies, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics will produce an annual public report on the database, but the report will not include individual incidents to protect the privacy of officers.
Police reform advocates have issued calls for a national system to track officers who are fired or resign before they are rehired in other police departments. Some are rehired in different states because their full misconduct records aren’t available.
In the March 2020 Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, Kentucky, Taylor was killed during a botched drug raid. Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville Metro Police Department officer who was fired in January 2021 for violating use-of-force procedures and failing to use a body camera during the fatal raid, was hired earlier this year by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department in Kentucky. In 2022, former Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann was fired after the fatal 2014 shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and he was hired by a small Pennsylvania town to be its only police officer. He resigned from the job amid public outrage.
“President Biden and I will continue to do all we can to advance police accountability and strengthen the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, “Vice President Harris said in a statement. And we renew our call for the United States Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.”
