Trump and the Department of Justice have officially shut down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, the first-ever federal system designed to track misconduct by law enforcement officers. The DOJ confirmed the decision to The Washington Post on Thursday.
The database was created in response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. It aimed to prevent officers with disciplinary records from moving to new agencies without accountability. Ironically, Trump initially proposed the idea of a misconduct database during his first term, but it wasn’t established until President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022. Last month, Trump revoked that order, effectively dismantling the database.
Although the system only covered federal law enforcement officers, it tracked nearly 150,000 personnel across 90 executive branch agencies, including the FBI, IRS, and even smaller agencies like the Railroad Retirement Board. The DOJ reported in December that the database had already compiled disciplinary records dating back to 2017.
Trump’s order revoking Biden’s police reform measures was part of a broader push to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. The now-defunct order also included provisions for improving use-of-force standards, increasing body camera usage, and requiring anti-bias training—initiatives that were also scrapped along with the database.
The White House and the Justice Department have not publicly explained the reasoning behind the decision to eliminate the database. However, in the executive order signed on January 20, Trump revoked multiple Biden-era policies, claiming they had “embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the federal government.”
While some law enforcement groups had previously criticized the database, arguing that officers lacked a way to challenge their inclusion, police accountability advocates expressed deep disappointment over its removal.
“Everyone, cops and communities alike, has an interest in keeping officers with histories of serious misconduct from rejoining the profession,” said Thomas Abt, director of the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland. “Nonpartisan public safety reforms like these should be placed above politics and maintained across administrations.”
Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, also criticized the decision. “Trump has made clear through actions such as this that he doesn’t think law enforcement accountability advances public safety,” she told The Washington Post.
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