In an effort to restore public trust in law enforcement across the U.S., a database was established to track police misconduct. However, at the direction of President Donald Trump, it has now been removed.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that the Trump administration has shut down its nationwide database, which identified officers within its ranks who had misused their authority.
The index, which documented nearly 150,000 federal officers and agents with misconduct records, was designed to stop problematic individuals from simply moving to a new department and starting fresh.
It was established in response to the death of George Floyd in May 2020, an event that ignited nationwide and global outrage.
Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer at the time, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds after detaining him for allegedly using a counterfeit bill.
Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a powerful slogan in protests against police violence and racial injustice.
Chauvin, who was later dismissed from the force, was convicted of Floyd’s murder and sentenced to 22 years in prison. In July 2022, he received an additional 20-year sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights.
During his first term in office, President Trump initially proposed the idea of establishing a database to identify corrupt officers. His suggestion came in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.
Former President Joe Biden later acted on this proposal, bringing it to life two years later through an executive order.
However, among the numerous executive orders Trump signed himself was one that overturned Biden’s directive, which had led to the creation of the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database.
The Trump administration justified the repeal by stating that the order “embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government.”
Officially launched in December 2023, the initiative has already led all 90 executive branch agencies to submit thousands of disciplinary records on their officers, some dating back to 2017, according to a DOJ report released that same month.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Thomas Abt, director of the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland, stated: “Everyone, cops and communities alike, has an interest in keeping officers with histories of serious misconduct from rejoining the profession.
“Nonpartisan public safety reforms like these should be placed above politics and maintained across administrations.”
Meanwhile, Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, also told the publication: “Trump has made clear through actions such as this that he doesn’t think law enforcement accountability advances public safety.”