By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has taken a puzzling step by removing a database that was set up to track misconduct by federal law enforcement officers. This database was a concept proposed by Republican President Donald Trump during his initial term in office and officially established by Democratic former President Joe Biden.
The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database’s website has seemingly been deactivated as of Thursday. This removal was initially reported by the Washington Post. The Justice Department’s website now indicates that the database is no longer active and is in the process of being dismantled following Trump’s revocation of Biden’s executive order that gave rise to its creation.
As of September 2024, the database contained 4,790 records of misconduct by federal officers spanning the years 2018 to 2023, as highlighted in a report published last year. Trump himself had suggested the development of a database specifically to document “instances of excessive use of force related to law enforcement matters” in June 2020 in response to the tragic death of George Floyd. Floyd, a Black man, lost his life when a white officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck in a shocking incident that ignited widespread protests against police brutality.
Shortly after commencing his second term as President, Trump granted pardons to two police officers in Washington who had been convicted in the 2020 killing of a 20-year-old Black man named Karon Hylton-Brown.
The disappearance of the federal database does not impact the National Decertification Index, which serves as a nationwide registry documenting state and local law enforcement officers who have had their certification or licenses revoked due to misconduct, as reported by the Washington Post.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Michelle Nichols and Leslie Adler)
