The Justice Department is stepping up accountability and transparency for federal law enforcement officers. Following years of calls for more crackdowns on allegations of officer misconduct, the DOJ announced Monday, Dec. 18, the creation of a national law enforcement accountability database.
The new system will record documented instances of misconduct by federal law enforcement officers to ensure they are not inadvertently rehired by another federal agency.
The database is part of a May 2022 executive order issued by President Biden. The order aimed to increase public trust and safety, and it committed the federal government to new recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention practices for officers, as well as enhanced training and oversight.
The database will connect all federal law enforcement agencies under one accountability structure for more complete and thorough vetting of job candidates.
The database will be accessible only by authorized federal personnel and not available to the public. However, DOJ officials said they will produce an annual report of aggregated data without information about individual officers.
All federal law enforcement agencies will have until Feb. 16, 2024, to report records for their personnel.
Currently, the database is only at the federal level. According to The Washington Post, DOJ officials said they will entice local and state law enforcement agencies to participate in a decertification database by providing grants to agencies that use the database to vet candidates in the hiring process.
There have been several high-profile use-of-force incidents pertaining to local and state police officers. In those cases, the officer was let go from one department and then rehired by another in a separate jurisdiction.
For example, Myles Cosgrove, a former Louisville police officer who failed to follow department protocols during the raid on Breonna Taylor’s home in March 2020, was fired in January 2021. However, Cosgrove has since been rehired by a Kentucky sheriff’s department earlier this year.
“This database will ensure that records of serious misconduct by federal law enforcement officers are readily available to agencies considering hiring those officers,” President Biden said in a statement.
