By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
With the continued chaos from the Trump administration’s attacks on civil rights, liberties, and specifically, diversity, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has quietly decommissioned the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a tool created to track federal law enforcement misconduct. The database’s shutdown was quietly announced via an online statement that provided no explanation for the decision. Agencies can no longer access or update the system, which previously allowed law enforcement departments to check officers’ records for violations, including excessive force.
The closure follows President Donald Trump’s decision in January to rescind 78 executive orders issued under President Joe Biden’s administration, including Executive Order 14074. Signed in 2022, Biden’s order was part of a broader initiative to enhance police accountability after the murder of George Floyd. In addition to establishing the NLEAD, the order banned chokeholds and emphasized de-escalation tactics within federal agencies.
While the NLEAD was not publicly accessible, it was a critical tool for law enforcement agencies to evaluate officers’ histories before hiring or promotions. Since its launch in December 2023, the database has been searched nearly 10,000 times, with only 25 cases resulting in cross-agency matches, allowing departments to investigate candidates’ backgrounds further. The DOJ has claimed that most federal officers have no recorded instances of misconduct.
Interestingly, Trump himself initially proposed the concept of a national police accountability database. In June 2020, one month after Floyd’s death, Trump signed Executive Order 12939, titled “Safe Policing for Safe Communities.” That order directed the Attorney General to develop a system for law enforcement agencies to share information regarding excessive force and misconduct.
Despite the NLEAD’s elimination, the DOJ stated that its Bureau of Justice Statistics published its first public report on the database in December 2024, providing anonymized and aggregated data on officer misconduct. All 90 Executive Branch agencies employing law enforcement officers, covering approximately 150,000 personnel, submitted records as required under the executive order.
In an effort to maintain some level of accountability, the DOJ announced that it had partnered with the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST) and the International Justice and Public Safety Network (Nlets) to enhance access to the National Decertification Index (NDI), a national registry of officer decertifications used by all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The Biden administration wanted the NDI’s to include expanded categories of misconduct information.
With the NLEAD now offline, law enforcement accountability returns to a patchwork of state and federal efforts—leaving some experts questioning how agencies will prevent officers with histories of misconduct from moving between jurisdictions undetected.
“The NLEAD allowed law enforcement agencies to make informed decisions by providing transparency in officer hiring processes,” said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, when the database was first introduced. “Agencies will now lose an important tool that prevented officers with histories of abuse from moving undetected between departments.”
