- The Department of Justice has removed the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which documented police misconduct across the country. The database was supposed to help law enforcement agencies make more informed hiring decisions when considering applicants with a history on the force.
- The NLEAD was established through a Biden-era executive order in 2022 and was officially launched in 2023. However, Trump first floated the idea in 2020, following the death of George Floyd.
- According to a December 2024 DOJ report, the database contained nearly 4,800 records of federal officer misconduct between 2018 and 2023.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Donald Trump removed a database that documented police misconduct across the country, as first reported by the Washington Post. The database was supposed to provide law enforcement agencies with information about potential hires who had previous experience on the force.
The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) is no longer available and the website that hosted it is no longer active. Its removal is addressed in a statement on the Bureau of Justice Statistics website that reads, “User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD. The U.S. Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.”
Why was the NLEAD created?
Established through an executive order signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022, the NLEAD tracked the records of current and former federal law enforcement officers, including criminal convictions, suspension of a law enforcement officer’s enforcement authorities, terminations related to misconduct, civil judgments, resignations or retirements while under investigation for serious misconduct, sustained complaints or records of disciplinary action, and commendations and awards.
According to a December 2024 DOJ report, the database contained 4,790 records of federal officer misconduct between 2018 and 2023.
The information was meant to help law enforcement agencies nationwide make more informed hiring decisions when considering applicants with a history on the force.
Donald Trump first floated the idea of the database in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. However, it didn’t take shape until Biden’s executive order in 2022 and wasn’t fully operational until 2023.
Responses to the NLEAD
Although the information in the NLEAD was never made publicly available, advocates for police reform lauded its creation.
In a statement released at the time, president and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Janai Nelson, called the database an “unprecedented and important step to help prevent officers with histories of misconduct from moving from one department to another without detection.”
Nelson added, “Law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the records of misconduct in officer hiring and offending officers will not be able to distance themselves from their misdeeds.”
In a statement sent to the Washington Post, the Trump White House said that the president “believes in an appropriate balance of accountability without compromising law enforcement’s ability to do its job of fighting crime and keeping communities safe.”
However, it goes on to accuse Biden’s executive order of filling the database with “woke, anti-police concepts that make communities less safe like a call for ‘equitable’ policing and addressing ‘systemic racism in our criminal justice system.’”
