Trump took down police misconduct database, but states can still share background check info
Source: NPR
February 28, 2025 1:37 PM ET
A federal system for doing background checks on law enforcement officers has gone offline — thanks to an executive order signed by President Trump when he returned to the White House on Jan. 20. The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) was launched in 2023 as a central repository of the professional records of federal law enforcement officers. The main purpose was to allow prospective employers — other federal agencies or local police — to check their backgrounds for misconduct. The system is now offline.
Why did President Trump decommission the database?
It appears to be a casualty of Trump's flurry of first-day executive actions, which included the revocation of a long list of President Biden's executive orders. One of those Biden orders was a package of police reforms signed on May 25, 2022, the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. The database was just one item among many in Biden's order, and the Trump administration has not criticized it specifically, though in the preface to the revocation it criticized the Biden policies in general over what it called "unlawful and radical DEI ideology."
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department has responded to NPR's request for an explanation for the decommissioning of NLEAD.
Will this make it harder for law enforcement agencies to catch job applicants with problems in their past?
Yes, especially when officers move between federal agencies. The Biden administration had hoped this would also allow local police departments to check the records of former federal officers, and now that won't happen. But when local departments hire officers with previous experience, they usually come from other state and local agencies, not from the federal government. And another system, called the National Decertification Index (NDI), allows departments to check officers' records in other states.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5305281/trump-police-misconduct-database-background-checks
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