Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has shut down a national database that tracked misconduct by federal police. This is a resource that reform advocates welcomed as essential to prevent officers with fraud records from being detected across agencies.
The Washington Post reports that the National Law Enforcement Liability Database (NLEAD), which initially reported, is currently unavailable, which preserves police records of fraud.
The U.S. Department of Justice also confirmed the database exclusion in a statement issued online.
“The user authority may not query or add data to NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is repealing Nlead in accordance with federal standards.”
The web link that hosted the database is no longer active.
The first police misconduct database of this kind was not publicly available. Law enforcement can use NLEAD to see if an officer applying for a law enforcement position committed any fraud, such as excessive force.
Several experts celebrated NLEAD when Joe Biden first created it by an executive order issued in 2023, his third year in his presidency.
“Law enforcement will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the hiring of officers and records of misconduct by problematic officers,” said Janai Nelson, president and director of the Legal Defense Fund, on the database at the time.
But Trump has since revoked Biden’s executive order as part of his continued efforts to cut federal agencies. Trump himself first proposed a database after killing George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 months before Biden defeated him in the presidential election in November.
In an emailed statement to the Washington Post, the White House confirmed the deletion of the database.
“President Trump is in the right balance of accountability without compromising law enforcement’s ability to do the job of fighting crime and keeping communities safe,” the statement read. “But Biden’s executive order to create this database will reduce community safety, as it addresses “fair” policing and “systemic racism” in our criminal justice system. It was filled with awakened anti-political concepts. President Trump revoked an order to create this database on the first day as he is committed to giving law enforcement brave men and women the tools they need to stop crime. ”
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The news of Nlead’s erasure is because police misconduct is far from being rooted in American law enforcement. In Hansville, Alabama, for example, the entire department was recently on leave in a study by the Great Ju Court that discovered the “culture of corrupt ramps.”
The 18 large ju judges called for the abolition of the Hansville Police Station, which is only eight police officers.
The investigation into the police station came amid the death of 49-year-old Christopher Michael Willingham, a Hansville dispatcher. Willingham was found dead at work due to a toxic combination of drugs.
The department also ruled that “failed to explain, preserve and maintain the evidence, and in doing so the victims of the crime and the public were unsuccessful.”
