The US Justice Department has created a database to track the misconduct records of federal law enforcement officers in an effort to prevent agencies from unwittingly hiring problem officers, officials said Monday.
The federal move is a step toward accountability amid growing calls to close loopholes that allow law enforcement officers to be rehired by other agencies after losing their jobs or resigning following misconduct allegations.
But the database, which will only contain records for federal officers and will not be open to the public, falls short of the national misconduct database called for by some police reform advocates.
The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database currently only includes former and current Department of Justice officers with records of serious misconduct in the past seven years. It will be expanded to include other federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service and the United States Park Police, a Justice Department official said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said it would give federal agencies “an important new tool for vetting and hiring officers and agents that will help strengthen our efforts” to build and maintain public trust.
“No law enforcement agency – including the Department of Justice – can do its job effectively without the public’s trust,” Garland said in an e-mailed statement.
Federal agencies will be responsible for reporting and updating records for six types of misconduct, including criminal convictions, civil judgments, terminations, suspensions, resignations or retirements while under investigation, and sustained complaints or disciplinary actions for serious misconduct, officials said.
It is currently accessible only to Justice Department employees and will eventually be expanded to allow access by users in other federal law enforcement agencies, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies, a Justice Department official said.
Several state legislatures have created statewide databases in recent years to track disciplinary misconduct and officer decertification, which occurs when a state licensing body revokes the certification or license required to be a law enforcement officer in that state. But few of these state databases are open to the public, and few are shared among states.