President Joe Biden Wednesday signed an executive order to advance effective, accountable policing by federal policing agencies.
The attorney general was ordered to create a national database of police misconduct that must include all federal law enforcement agencies. The database will track officer misconduct such as convictions, terminations, decertifications, civil judgments and resignations and retirements while under investigation for serious misconduct.
Sustained complaints or records of disciplinary actions for serious misconduct will also be mandated for inclusion in the database.
The database will be made available to local law enforcement agencies, also, who will reportedly be encouraged to use it to screen personnel. It may prevent “bad apples” under a cloud from hopping to a different police department unaware of alleged misdeeds.
Federal police must adopt measures to promote thorough investigations and preserve evidence after incidents involving the use of deadly force or deaths in custody under the executive order.
It orders all federal law enforcement agencies to adopt and publicly post body-worn camera policies that mandate activation of cameras during activities like arrests and searches. The federal authorities must also provide expedited public release of footage following incidents involving serious bodily injury or deaths in custody.
Chokeholds and carotid restraints are banned by the order unless deadly force is authorized. The order also restricts no-knock entries.
Further restrictions are also placed on what military items can be transferred to civilian police departments.
Along with a host of other changes announced by the president, federal law enforcement officers are probably groaning under the slew of changes and restrictions involved.
Black Lives Matter issued a number of social media posts this week that say the president has not done enough. The group seems to express a view that the only real answer to their perceived issues is doing away with all police.
“Maintaining a white supremacist institution like policing costs Black lives,” the group posted on their verified Twitter account. “This continued commitment by politicians to support our killers makes them accessories to our demise.”
In another Wednesday tweet, they likened police to slave patrollers and said Biden’s changes were not going to keep them safe.
“Politicians have been protecting systems of policing as if it could magically abandon its roots of slave patrolling and anti-Black violence,” a spokesperson said. “Banning choke holds and requiring body cameras doesn’t keep us safe. More money for “training” doesn’t keep us safe.”
“President Biden’s [executive order] willfully ignores the inherently racist origins of policing & advances the same ideas over and over again as if somehow it will magically make old, outdated approaches work,” BLM organizers declared.
“Halfway measures will not save our people from white supremacy and state violence.”
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