Biden order would create national policing standards
President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday aimed at bolstering police accountability, according to multiple people briefed on the announcement, a step that could reenergize federal reform efforts as the nation marks the second anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd.
The order — which appears to have the support of some major policing organizations — will call for the creation of national standards for the accreditation of police departments and a national database of officers with substantiated complaints and disciplinary records, including those fired for misconduct. It also will instruct federal law enforcement agencies to update their use-of-force policies, said the people briefed on the matter, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the order had not yet been released.
Advocates have been urging the White House to take such action since a sweeping police-reform bill failed in Congress last year. The bill was named for Floyd, a Black man who death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 prompted mass social justice protests across the country. Floyd’s family members, civil rights advocates and law enforcement officials are expected to join the president at the White House on Wednesday for a 4 p.m. ceremony at which the order will be signed.
“If you had asked me six months ago, I would have said it’s not time for an executive order yet because we should be focused on federal legislation, the George Floyd bill in particular,” Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said on Tuesday. “But once that effort was sabotaged, the administration has stepped up as much as it could via executive action.”
Biden’s bid to act unilaterally comes amid a rise in violent crime and concern among civil rights groups that the White House has lost a sense of urgency around police reform. Yet the president has little direct authority over the nation’s 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies. In addition to setting new guidelines for federal officers, the executive order aims to offer a template for the broader policing community, asking state and local agencies to embrace the document’s goals.