After five Memphis, Tennessee, police officers were charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, President Joe Biden renewed his call for law enforcement accountability.
The day before footage of Nichols' death was expected to be released, Biden said the vast majority of law enforcement officers "wear the badge honorably," but the nation must have more accountability when officers violate their oaths.
Biden did not mention his stalled campaign promise to create a national police commission, but he highlighted his other efforts, including a May 2022 executive order aimed at improving accountability for federal officers. Biden campaigned in 2020 at a time when many voters were calling for police reform following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a police officer.
Many questions remain about what happened when police pulled over Nichols on Jan. 7 on suspicion of reckless driving. After confrontations with police, Nichols was taken to the hospital and died three days later. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations is investigating the use of force. Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, said that an independent autopsy showed that Nichols "suffered from extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating." Nichols and the five officers who have since been fired are Black.
With Nichols' death again raising scrutiny around policing, we reviewed what Biden has achieved and failed to deliver on police reform since our last update in 2021.
Biden shelved his pledge to create a national commission on policing — the promise we are following on the Biden Promise Tracker. Instead, he shifted his approach to work with Congress on an expansive bill named for Floyd.
The House passed the bill in 2020 and 2021, but the Senate failed to agree on a few points, including chokeholds and qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil lawsuits.
Without legislation, Biden announced an executive order in May 2022 that bans the use of chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized, restricts no-knock warrants and requires body-worn cameras for federal law enforcement officers during arrests and searches. The order also calls for the creation of a database of police misconduct. A private database exists, but NPR found that only about one-third of police departments check it before hiring police officers.
The reach of Biden's order on policing is limited because it just applies to federal officers. There are about 700,000 to 800,000 police officers in the U.S., including roughly 100,000 federal officers.
"Most of the officers citizens encounter on a regular basis are at the state and local and municipal level," said Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, retired New York City police officer and policy director for criminal justice and civil liberties at R Street Institute, a center-right think tank.
Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and former New Orleans mayor, said significant changes must emerge on the local level among mayors, police chiefs and communities.
"We welcome the executive order, but people should not mistake the fact that an executive order is not a replacement for a full statute," Morial said.
The George Floyd legislation directed the Justice Department to create uniform accreditation standards for law enforcement agencies and require officers to complete training on racial profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force. Morial said that accreditation could be tied to federal funding, in the same way that hospitals must be accredited to get Medicare funding.
The ACLU called Biden's order a step in the right direction but wants the administration to push for stricter use of force standards at all levels of policing and use its grant-making authority to influence state and local police to align policies with federal standards.
Where does this leave Biden's promise to form a national policing commission? We rated Biden's progress Stalled in 2021 when the George Floyd legislation entered into limbo. Biden has since taken a step toward his promise through his order on policing, but it only covers federal agencies, which represent a small fraction of law enforcement officers in the country. We will monitor Biden's progress to see what other steps he takes toward police reform, but for now we continue to rate this Stalled.
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