Hours into his return to the Oval Office, President Trump revoked an executive order that aimed to “advance effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices to enhance public trust and public safety.” But Trump did not just revoke many of his predecessor’s reforms — he also in the process reversed policies that he championed during his first term.
After the Senate failed in 2021 to pass a bipartisan package of law enforcement reforms — the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — the Biden administration sought to implement as much of the legislation as possible through executive order. Signed May 2022 on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, the action aimed “to promote safe and accountable policing” in myriad ways.
Consider the order’s highlights. It permitted federal police to use force only as a tool of last resort. It curtailed when federal police could enter a home without knocking and announcing themselves and when they could use chokeholds. It mandated body cameras. It limited the transfer and sale of federal military equipment to state and local law enforcement. It required the Department of Justice to launch a national misconduct database for federal police. And, recognizing that most policing is local, it encouraged reform of state and local policing through various grants.
During his first term, Trump championed many of these measures. Take, for example, the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database. It is a national repository of substantiated misconduct claims and disciplinary records of federal police officers. It was created largely to address the problem of the “wandering officer” who shuffles from department to department after resignation or discharge due to misconduct. Biden, as part of his policing order, directed the DOJ to create the database, and the department did so. In December 2024, the DOJ reported that the database, since its debut one year earlier, has been searched nearly 10,000 times to inform federal policing employment determinations.
But before there was National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, there was Trump’s 2020 directive to, essentially, create it. Trump’s version would’ve been similar but not the same. It would’ve included policing misconduct but also “concerning instances of excessive force.” And unlike the current database, Trump’s problematic-officer registry would’ve aggregated and anonymized information about officers and made it publicly available — a feature some advocates still want to see.
In the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, as the air rang with calls for racial justice, Trump issued his own executive order to reform policing — and it included much more than the directive to launch the database. Among other things, it tightened use-of-force rules, banned chokeholds, steered federal dollars towards state and local police that meet certain standards, and encouraged initiatives that better address vulnerable populations’ needs and lessen the burdens that law enforcement face in responding to them. Biden’s order did all those things too.
So why did Trump backtrack? Probably to signal a sharp turn away from the direction of the Biden administration. But another reason could be that when Trump signed his policing order, the nation was still reeling from Floyd’s murder and his administration felt tremendous pressure to act. Now there’s less pressure.
Whatever the reason, the values that guided Trump’s first-term policing reforms are just as worthy, and they should guide the new administration in crafting an executive order to advance effective and accountable policing. Indeed, as Trump’s 2020 order put it, it is still a good idea, “particularly in African-American communities,” to inspire “confidence that [police] will live up to our Nation’s founding ideals and will protect the rights of all people.” It is still a good idea to ensure “transparent, safe, and accountable delivery of law enforcement to their communities.” And it is still a good idea to promote models of policing that better respond to the unique needs of vulnerable populations.
