Joe Biden compromises on promise to create commission to address policing issues

During his fall 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to establish a national commission on policing to address police brutality. His promise came after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in May 2020 and many Americans had begun calling for police reform.

Since then, Biden has worked with Congress on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which banned federal no-knock warrants in drug cases and aimed to curtail police use of chokeholds. The act also 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.

The House passed the bill in 2020 and 2021, but the Senate failed to agree on provisions related to chokeholds and qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil lawsuits.

Biden, who has repeatedly called to pass the bill, has tried other avenues to fulfill his promise. He signed a May 2022 executive order banning chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized, restricting no-knock warrants and requiring federal law enforcement officers to wear body cameras during arrests and searches.

The order also called for creating a database of police misconduct and establishing a committee of representatives from federal agencies to produce a plan that "advances front-end diversion, alternatives to incarceration, rehabilitation, and reentry." The Justice Department's strategic plan, released in April 2023, outlined the committee's goals to safely reduce "unnecessary" criminal justice system interactions, support rehabilitation during incarceration and ease reentry for people with criminal records.

The administration has said it is carrying out the order, but it applies only to federal officers. Americans mostly encounter state, local and municipal officers. About 100,000 out of 800,000 law enforcement officers in the U.S. are federal officers.

Biden's administration has highlighted several instances of the Justice Department investigating law enforcement agencies for systemic misconduct. The department in 2021 rescinded a Trump-era memo that inhibited the use of consent decrees — legally binding agreements among parties to resolve disputes without admission of guilt or liability. Federal prosecutors have used these decrees, which typically include detailed improvement plans and federal monitoring, to investigate police departments.

In 2023, the White House pointed to the Justice Department's work restoring a voluntary program to provide "technical assistance to police departments that ask for help to reform their practices and build trust" and "has awarded millions of dollars in grants for de-escalation and anti-bias training."

Although Biden has not created a national commission to broadly address policing, his executive order on policing took steps toward reforming federal law enforcement. Biden achieved less than his original statement, but there were still significant accomplishments consistent with his original promise. We rate this Compromise.