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National Law Enforcement Accountability Database

Strengthening trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.

Authorized federal users

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Empowering federal hiring

In Executive Order 14074, Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety, President Biden declared a policy to “make policing safer and more effective by strengthening trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.”

As explained by the Executive Order, one of the many ways to advance that policy is to “commit to new practices in law enforcement recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention, as well as training, oversight, and accountability.”

In furtherance of these goals and to promote new and strengthened practices in the hiring, promotion, and retention of law enforcement officers, the Executive Order directed the Attorney General to establish a National Law Enforcement Accountability Database for official records of federal law enforcement officer misconduct, commendations, and awards.

What is in the NLEAD?

As specified by the Executive Order, the NLEAD includes law enforcement officers who have records that include one of six categories related to officer misconduct.

The NLEAD will include data on commendations and awards when an officer is already in the NLEAD for one of the misconduct categories.

Who can access the NLEAD?

To protect the safety, privacy, and due process rights of law enforcement officers who may be identified, the NLEAD cannot be searched by the public. Access to the NLEAD is limited to authorized users from federal law enforcement agencies for use in the hiring, job assignment, and promotion of law enforcement officers.

In the future, NLEAD aims to offer data access to state and local agencies to support hiring and workforce practices.

How can I learn more?

To promote transparency, and as required by the Executive Order, DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics will publish an annual public report with aggregated and anonymized information on NLEAD data.

This report will be available to the public to understand how federal law enforcement agencies use the database to provide information that will improve the quality of the federal law enforcement workforce.

NLEAD Operations

The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database launched on December 18, 2023, and currently includes records for current and former federal officers who have misconduct information over the past seven years.

State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Law Enforcement Agency Collaboration

DOJ has partnered with IADLEST (International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training), which runs the National Decertification Index (NDI). The NDI is a national registry of law enforcement de-certification and revocation actions relating to officer misconduct that is currently used by all fifty states and the District of Columbia. In December 2023, with DOJ’s assistance, IADLEST released a new Request for Proposal to update and expand the NDI to include the additional categories of information required by the Executive Order.

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