On Friday, January 10, the Biden-Harris Administration convened state leaders, along with representatives from law enforcement groups and the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST), to continue the work of making our communities safer through good policing. IADLEST operates the National Decertification Index (NDI), a registry of state and local police misconduct that is currently in place in all 50 states and DC. State and local police departments can check the NDI to make sure they are hiring officers without disqualifying misconduct in their backgrounds.
The event gathered these leaders to encourage the continued adoption and use of NDI by police departments. IADLEST presented information on the benefits of using the NDI and on upcoming improvements to the NDI, including an expansion that will cover additional types of misconduct. State leaders also gave inspiring examples of the successful use of the NDI in their states that prevented officers with serious misconduct from being hired.
Participants in the convening included state leaders from Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia.
The Biden-Harris Administration has created real incentives for state and local law enforcement agencies to use the National De-Certification Index (NDI). These incentives include given priority consideration for grant awards to law enforcement agencies that use NDI, creating national accreditation standards that include using NDI, and providing $3 million in funding to expand the NDI. The Administration also created the first-ever federal police misconduct database, known as the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), which is being used successfully by each of the 90 federal agencies that employs law enforcement officers.
