TWO YEARS AFTER the murder of George Floyd ignited worldwide protests against police brutality, President Joe Biden ordered federal law enforcement agencies to update their policies on use of force. A new report, however, finds that the nation’s largest law enforcement agency ignored the spirit — if not the letter — of that order.
The Department of Homeland Security has failed to accurately compile data on use-of-force incidents, according to a report issued Monday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO. “We found the data were not sufficiently reliable for the purposes of describing the number of times agency law enforcement officers used force,” the watchdog agency wrote.
DHS updated its use-of-force policy in February to limit the use of no-knock entries, require more frequent training, and ban chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized. The changes brought DHS into compliance with Biden’s May 2022 executive order, which required federal law enforcement agencies to align their use-of-force practices with new Department of Justice policy. The order also included guidelines for improved data collection and reporting on federal agencies’ use of force.
GAO’s report, authorized by Congress last year, determined that several agencies under DHS have been regularly undercounting use-of-force incidents. From April 2022 to July 2023, GAO audited four DHS agencies: Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protective Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service. “If officers used force multiple times during one event, the agency counted only one instance of force,” said Gretta Goodwin, a GAO director for homeland security and justice.
Hellbound and Down 