President Donald Trump announced Thursday Alice Johnson would serve as his new "pardon czar."
Johnson, who was pardoned by Trump during his first term in office for a non-violent drug offense, will be responsible for scouring the criminal justice system and looking for people who may be the victims of injustice.
"She's going to be my pardon czar," President Trump said during a celebration of Black History Month at the White House on Thursday. "You're going to find people just like you that this should not have happened," he said to Johnson.
According to government records, Johnson had been serving a life sentence for a drug conviction in the Western District of Tennessee. She had been sentenced in 1997.
President Trump signed the full and unconditional pardon in August 2020.
"You've been an inspiration to people. And we're going to be listening to your recommendation on pardons," the President said.
Many other criminal justice changes have been taking effect since President Trump took office in January, including the shutdown of the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, as first reported by the Washington Post.
The database, which kept nearly 5,000 records of misconduct related to federal law enforcement officials, initially launched in 2023 under President Joe Biden but was decommissioned when President Trump revoked the former President's executive order.
According to a statement on a Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics website, "agencies can no longer query or add data to the (database). The U.S. Department of Justice is decommissioning the (National Law Enforcement Accountability Database) in accordance with federal standards."
The database tracked federal law enforcement officers with criminal convictions and terminations related to misconduct as well as officers who resigned or retired under investigation. The database also kept information about commendations and awards.
According to a federal fact sheet about NLEAD, the database had been searched nearly 10,000 times since it was launched.
"It's really unfortunate that this really powerful segment of law enforcement agents no longer has any way to be vetted or tracked before they're hired into another agency," said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a civil rights organization focused on holding law enforcement accountable.
RELATED STORY | President Trump’s first 30 days: Rapid government changes and controversial actions
Bonds said she believed the database had been serving as a "beta test" to see whether a larger national database could be created to cover state and local police as well.
"So, not really letting it be in existence that long, not really being able to serve as a model is disappointing," she said
"It's very disappointing," said Chloe White, the senior policy counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
White said President Trump had proposed creating a similar law enforcement accountability database when he was in office during his first term.
The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, however, was not created until 2023, under President Biden.
White said on a very basic level, it is important for law enforcement agencies to share information with each other.
"It's good for agencies to share information and to know who has what infractions and whom they shouldn't hire," she said. "I think that's just basic information that they probably want to have."
The White House told the Washington Post that while the President "believes in an appropriate balance of accountability," he rescinded the Biden executive order creating the database because it was "full of woke, anti-police concepts."'
The elimination of the federal database will not impact state, local, and private databases that also track discipline across the country.
