WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will issue an executive order on Wednesday to reform policing at the federal and local levels two years after the death of George Floyd, senior officials in his administration said.
The executive order will direct all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, create a national registry of federal and local officers fired for misconduct, and use grants to encourage police departments to ban chokeholds and neck restraints. , unless lethal force is necessary, officials said.
The executive order will affect about 100,000 federal law enforcement officers, but the White House hopes to use federal spending to expand to more than 700,000 state and local officers.
George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, died on May 25, 2020 after being held to the ground for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, his hands handcuffed behind his back and a knee of the white policeman pressed on his neck while he said he couldn’t breathe.
The scene, filmed by passers-by and massively shared on social networks, had provoked large demonstrations in the United States and around the world to denounce racial discrimination and police violence.
The executive order will also call for the creation of national standards for police service accreditation and seek to tie a portion of future grants to obtaining such accreditation, the officials said.
(Report Rami Ayyub and Jarrett Renshaw; French version Camille Raynaud)