This article was published in partnership with the Center for American Progress.

Last week, the Biden administration signed an executive order on police reform. The order comes two years after George Floyd was murdered at the hands of police in Minneapolis, which sparked nationwide protests against the violence inflicted on Black people by the police officers charged to serve and protect them. People took to the streets demanding action, not just to hold individual officers accountable, but also to challenge the systemic racism that has been ingrained into American policing since the country’s founding. Commemorating this grim moment in American history yet again serves as a critical reminder of all that still needs to change to do justice to George Floyd’s memory — and the memory of countless other Black people who have suffered from police violence outside of the national spotlight. People who have been killed by police officers while leaving a convenience store, sleeping in their bed, or being pulled over for a traffic stop.

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1529567016734150657

The executive order, “Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing, and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety,” represents the most substantial federal action on police reform since George Floyd’s murder and comes after the Senate failed to pass the more comprehensive George Floyd Justice and Policing Act in 2021. Yet, it does not go nearly far enough to save lives. Reforming the institution of policing and reimagining safety remains an urgent priority that will require brave and sustained commitment across all levels of government as well as collaboration with communities that have been most harmed by police violence.

Key reforms in President Biden’s executive order include:

1. Improving data collection. All federal law enforcement agencies will contribute to a National Law Enforcement Accountability Database regarding instances of police misconduct as well as submit information to the FBI related to use-of-force incidents. The U.S. attorney general will review the status of and compliance with federal reporting requirements. This also includes the issuance of guidance to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies on best practices for contributing their data to federal systems.
2. Revising use-of-force standards. All federal law enforcement agencies will revise their use-of-force policies to ensure they meet or exceed the standards included in the recently revised policy for the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s policy provides that use of force is permitted only when “no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist.” All federal law enforcement use-of-force policies will also include de-escalation provisions as well as an affirmative duty to intervene to stop excessive use of force and render medical aid.
3. Limiting the use of no-knock entries. Building upon the U.S. Department of Justice’s September 2021 policy, all federal law enforcement agencies will be prohibited from the use of no-knock entries unless an agent has reasonable grounds to believe that knocking and announcing the agent’s presence would create an imminent threat of physical violence to the officer and/or another person.
4. Limiting the militarization of law enforcement. Federal agencies are restricted from transferring or selling additional types of military equipment to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, expanding the Obama-era restriction on this practice.
5. Credentialing of police agencies. The attorney general will develop and implement a process by which state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies will seek accreditation by an independent entity.
6. Leveraging federal grants. Federal discretionary grants will be awarded to state, local, and tribal governments to encourage compliance with the executive order. This will include an assessment of what discretionary grants will be limited to the law enforcement agencies that achieve accreditation.
7. Improving crisis response to include alternatives. Guidance will be issued and resources identified to support state, local, tribal, and territorial officials as they implement a range of alternative first-responder models to meet the needs of people experiencing a behavioral or mental health crises or persons who have disabilities. This includes civilian community responder models being developed in jurisdictions across the country that do not include the police as first-responders.

The executive order also contains important provisions that improve investigations into deaths in police custody; strengthen the effectiveness of pattern-of-practice investigations; ban chokeholds and carotid restraints except in certain circumstances where use of deadly force is authorized; enhance recruitment, training, and retention practices; ensure the use of body-worn cameras by federal law enforcement officers; and advance key criminal justice reform and reentry measures.

The administration should also continue to push for stricter use of force standards at all levels of policing, making it clear that deadly force in particular should only be used as a last resort and once all other options are exhausted, and fully use its grant-making authority to influence state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to align their policies with federal standards. It should also close the remaining loopholes in the transfer and sale of military equipment to local police. Finally, this order will only be as strong as its implementation. The administration must ensure proper protocols and training to implement this order broadly and to help change the culture of policing today.

State, local, and tribal police departments should expand upon the executive order, which only governs federal officers. The vast majority of peoples’ interaction with police are with state, local, and tribal law enforcement. Since George Floyd’s murder and the protest movement that followed, many jurisdictions have begun taking a range of official actions to improve policing in their communities. States and localities should continue to grow these important efforts in ways that produce meaningful accountability for law enforcement and respond to public calls for reform by passing comprehensive statewide legislation; enhancing data collection and reporting; and directly changing harmful and racially disparate policies, including by creating community-centered safety and investing in prevention.

Congress must also do its part by passing comprehensive police reform legislation that creates meaningful accountability and restores trust between police and the communities they serve by eliminating qualified immunity and strengthening civil rights protections. This includes legislative reforms to the federal statute, Section 242, which defines the circumstance when a government official can be criminally responsible for violating someone’s civil rights. Section 242 does not specifically define prohibited conduct and has historically been interpreted too narrowly, failing to hold police officers accountable for a wide range of misconduct.

https://action.aclu.org/petition/divest-police-invest-black-and-brown-communities

Legislative action is also needed to eliminate the judicial doctrine of qualified immunity that drastically reduces the legal liability of police officers. Qualified immunity limits the circumstances in which an individual can sue a police officer for violating their civil rights only to situations where the behavior violates “clearly established law.” This strict legal standard curtails accountability in policing to such a degree that officers face few repercussions — even when their conduct violates the Constitution. While it is broadly recognized within the police reform movement that changes to the doctrine of qualified immunity and Section 242 are needed, Congress will need to pass legislation for these changes to become law.

No more lives should be lost to police violence. Elected officials must be responsive to public demands for reforms to the institution of policing that create a meaningful standard of accountability; erode systemic racism in the criminal legal system; and improve relationships between police and the communities they serve. Moreover, we must continue to reimagine public safety by creating alternatives that are community-centered and also focus on prevention.

More than 75 years after the systematic incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. Justice Department launched the “China Initiative,” inciting widespread fear of racial profiling for Asian Americans across the country. This year, as Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC commemorates Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), we reflect on the exclusion, traumatization, and scapegoating of our communities under the pretext of national security.

We fight for visibility in our country’s history to stop a cyclical pattern of discrimination and profiling. We recognize the resilience of our communities and the courage of many Asian American and immigrant advocates and civil rights leaders. We question why these sacrifices needed to be made and challenge the paradigm and national security apparatus that treats our identities as Asian Americans as threats. For far too long, our communities have struggled for inclusion and have been viewed as inherently suspect. We are not treated as American, but as “perpetual foreigners,” in a country that we call home.

Now more than ever, it is important to remember our history, and to shed light on the ways that the Asian American community has been targeted and scapegoated as a national security threat based on our race, ethnicity, religion, or ancestry. Many of us know that during World War II, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and communities. Over 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry were rounded up, forced to leave their homes, and incarcerated in remote detention camps in the name of “national security” in what was one of the darkest stains in our nation’s history.

What is often not highlighted in our history is that the racist rationale behind this measure was concern that any people of Japanese descent were more prone to acts of espionage or sabotage. People were reduced to numbers on tags and treated as the enemy based on their background. It did not matter that around a third of those incarcerated were children or that around two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Many died in incarceration from causes including infectious diseases, bad sanitation, or even shooting by guards. Congress eventually acknowledged that “these actions were carried out without adequate security reasons and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by the Commission [on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians], and were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” It was not until 1988 that the government issued this formal admission of failure.

Decades after the incarceration of Japanese Americans, Fred Korematsu, who was incarcerated and challenged the executive order, warned: “No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.”

Credit: Ringo Chiu via AP Images

Unfortunately, history continues to repeat itself. Following 9/11, we saw Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities subjected to mass surveillance, unwarranted investigations, and unjust prosecutions by the federal government under counterterrorism programs. As with the incarceration of Japanese Americans, racist rationales were used to justify the government’s actions — for example, the discriminatory theory of “radicalization,” which falsely claims that people with certain religious beliefs and practices are more prone to actions threatening national security.

In the past decade, we have continued to see federal agencies use race, ethnicity, national origin, and/or religious beliefs to profile and target Asian Americans, particularly Chinese American scientists and academics. Racial bias against persons of Asian descent permeated federal agencies and influenced the investigations and prosecutions of Asian Americans and immigrants across the country, including Professor Xiaoxing Xi and Sherry Chen. This discrimination intensified under the Justice Department’s now-defunct “China Initiative,” allegedly intended to combat economic espionage and trade secret theft. While there are legitimate concerns about the activities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government, the increasing pressure on the FBI and Justice Department to bring cases, along with rising xenophobic and anti-China rhetoric from U.S. government officials, have further fueled anti-Asian sentiments at home and instigated a new wave of racial profiling and violent targeting of our communities.

Under this initiative, officials have relied on a broad theory of “non-traditional collectors” — a euphemism for “spies” — to broadly scrutinize individuals of Chinese descent. Academics with connections to China have been painted as national security threats regardless of any wrongdoing. Reports have found the majority of cases under the initiative do not involve charges of economic espionage or trade secret theft. The initiative incited fear that many individuals are being targeted based on their ethnicity rather than evidence of criminal activity, leaving lives and careers ruined, and driving widespread distrust of our government.

In response to community concerns, Advancing Justice – AAJC launched the Anti-Racial Profiling Project to help directly impacted persons such as Professor Anming Hu, and work towards substantive government reforms. We spearheaded a diverse coalition of Asian American organizations, civil rights groups (including the ACLU), and academic groups to put an end to this harmful initiative. As a result of this coalition’s work, the Justice Department announced its decision to terminate the “China Initiative” on February 23, 2022.

While we commend the Justice Department for listening to the concerns of the Asian American community and celebrate this moment as a critical step forward to address the cyclical and historic racial profiling of Asian Americans, much work remains to be done.

The unjust targeting and profiling of Asian Americans and Asian immigrants have inflicted lasting harms and instilled fear in our communities across the country, especially during a time when hate and violence against Asian Americans continues to rise, further inflaming distress and anxiety. For many of those who have had their “loyalty” questioned like Professor Gang Chen and been subjected to misguided scrutiny under the pretext of national security by their own government, the pain and trauma are long lasting. We call for accountability from the government and remedies for those who have been arrested, lost their jobs, and had their lives destroyed because of unjust investigations and prosecutions.

Moving forward, Advancing Justice – AAJC will continue to advocate for transparency from the government in implementing structural changes to address concerns of racial bias and unjust targeting of our communities. We will continue to push for changes across government agencies, including anti-bias training for investigators, prosecutors, and other government staff to protect not only Asian Americans and immigrants, but all communities of color.

It is long past time to end this injustice. We must remain vigilant of the ways in which Asian American communities are targeted and scapegoated as economic and national security threats. Our institutions and our country must live up to our American ideals and values, and stop this cycle of profiling and discrimination against our communities.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC has a mission to advance the civil and human rights of Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all. Advancing Justice – AAJC launched the Anti-Racial Profiling Project in October 2020 to offer resources and legal referrals for those impacted by the U.S. government’s increased efforts to target and profile Asian American and Asian immigrant scientists and researchers, particularly of Chinese descent. Visit our website at advancingjustice-aajc.org.