Speaking at a church where Martin Luther King once preached, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that he soon will be unveiling stringent new protocols for reducing profiling by federal law enforcement, Time reports.
The new protocols would represent the first change to racial profiling guidelines on the federal level in more than a decade.
“In the coming days, I will announce updated Justice Department guidance regarding profiling by federal law enforcement, which will institute rigorous new standards—and robust safeguards—to help end racial profiling, once and for all,” Holder said at the first of several planned regional community discussions in the aftermath of the Ferguson grand jury decision. “This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing.”
Although President George W. Bush barred racial profiling through the Justice Department’s Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, he left exemptions for national security.
Holder, who has said he was the target of racial profiling, said more changes are needed.
“We are dealing with concerns that are truly national in scope and that threaten the entire nation,” Holder told the thousands of attendees. “Broadly speaking, without mutual understanding between citizens–whose rights must be respected–and law enforcement officers–who make tremendous and often-unheralded personal sacrifices every day to preserve public safety–without that trust, without that interaction, there can be no meaningful progress. Our police officers cannot be seen as an occupying force disconnected from the communities they serve. Bonds that have been broken must be restored. Bonds that never existed must now be created.”
