Illinois Should License Police Officers like Hairdressers, Physicians: State's Top Legal Officer

The Attorney General of Illinois has said that deaths like that of George Floyd show the need for police officers to be licensed by the state just like workers from other professions.

As the U.S. remains convulsed by protests following Floyd's death, Kwame Raoul has said he would pursue his effort to push for a state licensing system for police akin to what physicians, pharmacists and hairdressers have.

He first pushed the idea as a state senator during a sweeping criminal justice bill that followed the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The legislation banned police chokeholds and created a database of officers who had been disciplined due to misconduct.

But the provision to license officers was dropped so it could be passed and signed into law in 2015. Now he thinks it now has a better chance of passing the legislature.

"I think it's the responsibility of the legislature to do what they've done for many other professions to have consequences for repeated misconduct or single acts of egregious misconduct," Raoul told radio station WBEZ. "If they have an egregious act of official misconduct or a pattern of such, they can have their license taken away such that they cannot participate in that profession anymore and that should be the same thing for a law enforcement officer who is capable of using deadly force in carrying out his or her duties."

Raoul believes that a state licensing system would kick out officers with repeated misconduct claims and stop them from doing police work in another city.

In his view, such a licensing system could have taken off the street officers like Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald in 2014, as well as Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer charged with second-degree murder for killing Floyd.

This week Raoul led a coalition of state legal officers urging Congress to give them broader authority to investigate "unconstitutional policing," the Chicago Tribune reported.

Despite the police being dropped five years ago, he says there is new impetus for a police licensing system. "I'm hopeful," he said. "The nation watched as an officer casually caused asphyxiation by kneeling on a man's neck for minutes. That has angered a lot of people. That has moved a lot of people. That has forced a lot of people to look in the mirror and say, 'What have I done to contribute to this?'

Newsweek has contacted the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police for comment.

WBEZ reported that the association had said it would be prepared to discuss police officer licensing although it suggested that the certification process for officers may just need to be amended.