The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has been condemned by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. However, police violence spiraled out of control in part because each of those presidents failed to obey a law compelling the feds to track police killings around the nation.

In 1994, Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which boosted subsidies for local and state law enforcement. The bill also required the attorney general to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” across the nation and to “publish an annual summary of the data acquired.” Congress effectively ordered the Justice Department to document how often police kill unarmed private citizens.

Two years later, a Justice Department report raised the white flag: “Systematically collecting information on use of force from the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies is difficult given … the sensitivity of the issue.” 

Instead of requiring local and state law enforcement agencies to comply with […]