New CLEAN DC Act Wipes Out Nearly All 2022 Police Reforms, Reverting Laws to Pre-2022 Status

This new piece of legislation, officially dubbed the Common-Sense Law Enforcement and Accountability Now in DC Act of 2025 (or the CLEAN DC Act), is short, but its impact is massive. At its core, the bill is a legislative grenade thrown at the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022. Section 2 of this new Act states clearly that almost everything the 2022 Act did is now completely repealed, meaning the laws governing policing and justice revert to exactly what they were before 2022.

The Legislative Undo Button

Think of the 2022 Act as a major software update that changed the rules for how law enforcement operates and how citizens interact with the justice system. The CLEAN DC Act is essentially hitting the 'system restore' button, overriding years of work. If the 2022 reforms included new restrictions on police use of force, new requirements for body camera footage release, or new accountability measures for officers, those changes are now gone. For anyone who relied on those 2022 changes—whether they were advocates, community members, or even officers adapting to new rules—this bill pulls the rug out from under them, replacing the current framework with one that is at least three years old.

What Stays and What Goes?

The repeal is not 100% complete, which adds a layer of complexity. While the vast majority of the 2022 reform package is wiped clean, the CLEAN DC Act explicitly exempts two specific parts: subtitle S of title I, and subtitle A of title I. Whatever those two subtitles covered will remain law, even as everything else around them collapses back to the pre-2022 rules. This creates potential headaches for everyone, from city lawyers to patrol officers, who now have to figure out how these two surviving pieces of the 2022 Act interact with the older, reinstated laws. It’s like putting a modern engine part into a vintage car—it might work, but the integration could be messy, creating gaps or conflicts in operational procedures.

Real-World Repercussions

For regular people, the impact depends entirely on what the 2022 Act actually changed. If the 2022 Act established specific new rights for arrestees or mandated certain oversight procedures, those rights and procedures are now likely gone. For example, if the 2022 Act had established a clear, public process for filing complaints against officers, that process is now repealed, and the older, potentially less transparent system is back in effect. This is a significant reversal for advocates who pushed for stronger police accountability and oversight, as it sends the legal framework back to a place where those measures were deemed insufficient. By focusing solely on repeal, the CLEAN DC Act doesn’t introduce new reforms; it simply removes existing ones, making it a pure status quo ante bill for policing in the district.