Washington, DC - Patrick Yoes, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, announced that Congress had sent H.R. 7776, the legislative vehicle for the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023,” to the President, who is expected to sign it into law. The bill includes a provision developed by the FOP to require all civilian law enforcement officers employed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to be issued an appropriate law enforcement credential.

“We need to begin by thanking Representative Bacon for his tremendous work in getting this provision included in the bill,” Yoes said. “When this issue was brought to us by the First Federal Fraternal Order of Police Lodge President Daniel Henkel, and echoed by our Federal DoD officers, we took it to Representative Bacon, who’s been a very strong supporter of our nation’s law enforcement officers. He immediately realized how important this was for the safety of our officers and made the issue a priority.”

At the request of the FOP, Representative Bacon and a bipartisan group of House Members wrote to Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of the Defense Department, stating:

For law enforcement officers not to have the proper credentials clearly
Identifying them as law enforcement raises numerous issues, but the
lack of this identification is a critical threat to the safety of these officers.

“He sent that letter a year ago and when the DoD did not address the issue, Representative Bacon introduced H.R. 8142, a bill requiring the Department to provide these credentials,” Yoes said. “Because of his leadership, a similar provision was included in the Defense Reauthorization Act and will soon be signed into law. We couldn’t be more grateful to him.”