Val Demings is on Biden’s VP List. Will Her Police Career Hurt or Help?

A decade later, Ms. Demings, now a second-term Democratic congresswoman, has emerged as a finalist to be Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s running mate. She rose in politics as a Black woman with law enforcement credentials, but her moment in the spotlight comes as the nation reckons with the difficult legacy of police brutality and racial discrimination.

If she is chosen as the vice-presidential nominee, her career could prove to be a political asset against an incumbent president who is building his re-election campaign around his call for law and order, while attacking Mr. Biden as weak on crime. But in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, with protests continuing to rock the country, it could also be a political liability.

“This is an opportunity to change the way things are,” said David Porter, a former newspaper columnist active in progressive causes, who worked for Ms. Demings early in her political career. “I just don’t know that picking a cop would send the right message right now.”

Police misconduct cases are also the focus of renewed scrutiny for another top contender for the vice presidency, Senator Kamala Harris, who has been criticized for not aggressively prosecuting officers accused of wrongdoing as California’s attorney general. And they derailed the hopes of another candidate, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who withdrew last month amid criticism that as a prosecutor she had failed to charge officers accused of misconduct.

In recent weeks, Ms. Demings has become a leading voice calling for changes in policing, and she has cast herself as an experienced reformer, repeating that she started out as a social worker and brought a “social worker’s heart” to police work. But a review by The New York Times shows a more complicated record: that of a police leader with a long history of defending the status quo.