R-word forgotten Don OKs cop reform – racism not mentioned
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that calls on police departments to adopt stricter use-of-force protocols and keep tabs on cops with a history of misconduct — but there was no mention of addressing racism within American law enforcement ranks despite continued unrest over George Floyd’s death.
Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, Trump painted police brutality against black Americans as the result of “a tiny percentage” of “bad” cops — not a systemic issue — and suggested his order will tackle those problems without inhibiting his lawand-order agenda.
“Americans want law and order, they demand law and order,” Trump said before a crowd largely made up of police officials and Republican lawmakers. “They may not say it, they may not be talking about it, but that’s what they want. Some of them don’t know that that’s what they want, but that’s what they want.”
After his remarks, Trump signed the order flanked by a group of mostly white police union representatives from across the country.
“They’ve done an incredible job,” he said before leaving the Rose Garden without taking questions.
The executive action lays out three pillars for encouraging “best practices” in police departments.
First, the directive makes some Justice Department grants for local departments contingent on following the administration’s use-of-force prescriptions. The prescriptions, in turn, prohibit police chokeholds while requiring officers to be trained in deescalation tactics.
However, chokeholds will be permitted in any situation where “deadly force is allowed by law,” the order says. It’s unclear how such a determination would be made, and chokeholds are already banned by many police departments on a local level.
Second, Trump’s order paves the way for the establishment of a national database tracking officers with multiple misconduct complaints on their records. The database would prevent unruly cops from being able to join new departments without scrutiny, according to senior administration officials.
Lastly, the order includes language encouraging police departments to involve mental health professionals while arresting or approaching homeless people and individuals suffering from mental illness or drug addiction.
Police reform advocates were disappointed that Trump’s order didn’t acknowledge the systemic racism they say underpinned the police killings of Floyd and many other unarmed black men.
“There was no mention of race in the executive order, which is tone-deaf,” said Lucy Lang, the director of John Jay College’s Institute for Innovation in Prosecution. “We’re not going to get to the root of solving this problem by weeding out individuals alone. This is a bigger problem.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a former prosecutor, said the order did not “meet the moment.”
“Let me be clear, this is not enough. It does not meet this moment. This is not enough,” Harris said during a Senate hearing on police reforms. “There are thousands of people marching in the streets in 50 states demanding meaningful change. People are demanding action. They’re not marching in the streets for watered-down proposals that won’t hold any officers accountable.”