Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump ready to sign order on policing
Money incentives said key to ‘best practices’ pursuit
ATLANTA — Senior administration officials said Monday evening that President Donald Trump plans to take executive action today that would provide new federal funding incentives for local police departments to beef up training over the use of force and strengthen a national database to track misconduct.
Trump’s order, the product of collaboration with law enforcement groups and families of suspects killed by police, aims to address the mass protests over police brutality that have convulsed American cities. Yet even as the president
described his measures as “pretty comprehensive,” they are expected to fall far short of the kind of sweeping changes that activists from Black Lives Matter and other social justice groups have demanded — such as significantly reducing funding for police departments and directing the money to social programs.
Administration officials emphasized that Trump’s approach would instead seek to leverage federal grant money to encourage local depart- ments to bolster training and certification around a set of national “best practices.” Departments that pursue such goals would move to the front of the line for the grant funding, and “you don’t necessarily have to demonize them or withdraw funds,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters before Trump’s announcement.
“The overall goal is we want law and order, and we want it done fairly, justly — we want it done safely,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “It’s about law and order, but it’s about justice, also.”
Trump called the death of Rayshard Brooks — a black man who was shot and killed Friday night by police in Atlanta while running away after a scuffle with officers — “very disturbing” and a “terrible situation.”
Of his executive action, the president said he intends to make the announcement at a news conference, in which he is likely to be joined by law enforcement officials, as well as family members of people who have been killed by police.
“We need great people in police departments,” Trump said. “We have mostly great people, but we will do better, even better, and we’re going to try to do it fast.”
CHANGES IN ATLANTA
Pleading through tears Monday, Brooks’ family demanded changes in the criminal justice system and called on protesters to refrain from violence amid heightened tensions across the U.S. three weeks after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
An autopsy found that Brooks, 27, was shot twice in the back by a white officer who was trying to arrest him at a fast-food restaurant for being intoxicated behind the wheel of his car. Brooks tried to flee after wrestling with officers and grabbing a stun gun from one of them.
“Not only are we hurt, we are angry,” said Chassidy Evans, Brooks’ niece. “When does it stop? We’re not only pleading for justice. We’re pleading for change.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced Monday that she was ordering changes to police use-offorce policies, including requiring that officers receive continuous training in how to deescalate situations and use those techniques before taking action that could be fatal. She said she also was requiring officers to intervene if they see a colleague using excessive force.
The mayor said that after Brooks’ shooting, it was clear Atlanta did not have “another day, another minute, another hour to waste” in changing police practices. Other cities nationwide are taking similar steps.
About 20 of Brooks’ children, siblings, cousins and other family members sobbed at a news conference as more than 1,000 people gathered not far away at an NAACP-led protest outside the Georgia Capitol.
Evans said there was no reason for her uncle “to be shot and killed like trash in the street for falling asleep in a drive-thru.”
“Rayshard has a family who loves him who would have gladly come and got him so he would be here with us today,” she said.
Relatives described Brooks as a loving father of three daughters and a stepson who had a bright smile and a big heart and loved to dance. His oldest daughter learned her father was slain while celebrating her eighth birthday with cupcakes and friends, wearing a special dress as she waited for her father to take her skating, said Justin Miller, an attorney for the family.
“There’s no justice that can ever make me feel happy about what’s been done,” said Tomika Miller, Brooks’ widow. “I can never get my husband back. … I can never tell my daughter he’s coming to take you skating or for swimming lessons.”
She asked those demonstrating to “keep the protesting peaceful,” saying: “We want to keep his name positive and great.”
Several Democratic lawmakers joined protesters and called for Georgia to pass changes reforms including the repeal of the state’s citizen’s arrest and stand-your-ground laws.
While some Republican leaders pushed back against swift action on some proposals, GOP House Speaker David Ralston endorsed rapid passage of a hate-crimes law, telling lawmakers that failure to act would be “a stain on this state we can never wash away.”
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, whose office is weighing whether to charge the officers involved in the case, has said he is still trying to obtain all the police body camera and dashboard camera footage of the shooting, and he hopes to announce a decision in the middle of this week. The officer who fired the shots, Garrett Rolfe, has been fired; the other officer, Devin Brosnan, has been pulled from street patrols.
PRESSURE ON CONGRESS
In Washington, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is drafting police-overhaul legislation for Senate Republicans to be introduced this week, said it’s important for the chamber to take a vote on the matter before the Fourth of July recess to get lawmakers on record, and that “if it fails, it fails.”
Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, the Senate’s only black Republican also expressed some doubt that lawmakers in both parties could agree on final legislation designed to address civil-rights concerns. Demonstrations are putting pressure on Congress and local governments to scrutinize police departments and rapidly find ways to address police brutality, especially against black Americans.
Scott said Senate Democratic leaders, by signing onto their own police bill with House Democrats, have effectively indicated to their rankand-file that they shouldn’t cooperate with Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, has repeatedly called on Republican leaders to schedule a vote on policing changes before the chamber’s holiday recess.
Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, said he doubts the Senate will take up legislation before the break, and to succeed it would be better to give it more time. He said if a debate took place before the recess, then it would likely be a failure, with “sideby-side” votes of the proposals from the two parties, with both unable to get the 60 votes needed.
In the Democratic-led House, the Judiciary Committee this week will take up that chamber’s measure, and there are plans for a full House vote next week.
The House bill would make it easier to prosecute and sue officers. It also would ban federal officers from using chokeholds, bar racial profiling, end “no-knock” search warrants in drug cases, create a national registry for police violations, and require local police departments that get federal funds to conduct bias training and use deescalation tactics.
IMMUNITY CASES
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a form of immunity that has shielded police officers from lawsuits alleging brutality and other civil-rights violations.
The justices declined to hear eight separate cases presenting reconsideration of the doctrine of qualified immunity that establishes protection from lawsuits for government officials, particularly police officers.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a six-page dissent, calling on his colleagues to revisit the protections and expressing “strong doubts” about the court’s approach to qualified immunity.
The doctrine, created by the Supreme Court decades ago, allows civil suits only when it can be shown that an official’s actions violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. When determining whether the right was clearly established, courts consider whether a reasonable official would have known that the actions were a violation.
In practice, the “clearly established” test often means that for their lawsuits to proceed, civil-rights plaintiffs must identify a nearly identical violation that has been recognized by the Supreme Court or appellate courts in the same jurisdiction.
Changing qualified immunity is part of the House Democrats’ policing-overhaul legislation, and some senators have called for action as well. The president has opposed those efforts.
“The Supreme Court’s deeply disappointing decision today to punt on the critical issue of official immunity, in this time of national reckoning over police violence, places the ball squarely in Congress’ court,” said David Cole, national legal director for the ACLU.
“We have seen the deadly consequences play out on the streets, and black Americans have largely paid the price,” he said.
But the court’s qualified-immunity decisions have raised concerns among lawyers and academics for years. An extraordinary coalition of organizations on the left, right and middle has called on the court to revisit the issue, as have two members of the court who represent its opposite ideological wings — Thomas and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Information for this article was contributed by Russ Bynum, Kate Brumback and Ben Nadler of The Associated Press; by Laura Litvan of Bloomberg News; and by David Nakamura, Robert Barnes, Ann E. Marimow and Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post.