defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests

When protesters cry ‘defund the police,’ what does it mean?
One group, which is working toward a ‘police-free Minneapolis’ argues the move is about reallocating resources and funding away from police and putting it toward community-based models of safety.

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/06/07/when-protesters-cry-defund-the-police-what-does-it-mean/?fbclid=IwAR1quZKXt-B1kAUQHZmGVPaQfQ-6jIygxHB2VyqN6dXM0GBbpUJDhV38A4w

WASHINGTON — Protesters are pushing to “defund the police” over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement. Their chant has become rallying cry – and a stick for President Trump to use on Democrats as he portrays them as soft on crime.

But what does “defund the police” mean? It’s not necessarily about gutting police department budgets.

WHAT IS THE ‘DEFUND THE POLICE’ MOVEMENT?

Supporters say it isn’t about eliminating police departments or stripping agencies of all of their money. They say it is time for the country to address systemic problems in policing in America and spend more on what communities across the U.S. need, like housing and education.

State and local governments spent $115 billion on policing in 2017, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute.

“Why can’t we look at how it is that we reorganize our priorities, so people don’t have to be in the streets during a national pandemic?” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza asked during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Activists acknowledge this is a gradual process.

The group MPD150, which says it is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis,” argues that such action would be more about “strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.”

“The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises,” the group wrote on its website.

People gather along a street painted with “Defund the police” near the White House on Saturday night. Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post

WHAT ARE LAWMAKERS SAYING?

Sen. Cory Booker said he understands the sentiment behind the slogan, but it’s not a slogan he will use.

The New Jersey Democrat told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he shares a feeling with many protesters that Americans are “over-policed” and that “we are investing in police, which is not solving problems, but making them worse when we should be, in a more compassionate country, in a more loving country.”

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said part of the movement is really about how money is spent.

“Now, I don’t believe that you should disband police departments,” she said in an interview with CNN. “But I do think that, in cities, in states, we need to look at how we are spending the resources and invest more in our communities.

“Maybe this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety,” she said.

President Trump and his campaign view the emergence of the “Defund the Police” slogan as a spark of opportunity during what has been a trying political moment. Trump’s response to the protests has sparked widespread condemnation. But now his supporters say the new mantra may make voters, who may be otherwise sympathetic to the protesters, recoil from a “radical” idea.

Trump seized on the slogan last week as he spoke at an event in Maine.

“They’re saying defund the police,” he said. “Defund. Think of it. When I saw it, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘We don’t want to have any police,’ they say. You don’t want police?”

Trump’s 2016 campaign was built on a promise of ensuring law and order – often in contrast to protests against his rhetoric that followed him across the country. As he seeks reelection, Trump is preparing to deploy the same argument again – and seems to believe the “defund the police” call has made the campaign applause line all the more real for his supporters.

IS THERE ANY PUSH TO ACTUALLY DEFUND POLICE DEPARTMENTS?

Yes, or at least to reduce their budgets in some major cities.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services, while keeping the city safe, but he didn’t give details.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed to cut as much as $150 million that was part of a planned increase in the police department’s budget.

A Minneapolis city councilmember said in a tweet on Thursday that the city would “dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.”

“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Jeremiah Ellison wrote. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.” He did not explain what would replace the police department.

HOW HAVE POLICE OFFICIALS AND UNIONS RESPONDED?

Generally, police and union officials have long resisted cuts to police budgets, arguing that it would make cities less safe.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union for the city’s rank-and-file officers, said budget cuts would be the “quickest way to make our neighborhoods more dangerous.”

“Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for back-up won’t get it, and rape, murder and assault investigations won’t occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete,” the union’s board said in a statement last week.

“At this time, with violent crime increasing, a global pandemic and nearly a week’s worth of violence, arson, and looting, ‘defunding’ the LAPD is the most irresponsible thing anyone can propose.”

To oversimplify on the defund issue:

It’s kinda like the difference between Old Testament “justice” and NT.

To me, our society would be radically better if we got rid of as much on the “punishment” side of the ledger as possible, and shifted it to the compassion/uplift/generosity/problem-solving/non-violence side. To the extent humanly possible. Not just nibbling at the edges of this. But actually go for it, full on. Radically shift where we focus our time, energy and funding. Not incrementally. But radically.

For starters, we need to decriminalize all non-violent, victimless crimes, and stop incarcerating people for that. Let everyone out of prison who was put in there for those “crimes.” Drugs, sex-work, small-scale property theft, etc. Put this in perspective. Make the punishment fit the “crime,” and factor in the cost to society at all points along the way. Let the police deal with seriously dangerous issues of deadly harm, not the kinds of things that social workers, drug counselors, psychologists, etc. etc. would be better equipped to handle . . . or . . . the kinds of things that don’t require any kind of “remedy” at all. All too often, no “remedy” is needed to begin with, because it’s really not an issue we should be concerned with.

Also: I’ve always found this striking about the way the political right views Big Gubmint. They seem all in on “law and order” shite, to the max, border patrol atrocities, endless wars, expansion of empire to the nth, but when it comes to trying to rein in the abuses of corporations and the super-rich, or religious institutions . . . . suddenly, that’s supposedly “Big Gubmint.” Freedom and Liberty for whom? is what we always need to ask.

“Small government” is ideal, if this includes the police, the military, the border patrol, capitalism, the way brown, black, indigenous and leftist bodies are disciplined and punished — ending that garbage. It’s horrifying if it just means corporations and the super rich can do what they want, while everyone else has a boot on their necks.

Private tyrannies are tyrannies too, etc.

In short. Hell, yeah. Defund the police, ICE, our military, our empire. Replace this with an actual “caring society.” Not just words or greeting cards. Facts, deeds, on the ground.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

InvaderRam wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

“Small government” is ideal, if this includes the police, the military, the border patrol, capitalism, the way brown, black, indigenous and leftist bodies are disciplined and punished — ending that garbage. It’s horrifying if it just means corporations and the super rich can do what they want, while everyone else has a boot on their necks.

well. the only thing i would say is there’d be no “small government”. it’s just that funds would be redistributed.

but you make a lot of good points.

Ny own view: I see an incredible irony and disconnect in the right’s love of capitalism and its supposed hatred of “Big Gubmint.” To me, there’s no way around the fact that the capitalist system itself requires Big Gubmint. That its very existence demands a massive intervention of “the state,” and because it’s the first global economic system in world history, “states.” It simply can’t survive without that massive Big Gubmint support, policing, military, bailouts, propping up, defense of, wars for, supplements for, offsets for, etc. etc.

Take away the capitalist system, replace it with community-based, fully democratic, localized, egalitarian, cooperative economies, and a massive Big Gubmint is no longer needed . . . not only on the propping up side, or the offset side, but the bailout and warfare side.

In short, I see a direct conflict between the love of “small government” and the love of capitalism. I don’t think the two things are at all compatible. Capitalism requires imperialist governments, working in tandem. It requires endless bailouts because capitalism inevitably eats its own and has to be revived. And because it generates ginormous inequalities, it needs endless offsets. And it will always need policing to protect the rich. It will always require smashing skulls in the process. No way around that, IMO.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

I love the fact that defunding is on the table in some places. Not because i think it will happen, but because its a nice card to play. The Unions might be willing to budge a little more on reforms, if they think the alternative might be defunding.

“Disbanding” police forces make no sense to me, anymore than completely eliminating prisons. Rapists need to be arrested, and prisons are needed for some people. I dont believe in a human utopia.

Maybe this will also push more states towards legalizing marijuana. Police should be doing less bullshit.

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NYPD out here protecting the Wall Street bull. pic.twitter.com/SosSFgHpEl

— P. Nick Curran (@PNickCurran) June 13, 2020

posting again

free book

…

The End of Policing by @avitale is still free to download on our website.

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself.https://t.co/CmxBi9n135 pic.twitter.com/2o4LeVNmLq

— Verso Books (@VersoBooks) June 3, 2020

From a purely ‘strategic’ standpoint, i dont like the word ‘defund’. I dont like the way that will play in mainstream-voter-world. Think about how mainstream-voters would react if a candidate said “I’m going to defund the military.”

I dont think it will help defeat Trump to talk about ‘defunding’ the police. And yes, i know ‘defund’ has this or that meaning and it doesnt really mean this, but instead means that, blah blah blah. Good luck getting a mainstream-idiot-voter, with the attention span of a ferret, to understand any of that.

“Defund” will play right into Trump’s wheelhouse, imho. He will LOVE that word. Cant you just picture his talking points now.

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Pat Dolan from Facebook

Dolan says, “just passing this on as an example.”

“The School of [Redacted]: This is an educational post to outline some of the basics of police abolition. Read this and you may have fewer questions, and hopefully you learn something regardless.

The goal of police abolition is not about immediately defunding the police altogether. We want to start by decreasing police budgets. Iowa City spends more on the police department than any other city expense, and this money goes toward much more than salaries. Our police department wastes vast amounts of taxpayer money purchasing military equipment, which we do not need, especially in a town of less than 80,000 people. We own an $800,000 armor-plated military truck designed to be mine-resistant and ambush protected (MRAP), infinite tear gas canisters (10-20 dollars each), riot gear shields at a minimum of one hundred dollars each as well as armored suits that cost well over three hundred dollars per person. Even the shitty ‘POLICE’ decals on the front of a shield are twenty dollars apiece. We spend more than fifteen million dollars a year to fund the City of Iowa City police. That’s the budget, and it is absurd.

You may be asking yourself, “What are we getting for this price tag?” and the answer is, not much. In major cities, police departments only devote 4% of their time to violent crime, and almost none of those cases are solved. Responding to non-violent crimes and writing traffic tickets account for most of a police officer’s time on the clock. Imagine what these numbers must look like in a small town like Iowa City. We simply do not need huge police numbers in order to write traffic tickets, arrest people for nonviolent drug offenses, or even to investigate violent crime, and we certainly do not need an MRAP in order to complete these tasks. The truth is that police forces are ineffectual, expensive, and violent. We want to move city funds away from police and toward community-based models of safety and crime prevention because the fascinating thing about crime is that it’s predictable. Lack of employment, lack of green spaces, lack of education, and lack of arts, are all major contributing factors to high crime rates, as well as poor access to health care, including mental health. By defunding the police, we free the better part of fifteen million dollars to increase citizen access to these services.

A few summers ago, I found a homeless man overdosing under a bridge, eyes glazed and foaming at the mouth. I hated dialing 911 and praying that the ambulance would beat the police to the scene. I had a student who was the victim of domestic violence but didn’t want to call the police for fear her husband would be deported, and I wished that there were more paid survivor advocates and women’s shelters to take care of her. One of my teenage cousins punched my mom while living with her, traumatized by his drug addict mother and the turmoil of homelessness. He needed mental health services and a social worker, not an armed officer, but unfortunately, this was right before the Terry Branstad largely dismantled the community mental health services in Iowa. Conner disappeared shortly after, and my auntie could just as easily be dead as alive. As a community, we don’t need to catch charges; we need help. We need harm reduction, universal health care, social workers, and free access to education.

There is an idea going around that we would live in chaos if the police were defunded, but actually, they are a pretty recent invention, less than 200 years old, so keep in mind we’ve lived without them for a very long time. Colgate brand toothpaste is literally older than the police. The police were first formed in the United States in response to slave insurrection. They were created not to serve and protect, but to capture and return enslaved people trying to escape to freedom. This white supremacist institution cannot be reformed. We need to start over. Liberal ideas such as increasing implicit bias training or making bodycams mandatory have produced very few results. Cities across the United States have been successful in demanding and installing citizen review boards since the 1960s, but since these boards have very little power, they have proven unproductive. Reforming the police is not a new strategy, but it is an ineffective strategy. We can’t fix the police; It’s time to dismantle and defund them.

I want to speak to my queer homies now too. These protests ARE pride. Pride is not canceled. You see, in the 1960s, police commonly raided gay bars because gay sex was illegal, as was “masquerading” as a member of the opposite sex. They would shut down bars and restaurants that were found to have queer employees or to serve queer people. One such bar was the Stonewall Inn. Police raided the inn repeatedly in the month of June, singling out gender nonconforming and transgender leaders such as Stormé DeLarverie and Marsha P. Johnson. The queer community fought back when the police used violence against them, and the next year, they declared the first pride.

Originally posted by WV, moved here by zn

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police:https://portside.org/2020-06-10/what-world-could-teach-america-about-policing

What the World Could Teach America About Policing

Examples abound of reforms that are seen as “radical” in the United States.
June 10, 2020 Yasmeen Serhan The Atlantic

n the weeks since George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, nationwide anti-racism protests have called for, among other things, defunding the police. But the members of the Minneapolis City Council decided to go further, announcing their intent to dismantle their police department altogether.

Such a promise might have been deemed radical only a few weeks ago. But as the demonstrations following Floyd’s death have grown, and as police violence against peaceful protesters and journalists has been thrust into the national spotlight, the question of how police forces should protect and serve their communities—and what should become of those that don’t—has become all the more urgent in the United States.

So far, proposed answers have ranged from reforming and reprioritizing law-enforcement funding to disarming and disbanding departments for good. As radical as such recommendations might seem in an American context, they have been tried and tested elsewhere. Here are some of the lessons that the U.S. could learn from other countries.
I. DISMANTLING

As extraordinary as the decision by the Minneapolis City Council was, the prospect of dismantling a police force—even one with tens of thousands of officers—isn’t novel. In the Republic of Georgia, it has already been done.

At the turn of the 21st century, Georgia was one of the most corrupt places on Earth. Bribery in the country, which lies in the Caucasus and shares a border with Russia, was rampant, and its police force, which was both a beneficiary and an enforcer of the system, was widely distrusted. So endemic was the issue that when a new government came to power in 2004, it determined that the country’s police force was too corrupt to be fixed. So its leaders decided to abolish the force entirely, sacking about 30,000 officers. Then it began the three-year process of hiring a smaller, better trained—and, crucially, corruption-free—police force to replace it.

“We decided that reforming that force would be impossible and it would be better to disband this entire force and start from zero,” Shota Utiashvili, a senior fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies who worked for the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs at the time, told the BBC years later. The force instituted a zero-tolerance policy for officers found to be tempted by bribery. Before long, Utiashvili said, “the public perception of the police changed.”

Nearly a decade later, Georgia’s model was adapted elsewhere—this time, in Camden, New Jersey. With a rising homicide rate, and without the resources to hire more officers, the city decided that it, too, needed to start from scratch. So in 2013, it took the unusual step of eliminating its police force, laying off more than 250 officers in the process. Those who were rehired as part of the new Camden County Police Department—one twice the size of the previous force, employing its officers on reduced wages—were trained to focus more on community policing, which included an emphasis on de-escalation and using tools such as guns and handcuffs only as a last resort.

Since the disbanding, violent crime in Camden has fallen by 42 percent and the murder rate has fallen by more than half, from 67 killings in 2012, the year before the reforms, to 25 last year. And when people in the city joined protests against Floyd’s killing late last month, the police force joined them.
II. TRAINING

Abolishing a police force is one challenge. Replacing it with something better is another.

Key to that challenge is revamping the training for prospective officers. Here, too, the U.S. can look to other countries for inspiration. In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer, with the option to pursue the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in policing. Basic training in the U.S., by comparison, can take as little as 21 weeks (or 33.5 weeks, with field training). The less time recruits have to train, the less time is afforded for guidance on crisis intervention or de-escalation. “If you only have 21 weeks of classroom training, naturally you’re going to emphasize survival,” Paul Hirschfield, an associate sociology and criminal-justice professor at Rutgers University, told me.

Joachim Kersten, a senior research professor of criminology at the German Police University, told me that police training in Germany covers everything from how to respond to cases of domestic violence to how to disarm someone with a lethal weapon. In the latter case, he said, “the emphasis is not on using weapons or shooting.” Rather, trainees are encouraged to de-escalate, resorting to lethal force only when absolutely necessary.

This level of restraint isn’t unique to Germany—it’s a Europe-wide standard. In some European countries, the rules are stricter still: Police in Finland and Norway, for example, require that officers seek permission before shooting anyone, where possible. In Spain, police must provide verbal cautions and warning shots before resorting to deadly force. Even in circumstances where weapons aren’t used, police officers in Europe tend to be more restricted in what they can do. Chokeholds of the kind used to immobilize, and ultimately kill, Floyd are forbidden in much of Europe. Some parts of the U.S., including Minneapolis, California, and New York, have since banned chokeholds and other similar restraints as well.

“If you change the rules of engagement,” Hirschfield said, “if you make it more difficult to use deadly force, legally and through training, then police departments need to adapt” their tactics.

Part of the reason that police in Europe are loath to use lethal force is because in most scenarios, they don’t have to. Compared with the U.S., which claims 40 percent of the world’s firearms, gun ownership in most European countries is relatively rare. In Germany, “officers, with few exceptions in big cities, don’t have to expect that they will meet people who will shoot at them,” Kersten said. Indeed, a number of police officers in countries such as Britain, Ireland, and Norway aren’t armed at all.

This is perhaps why police-related deaths tend to be more prevalent in the U.S. than in many of its peer nations. Last year, the U.S. recorded more than 1,000 killings by law enforcement, dwarfing the number of police-related deaths in Canada, with 36 in 2017; Germany, with 14 that year; and England and Wales, with three in 2018. (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own police forces.) “There is a massive difference in the level of harm that police do in carrying out their duties in a society that, to begin with, has far more guns than Britain could ever imagine,” Lawrence Sherman, a director of Cambridge University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Policing, told me. “It creates a very different starting point.”
III. OVERSIGHT

Even if the U.S. were to adopt similar standards to that of its European counterparts, it wouldn’t necessarily have the means to enforce them—at least not at the national level. That’s because, unlike many other similar countries, the American law-enforcement system is largely decentralized. The majority of the approximately 18,000 law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. are run at the city or county level, employing anywhere from one to 30,000 officers. The hyperlocalized nature of the system means that the standards and practices these agencies employ can vary widely. Unlike England and Wales, whose 43 police agencies are subject to the scrutiny of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, an independent body, American policing has no federal oversight authority.

Sherman argues that the establishment of an Inspector General of Police, or some such equivalent to the British inspectorate, at the state level would solve this problem—a recommendation he also made to President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which was established following the fatal 2014 police shooting of the black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Such an authority would operate in the way its British equivalent does—by monitoring police forces to ensure that they are abiding by a certain set of rules and regulations and cutting the funding of those that don’t. Other suggestions Sherman made to the task force included the establishment of a National College of Policing (modeled after the British equivalent) and a registry of dismissed officers to ensure that those who are fired aren’t simply rehired elsewhere. None of the recommendations were ultimately taken up.

All of this could yet change—assuming that American leaders and policy makers are prepared to engage with examples offered by countries around the world. The U.S. doesn’t have a great track record for this, though. As Uri Friedman noted, American leaders have largely proved reluctant to learn from the policies and practices of peer nations in previous crises. Who’s to say this time will be any different?

“My best prediction,” Sherman said, “is that nothing is going to happen.” At least, not on the national level. But it could happen at the local level, if city and state governments are willing to take on the issue. “The complexities of police administration and institutional design require serious attention that is not going to happen with a presidential candidate,” Sherman continued, “but could and should happen at the gubernatorial level.”

zn wrote:

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That cant be right. I’ll have to check on that.

I mean….thats a significant, real-life change.

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More than half a million die from Covid-19 globally. Dust cloud lingers in parts of US. New protests push for police accountability.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/politics/floyd-police-reform-unlikely/index.html

(CNN)The dramatic images rocked the nation — hundreds of thousands of people from all races taking to the streets across the United States, demanding an end to excessive police force against people of color.

What began as local outrage in response to George Floyd’s death following an encounter with Minneapolis police officers soon spread throughout the country.
From coast to coast, demonstrators chanting “Black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace” united in hundreds of mostly peaceful protests, some risking their own safety. They found themselves tear gassed near the White House, allegedly assaulted by police in New York City, and shoved to the pavement by tactical teams in Buffalo.
Despite the personal risk, their voices were heard by fellow citizens and politicians alike, as demonstrators sparked a protest movement unlike anything the country has seen since the 1960s.

Partisan politics appears to have derailed any meaningful near-term reform.

Failure at the epicenter

In Minnesota, Floyd’s death — caught on camera by a bystander as a White police officer kneeled on Floyd’s neck until he lost consciousness — sparked a reform movement. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz responded by calling a special session of the state’s legislature to address emergency policing reform measures.
Walz said reform measures would be aimed at police violence, grants for rebuilding local infrastructure, accountability and transparency.
But legislators had little to show for their efforts. Partisan entrenchment ruled the day, as the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-led House clashed over nearly two-dozen policing reform measures.
House Democratic efforts to end warrior-type training for officers, instill residency requirements for police officers, ban choke holds and institute voting rights for felons grinded to a halt as Senate Republicans responded with more narrow reforms.
Despite widespread calls for reform, the special legislative session came up empty handed.
“The people of Minnesota should certainly be deeply disappointed,” Walz said, visibly upset. “This is a failure to move things, a failure to engage. It seems like there’s a tendency in legislative bodies to place blame on everyone else.”
In Minneapolis, where the city council continues to address policing reform, grand visions for change appear devoid of specifics and are far from being enacted anytime soon.
“We’re committed to dismantling police as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community, a new model of public safety that actually keeps our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the city council president, told me earlier this month on CNN’s “Newsroom.”
On Friday the city council voted unanimously to replace the Minneapolis police department with a new entity focused on “community safety and violence prevention.” The measure, however, still requires additional input from other city leaders and, ultimately, voters in November.
A federal failure
Minnesota lawmakers were not alone in their failure to overcome partisan politics and pass immediate, meaningful legislation.
In the US Senate last week, the chamber’s Democratic minority successfully blocked GOP policing reform legislation they deemed inadequate. Democrats sought provisions banning the use of choke holds by police departments, which some cities around the country have unilaterally adopted. They also wanted provisions overhauling qualified immunity, a legal mechanism that largely shields police officers from civil law suits.
“(The GOP) bill is a half-assed bill that doesn’t do what we should be doing, which is doing honest police reform,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat.
In the House, Democrats passed their own version of sweeping police reform on Thursday. The measure calls for limiting qualified immunity for police officers, prohibiting racial profiling and banning choke holds.
Despite the bill’s passage on a largely party-line vote, the Senate is not expected to consider it, and President Donald Trump isn’t likely to throw his support behind Democratic legislation championed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

‘Encouragement’ over ‘enforcement’

For its part, the White House attempted to exert a leadership role in the national policing debate, but an executive order signed by Trump earlier this month has been criticized by his opponents, such as Sen. Kamala Harris of California, as window dressing that encourages reforms but comes with no apparent enforcement mechanisms.
The President’s executive order calls for the banning of choke holds by law enforcement officers, for example, but makes an exception for “those situations where the use of deadly force is allowed by law.”
Advocates who want to eliminate the technique outright seized on this loophole, which would allow an officer to use a choke hold if they fear their life is in danger.
“All police that use choke holds claim their lives were threatened,” wrote Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, after Trump announced his executive order.
The issue of banning choke holds will remain controversial. Some policing experts contend that, in a deadly situation where an officer is fighting for his or her life, anything goes.
While Trump’s order purportedly takes aim at officers who “misuse” their authority, the President himself has called for the use of excessive force against those in custody.
Upon taking office, Trump praised the aggressive tactics of immigration officers and suggested that police shouldn’t protect the heads of handcuffed suspects being put in the back of a car.
“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon. You see them thrown in rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,'” Trump said to applause as he addressed a crowd of police officers in New York state.
His comments were met with scorn by various law enforcement agencies.
‘If we don’t get it now, we’ll never get it’
Despite calls by criminal justice reform activists for immediate changes to policing in America, there are some groups who appear content with buying time.
Last Monday, Bob Kroll, president of the Minneapolis police union, told me he had not read all of the bills working their way through the state legislature. But he cautioned against rushing through police reforms.
In comments that appeared tone-deaf to Floyd’s pleas to the officer choking him, Kroll said of efforts to rush through policing reform: “Everybody’s got to take a breath.”
While the Minneapolis police union calls for more time, criminal justice advocates say lives remain in danger every day that passes without new constraints on officers.
At a recent rally outside the Minnesota governor’s mansion, Del Shea Perry, the mother of Hardel Sherrel, told me her son had died in 2018 under suspicious circumstances while in jail after being arrested for domestic violence.
Perry said she and other families have been trying desperately to get the attention of elected leaders and have them take concrete steps to root out bad cops. Perry said she will continue their efforts until they are successful.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Perry said. “I’m an evangelist, not an activist. But I’ve been pushed into an activism role.”
Asked how long she will continue to be a public face for policing reform, Perry said, “Until we get justice.” Seizing on this moment of unprecedented national protest against police violence, she added: “If we don’t get it now, we’ll never get it.”