Trump Signs Order on Police Force After Meeting Victims’ Families

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday aimed at curbing police brutality following nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd, but also made clear he will not abandon his hard-line “law and order” stance.

During a Rose Garden ceremony, Trump expressed sympathy for families of people killed by police -- some of whom he privately met at the White House -- even as he praised the vast majority of officers as selfless heroes and blamed Democrats for longstanding problems in minority communities.

“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” Trump said.

Trump said Tuesday the order encourages better training and leverages federal funding to help stop the use of choke holds nationwide, except when an officer’s life is at risk, under a new credentialing process for law enforcement agencies.

But he rejected calls from protesters that law enforcement agencies be defunded or broken up entirely, instead urging increased investments in training. And the order itself fell short of calls from activists for broader action.

‘Dangerous’ Defunding

“I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police departments,” Trump said. “Americans know the truth -- without police, there is chaos. Without law, there is anarchy. And without safety, there is catastrophe.”

The president’s moves came amid widespread criticism over his response to demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice that have lasted for weeks following the death of Floyd, a Black man who died last month in Minneapolis when an officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. Some of Trump’s political advisers have expressed concern that his handling of the protests and the coronavirus pandemic have damaged his chances of being re-elected.

But Trump has continued to stress his support for “law and order,” even after critics have knocked the president and his advisers for failing to acknowledge systemic racial injustice in the U.S.

The president has become increasingly isolated within the GOP on the issue of race, as more lawmakers say prejudice in police departments is more widespread. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said at a Tuesday hearing that virtually every Black man in America “feels threatened” when stopped by the police, while he experiences “literally no fear” in the same scenario.

Minutes after decrying those “stoking fear and division,” Trump said former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, his likely 2020 opponent, “never even tried to fix this” problem. The Trump administration curtailed federal investigations into police-force bias employed by the Obama administration and loosened Obama-era restrictions sending military equipment to police.

School Vouchers

The president said the availability of private-school vouchers, and not systemic racism in police departments, is the nation’s most pressing civil-rights matter. He argued that a great jobs market and thriving economy “is probably the best thing that we can do” to help the Black community.

The president also took credit for the quelling of protests in Minneapolis against Floyd’s death using National Guard units and said he could send in federal law enforcement to Seattle, where protesters have carved out a police-free “autonomous zone.”

Trump said he met with the families of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was shot to death this year while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia; Jemel Roberson, a Black security guard in Illinois who was fatally shot by police in 2018; and Antwon Rose, who was killed by police in East Pittsburgh that same year. Others included the family of Botham Jean, who was shot and killed last year in his own apartment by an off-duty police officer in Dallas.

But none of those relatives joined Trump on the podium for the signing. Instead, the president was flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers as he signed the order.

White House policy adviser Ja’Ron Smith said it was a “mutual decision” for the relatives not to join the president on stage.

“It really wasn’t about doing a photo opportunity. We really wanted the opportunity to really hear from the families and protect them,” Smith told reporters, who called the closed-door meeting “emotional.”

The president’s executive order seeks to address some of the protesters’ grievances, and Trump said he would support efforts in Congress to pass legislation reforming some police behavior. But he described the order as “encouraging” police departments to adopt higher standards for their officers’ behavior rather than requiring reforms.

Best Practices

The order directs the Justice Department to issue grants only to police departments that have received or are in the process of seeking certification from certain independent organizations on best practices. The certifying groups would be chosen by the attorney general.

The standards include training officers with modern use-of-force practices, de-escalation tactics and community engagement. To be eligible for grants, state and local department policies would need to limit the use of choke holds to incidents in which lethal force is allowed by law.

The order also forms a federal officer database so that those with violent track records can’t easily get new jobs, and allows the attorney general to deny grant funding to state and local departments that do not participate.

It encourages departments to invite social workers to join police in responding to non-violent calls involving mentally ill and homeless people and better train officers to deal with those scenarios.

Law enforcement officials and critics alike acknowledge that much of the day-to-day work of policing involves responding to calls about people experiencing homelessness or mental illness, interactions that could be better served by social workers trained in crisis intervention. In a 2016 study on lethal use of force in the U.S., researchers estimated that 22% of police killings happened when responding to mental-health related.

Senior administration officials said that in drafting the order they consulted with law enforcement groups and representatives of families of people killed by police, some of whom were at the White House on Tuesday.

Calls for Enforcement

But experts said the order is unlikely to result in better police behavior without more stringent enforcement mechanisms.

“Some of the things that the president is calling for make total sense and should have happened a long time ago -- like ensuring that all police departments meet the highest standard on use of force and de-escalation training,” said Barry Friedman, the director of New York University’s Policing Project. “The concern is that the Department of Justice has never been good about using federal grants as a way to ensure police department compliance.”

Trump said that proper training could have prevented the deaths of those whose families he met with ahead of the signing.

But advocates of more sweeping change to the structure of policing argue that even the strictest policies, procedures, and bans can be and have been ignored: The Minneapolis Police Department, for example, had adopted crisis intervention, implicit bias, and de-escalation trainings, and officers wore body cameras, but they did not prevent the death of Floyd.

Lawmakers are working on broader police reform legislation. Senior White House officials have discussed a proposal being drafted by Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the upper chamber.

“Congress has started already and they’ll be having bills coming out of the Senate and possibly out of the House. And hopefully they’ll all get together and come up with a solution that goes even beyond what we’re signing today,” Trump said.

Some activists have called for more sweeping reforms, such as stripping funding from police departments and spending the money on social programs. Trump has repeatedly denounced the movement to “defund the police,” and sought to tie Biden to it, even though the former vice president has not embraced it.

”Americans want law and order they demand law and order. They may not say it. They may not be talking about it but that’s what they want,” Trump said.

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