President Donald Trump has signed an executive order on policing to encourage better practices and establish a database to keep track of officers with a history of excessive use-of-force complaints.
President Trump stressed the need for higher standards and commiserated with mourning families, even as he hailed the vast majority of officers as selfless public servants and held his law-and-order line, while also criticising Democrats.
“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” he said before signing the order flanked by police.
President Trump and the Republicans have been rushing to respond to the mass demonstrations against police brutality and racial prejudice that have raged for weeks across the country in response to the deaths of George Floyd and other black Americans.
It is a sudden shift for the Republican Party — and one Democrats are watching warily — that shows how quickly the protests have changed the political conversation and pressured Washington to act.
But President Trump, throughout the crisis, has continued to emphasise his support for law enforcement, and even on Tuesday railed against those who committed violence during the largely peaceful protests.
President Trump’s executive order would establish a database that tracks police officers with excessive use of force complaints in their records.
And it would give police departments a financial incentive to adopt best practices and encourage co-responder programmes, in which social workers join police when they respond to non-violent calls involving mental health, addiction and homeless issues.
President Trump said that, under a new credentialing process, chokeholds will be banned “except if an officer’s life is at risk”.
Chokeholds are already largely banned in police departments nationwide.
President Trump framed his plan as an alternative to the “defund the police” movement that has emerged from the protests and which he slammed as “radical and dangerous”.
“Americans know the truth: Without police there is chaos. Without law there is anarchy and without safety there is catastrophe,” he said.
President Trump’s audience included police officials and members of Congress, and came after he met at the White House with the families of men and women who have been killed in interactions with police.
“To all of the hurting families, I want you to know that all Americans mourn by your side,” he said. “Your loved ones will not have died in vain.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here