Circumventing Congress, Joe Biden used the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd as his rallying cry to pass an executive order on his version of police reform.
Biden blamed Republicans for him ignoring Congress, tweeting “I’ve called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, but Senate Republicans have stood in the way of progress. That’s why this afternoon, I’m taking action and signing an Executive Order that delivers the most significant police reform in decades.”
Republican Senator Tim Scott had tried to pass a police reform bill, but Democrats killed it with the filibuster they now say is racist and/or a relic of Jim Crow.
During a speech before signing the bill, Biden said it would deliver “the most significant police reform in decades,” and that it applies to 100,000 federal law enforcement officers.
After signing the Order, Biden said it will “increase accountability, ban chokeholds, restrict no-knock entries, and more for federal law enforcement officers — and it incentivizes state and local officers to do the same.” It will also mandate the use of body cameras and creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct.
I just signed an Executive Order that delivers the most significant police reform in decades. It will increase accountability, ban chokeholds, restrict no-knock entries, and more for federal law enforcement officers — and it incentivizes state and local officers to do the same.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 25, 2022
As Heather Mac Donald pointed out, “the problem with this EO is the narrative it represents rather than the policy details… that we have a police racism problem and a police violence problem in the country. Biden takes every opportunity to reinforce that narrative, and the results are unequivocal. Thousands more black lives lost in cities succumbing to predation and anarchy. After the George Floyd riots of 2020, homicides rose 29%, that’s the largest annual increase in history. And youth homicide rose an astounding 47%. The victims overwhelmingly black.”
Yet even the people Biden is trying to please aren’t exactly enthused.
Floyd family lawyer Ben Crump said in a statement “While this action does not have the long-term impact that we had hoped for it does represent incremental progress, and we need to commit ourselves to making progress every day.”
The “Movement for Black Lives,” a coalition of over 50 groups that includes the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, was more blunt: “President Biden’s executive order is a poor excuse for the transformation of public safety that he promised the Black voters who put him in office.”
Of course, nothing besides the abolition of police would be enough for those type of activists.
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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