President Trump just signed an executive order, and I think it is a step in the right direction. As to if it really changes policing has yet to be seen, especially in the inner cities. Police reform is needed right now, defunding the police is not the answer. When it came to police brutality, usually someone calls the police first, and George Floyd was being arrested for something, that still doesn’t mean he had to die. The police didn’t just wake up in the morning and said, ” oh let us go kill George Floyd” that is not what happened. If the police officer hadn’t put his knee on Floyd’s neck, he still would have been arrested, so we do need the police, we just need police reform. Let us not forget that George Floyd did hold a pregnant woman at gunpoint, we know this because of the police. We got something today in terms of a Bill let us see if that is enough, we might have to add a few other things!.
What we need to do as black people is to create an outrage for the following, like black on black crime, black on black killing, maybe if we do that something might actually change. If congress can be pushed to change policing in America, then we can push for other things, like systemic racism, if we believe it, we should be able to push congress to change certain laws.
Let us look at some of the things in the new Police Bill ( The justice of policing ACT of 2020)
some things in Executive Order
- Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.
- Bans chokeholds, carotid holds, and no-knock warrants at the federal level and limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
- Mandates the use of dashboard cameras and body cameras for federal offices and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.
- Establishes a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave on the agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.
- Amends federal criminal statute from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard to successfully identify and prosecute police misconduct.
- Reforms qualified immunity so that individuals are not barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights.
- Establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just, and equitable public safety approaches.
- Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices and requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Taskforce on 21st Century policing.
- Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to report the use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.
- Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.
- Establishes a Department of Justice task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution, and enforcement efforts of federal, state, and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.
