In addition to setting new guidelines for federal officers, the executive order aims to offer a template for the broader policing community, asking state and local agencies to embrace the document’s goals.
At a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary this week, Nusrat Jahan Choudhury was asked if she believed that “cops kill unarmed Black men in America every single day”—a statement she made while participating as a panelist at Princeton University.
The budget proposal includes more than $32 billion in spending to fight crime, including more than $20.6 billion at the Justice Department and another $3.2 billion for state and local law enforcement grants and for hiring police officers.
“We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police, the answer is to fund the police,” Biden said to a standing ovation.
There exists a real opportunity for thoughtful law enforcement leaders to direct any increase in funds toward building and renovating training facilities that can ultimately lead to those outcomes elected leaders seem to desire.
Biden insisted the answer to surging gun violence was “not to defund the police” or “abandon our streets” as he met with Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul at the NYPD’s Manhattan headquarters.
The focus on police reforms is part of what appears to be a last-ditch effort by the Biden administration to take action on some of Biden's signature initiatives in the run-up to his State of the Union Address on March 1.
The "Protecting America’s First Responders Act of 2021," authored by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, would better ensure that law enforcement and first responders who are disabled in the line of duty have prompt access to benefits.
Despite persistent anti-police sentiment, American law enforcement continues to watch over the American public, like sheepdogs protecting the flock from the wolves.
Among the issues that lawmakers were discussing were changes to "qualified immunity" that protects police officers from some lawsuits.
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