Trump's Executive Order

Image courtesy of unsplash.com

The death of George Floyd on Memorial Day in the US sparked a nationwide, and worldwide, protests against police brutality and systematic racism. The protestors are calling for better police accountability and positive legislation to tackle systematic racism. Some are calling for defunding the police as well.

The Democrat led House introduced a sweeping measure to ensure officers can be held accountable for misconduct and increase transparency. Their measure bans police chokeholds and no-knock warrants and reforms qualified immunity to make it easier for victims of police misconduct to recover damages when their rights are violated by the police.

The GOP led Senate is also crafting its own legislative package, led by Senator Tim Scott (South California), which will focus on police reporting, accountability, training and relations.

President Trump signed an executive order last week addressing policing reforms, surrounded by representatives of law enforcement with no representatives of Americans affected by police brutality. He emphasised the need to respect and support law enforcement.

Mr. Trump’s order has three key components: credentialing and certifying police departments, boosting information to better track officers with excessive use-of-force complaints and creating services for addressing mental health, drug addiction and homelessness. A Senior White House official has told the press that Mr Trump is also going to ask Congress to pass legislation and allocate funding to implement the orders. The order does not address the demand for defunding the police or ending qualified immunity. A Senior White House Official said that the administration is not looking to defund the police but is planning to invest more and incentivise best practices, and ending qualified immunity is a ‘non-starter’.

The order requires the attorney general to create a database tracking terminations, criminal convictions and civil judgments against law enforcement officers for excessive use-of-force. It also makes it harder for officers with a troubled history from getting hired by other departments. Such a national database is expected to force some departments into more transparency and accountability, but this depends entirely on the locality’s willingness to participate. 

The Attorney General, according to the order, has the authority to allocate money to state and local law enforcement agencies that are seeking credentials from a certified independent body that assesses their policies and practices. These reviews will look at an agency’s training practices, including use-of-force and de-escalation techniques, along with performance management and community engagement efforts.

The Health and Human Secretary, along with the Attorney General, will find ways to train officers regarding encounters with individuals suffering from impaired mental health, homelessness and addiction, and advise agencies on developing co-responder programs in which non-police professionals show up to certain situations alongside cops.

Within 90 days, the secretary of Health and Human Services is supposed to send a summary report to the President on community-support models addressing mental health, homelessness and addiction.

Administration officials are to pitch proposals to Congress, which should include recommendations to enhance current grant programs to improve law enforcement practices and build community engagement.

Mr Trump said he was banning chokeholds during the announcement, but that’s not the case. The order ‘encourages’ a ban through financial incentives.

Evidently, the order does not make federal funding conditional to these reforms, but instead potentially prioritizes some grants for departments that meet all the guidelines. However, this can potentially cause legal disputes. There have been a number of lawsuits brought against the present administration for attempting to condition the same law enforcement funding on specific policies. Courts around the US have been divided on the issue.

Critics of the order have called in a ‘woeful’ attempt at police reform that failed to address systematic racism and fell short of the demands of Black Lives Matter activists. National Association of Social Workers in New Hersey have called the executive order inadequate for responding to systematic racism in policing as it does not mandate national use-of-force guidelines, ban chokeholds, curtail no-knock warrants or address the disproportionate number of cases of misconduct against Black Americans. 

Democrats have also criticised the order as insufficient. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat – NY) said “While the president has finally acknowledged the need for policing reform, one modest executive order will not make up for his years of inflammatory rhetoric and policies designed to roll back the progress made in previous years”.

By Swarnim Agrahari