The NPR Politics Podcast - Police Reform Failed In Congress, So Biden Takes What He Can Get

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

An opt-in police misconduct database and new conduct standards for federal police: President Biden's police reform executive action enacts reforms that fall well short of what advocates hoped for. Lawmakers previously failed to agree on a more substantial effort.This episode: congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Allie Edwards from Eugene, Oregon, and I am getting ready to head to Star Wars Celebration in Los Angeles with my Star Wars fanatic 20-year-old son, Simon. We are ridiculously excited. This podcast was recorded at 107 p.m. on Thursday, May 26th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I can guarantee you that my son Simon will still be a Star Wars fan no matter when it happens. Okay, here's the show. Oh, Tam, I feel like this was a timestamp just for you.

And I am ridiculously excited that the Obi-Wan miniseries or whatever it's called is coming out on Disney Plus this weekend. I know what I'll be doing. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Keri Johnson, national justice correspondent. President Biden has signed a new executive order on policing. Relatives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were on hand for the ceremony at the White House.

Both were killed by police in 2020. It's not about their death, but what we do in their memory that matters. The purpose. I'm glad I have you both here because I really want to get into right off the top what the order does and does not do. We know the executive order instructs federal law enforcement agencies to revise their use of force policies. Tam, how does the White House say this is working? Well, so the important word in any control over, which is federal law enforcement agencies. So it revises use of force policies to try to minimize chokeholds, no-knock warrants.

These are tactics that really came to light with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. It also restricts the transfer of military equipment to local police forces from the military and federal government. And it creates a database, a federal database of officers who were fired for misconduct. Okay, so some of this is stuff that Congress was looking at. I mean, look, specifically that database and the transfer of military equipment were all things Congress was talking about when they were looking at doing police reform. But Carrie, this is just federal police, like Tam said, not the police forces that most Americans come into contact with.

Is that right? That's exactly right. The vast majority of crimes around the country are investigated and prosecuted by state and local actors. There are something like 18,000 state and local police agencies around the country. There are something like 100,000 federal agents and officers to which this order would directly apply. So it's just a tiny fraction. Although the Biden administration has been saying all along, they think some of these changes for the federal government and federal officers could serve as a model for state and local agencies. A lot of state and local agencies did some of these things on their own two years ago, after those really high profile international

marches for justice after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others. I want to talk about how this fits in. So if this is just for federal police, is the idea that the new rules could do something to inspire or motivate the Justice Department to pursue more stringent consent degrees with local police or become involved in some other ways? So the main power that the federal government has, it relates to its federal grant money, millions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, that it gives out to state and local police and prosecuting agencies around the country. And at one point early on, there was this review by the Justice Department after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and others pushed the Justice Department to take a look at whether it should be even handing out grants to agencies that violated federal civil rights laws. And if that were the case, it could have cut off, the Biden administration could have cut off a lot of police from access to these federal

funds. That would have been a very, very bold step. That is not what the Biden administration wound up doing here. Instead, it's trying to use some of these grant funds to incentivize state and locals to prompt them to be better instead of cutting them off if they don't do the right thing. All right. So, Tam, there's also a voluntary police misconduct database that you guys mentioned. So federal law enforcement agencies will contribute to that and local ones can contribute if they want. Is that right? Can you can you explain that a little bit? This is aimed at, they say, there are just a few bad apples is the concept that President Biden has occasionally mentioned and others. So the idea is to identify the police

officers and others who have had misconduct so that that's on their record, even if they move. This will create this database, but it won't populate the database. That would be up to state and local police agencies if they want to participate in it, if they want to check it, it would be voluntary, or there could potentially be incentives, like what Carrie talked about. Okay, so I am a little bit struck, as we're talking about this, by how much you guys are saying could and might and maybe. And I guess the question that I'm left with is, why is this executive order so limited? Is it because executive orders can really only do so much? Is this about political will? What's going on

with the way this is written? I feel like this is the part where I should ask you a question. This is the limits of executive power. There are great limits to executive power. You know, when Congress can't do something, and the president says, okay, what I'm left with is an executive order or doing some administrative action. It's never as durable, or as wide reaching. And it can't reach to the state and local governments. It just isn't the same as a law. I'm glad you mentioned the durability of this. Because when we were talking about consent decrees, Carrie, I just kept thinking about the fact that that was something that was really a heavy focus of the Obama administration and then the policy changed under the Trump administration. Now we're seeing the potential for a change again.

Is this really just temporary in nature? So it's true that a new administration could come in and decide it doesn't want to initiate these kind of big years long pattern or practice investigations of police departments. The Trump administration did minimal numbers of those. The Biden administration, I think, has four or five ongoing now, but it's still a program that takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. And it's something that this DOJ, even this Biden DOJ, is trying to work hand in hand with police departments about not go in as an overseer in all cases, but try to work as partners and do maybe less intensive, collaborative investigation. So I don't think these consent decrees are the solution to some of the wide scale, historic problems, systemic problems we've been seeing. All right, it's time for a quick break. We'll be back with more in a second.

And we're back. And I want to start with the big fundamental question, which is, will this make a difference for the federal officers, a duty to intervene. That means if, God forbid, somebody next to me on the line in the street in the house of someone we're investigating goes too far, a federal officer would have a duty to intervene and try to stop their fellow officer. Those are meaningful things for the Biden administration and this executive order to do. widespread civil rights violations or excessive force and making them eligible to have to pay out of their pocket money damages to people they have abused. That reform to that idea called qualified immunity is part of what scuttled the negotiations on Capitol Hill. And there's nothing about this here in this executive order. And with regard to use of force generally, the Biden administration had been talking about telling officers that they should use force only as a last resort.

But in the executive order that actually came out, it was weaker than that. You know, Tam, the Biden administration knows all of this. So what are they saying about why they're doing something that is as limited as this executive order is? So I will say that I was in the East Room yesterday for the signing ceremony, and there were a lot of people there. There was like a section that clearly looked like people who were cops. And there was a section of people who, you know, looked like civil rights activists and were family members of people who've been killed by officers. And they were all there. But it was a compromise, right? Like this, this executive order was negotiated over a series of months and months

and months. And, you know, I talked to Jim Pascoe, who is the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police about this. And he said that this isn't a sea change. We found common ground where it didn't seem likely that any could be found. And that said, you know, I don't think either side is 100% happy with it. You know, us or the civil rights community. But I think it's a good foundation, a good framework for improving the relationship between police and the communities they serve. And Biden in his remarks, and the vice president was clear in her remarks that this is a half measure because they wanted legislation. And the negotiations fell apart. And Kelsey, I would be curious what for the express purpose of saying that Congress has no exceptions to their gridlock in at this moment. And but that is what I have to say here. I mean,

that is the honest truth is there are there seem to be no exceptions to, you know, the things that hold Democrats and Republicans from getting together on major domestic policy. Yes, they can agree on big things like money for Ukraine, and they can agree on basic things like funding the government. But when it comes to these really kind of giant questions that keep coming up in American society right now about domestic policy, they are stuck. Democrats do not have enough votes to get anything passed on their own. And the closer they get to the election, the less incentive Republicans have to start wheeling and dealing with Democrats to write big policies. So yes, this does seem stuck right now, like a lot of other things. The sad truth is that we know that there are going to be

more tragedies that involve police killing people who don't have any weapons on them. We know that's going to happen. And the energy, the outrage that brought, you know, so many people onto the streets of major American cities and small towns and even international capitals around the world. That energy has dissipated in a couple of years. But I don't think that's the end to this story. I still believe that some of those movements that were forged in that horrible, tragic summer, they're going to persist. And unfortunately, there are going to be things that happen in the country that cause them to want to speak out again. So I don't think we've heard the end of this. We have to leave it there for today.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.