The NPR Politics Podcast - What Trump's Policing Order Does (And Doesn't) Do

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday encouraging police departments to improve training — a step critics say falls short of what is needed to curb police officers' use of force against people of color.This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and congressional reporter Claudia Grisales.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.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

Hi, this is Gabriel in Orange County, California. I'm out for a late night run trying to lose that quarantine 15 while I listen to the NPR Politics podcast. This episode was recorded at... It is 2.08 Eastern on Tuesday, June 16th. Happy Bloomsday to the nerds out there. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be out running. We believe in you.

Sounds great. Very inspirational. I like that everybody's suffering from a quarantine 15. I feel supported here. This is wonderful. I'm moving in the opposite direction, so I appreciate his effort.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I am Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. So President Trump signed an executive order today outlining police tracking and reform efforts. Today I'm signing an executive order encouraging police departments nationwide to adopt the highest professional standards to serve their communities. These standards will be as high and as strong as there is on earth. Aisha, what do we know about this plan?

So this is an executive order that would, part of what it would do is try to track misconduct because there's this issue where you have police officers who may have done something wrong on one job and then they leave that job, but they're able to get hired someplace else, even though they've engaged in bad behavior elsewhere. So this is supposed to try to make a federal database. What it would also do is that it would use federal grants to encourage departments to meet these higher certification standards on use of force, these, this basically try to use credentialing and the use of federal grants as really a carrot to if you want these grants, get credentialed in these modern policing standards, and then you can get more federal money. The other thing is that it would encourage police officers to have to work

with social workers and mental health advocates on certain calls to go out together because sometimes police officers are dealing with people with mental health issues or with other issues that's not necessarily criminal. Yeah. It's fair to say, though, that there's still a pretty big gap between what this does and the types of big reforms that a lot of protesters and advocates have been pushing for. Yes. I mean, without a doubt. And we should first, we should be very clear, this is an executive order. The Obama administration put in place executive orders dealing with police brutality. And the Trump administration came in and rolled those back. So executive orders are already on shaky ground in that sense. But even without that, you have civil rights attorneys, other people immediately coming out against this. So you do have critics.

But like just to take that that database as an example, right? In this event today, President Trump, as he often does, was kind of all over the place talking about a ton of different topics that have nothing to do with policing reform. Like a database like that, that takes time, that takes effort. It takes political muscle to get it in place and make it work do we have a sense that like this is a top priority for the white house that they're going to keep the focus on or is that a very open question so you're so you're saying it will depend on how this is actually implemented right that is what i'm saying yes yes like you actually have to implement this and how are you going to get all of these many local jurisdictions? And it is true. This is I mean, policing is done at a local level. Right. It's not a federal thing.

So how are you getting all of these local tiny municipalities to give you all this data? How are you going to collect it all and then put it out there for people to actually be able to analyze. That is a real question. And we have seen with Attorney General Bill Barr that he is very sympathetic to law enforcement. And he has at times, there are people who support the Trump administration have had complaints about the Attorney General, and he would have to be the one putting this together. So it's really going to depend on if President Trump is really pushing on this, and the White House is really pushing to make sure this happens. It is an election year. There are a lot of things going on. There is a real question of does this fall through the cracks?

So, Claudia, let's shift the focus a little bit to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. How much does this proposal differ from what congressional Democrats have been talking about? And does it address anything that they have made a priority for themselves? Yes, it does differ quite dramatically. Democrats want to go a lot further with their proposal. They are actually looking at outright bans. For example, they want to stop the practice of chokeholds. They also want to stop the practice of chokeholds. They also want to stop this practice of no-knock warrants. This is in drug-related cases. Ayesha, one of the things that really affected so many people around the world was just the

way that George Floyd died. And you have seen this huge push to ban police chokeholds as part of the reforms. You've seen it pass in New York State. It's something that Joe Biden is calling for a federal law to deal with. What did the executive order do about that? So the executive order does address as part of like that certification, this idea that you would ban chokeholds. But it also said that you would ban chokeholds unless the officer feels like his life is at risk. Of course, that raises questions in and of itself because often in these cases, police officers say that they feel like their life is at risk.

That's almost always the justification for the shooting, right? Yeah, I mean, you're not allowed to just shoot suspects unless you feel like your life is at risk. And yet we see lots of police shootings like that's the issue. So you will have these same issues around the chokehold. Was the chokehold justified because this police officer says he thought his life was at risk? All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more about where these various reform efforts are in Congress. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Facebook. It's a challenging time for small businesses in communities across the country.

Facebook's Business Resource Hub offers free tools to help manage a business, support customers and employees, and connect with other business owners who are facing similar challenges. From information on how to bring a business online to setting up a customer service plan, Facebook's Business Resource Hub can provide resources. Learn more at facebook.com slash resource. For James McBride, racism in this country has been a disease. It's been the cancer that has just been killing us. And now we want to address the problem. I mean, you can't address the cancer until you know you have it. And these people are seeing the cancer. Author James McBride on protests, a pandemic, and his new book. Listen to It's Been a Minute from NPR. All right, we're back. Claudia, we talked a little bit before about what House Democrats want to see. There's a lot going on in the Senate as well, which is,

of course, controlled by Republicans, including a committee hearing today. What's that focusing on? Right. Yeah. So this afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding their first hearing on policing ever since this national outcry began, triggered by the May 25th killing of George Floyd. And so they're going to have a very large panel kind of following the lead of the House Judiciary Committee. They had about a dozen witnesses last week. Senate Judiciary is planning on doing the same this afternoon. They're going

to have some of the same witnesses, including the Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and Vanita Gupta. She's the former head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. She works on civil rights issues today. So we're going to be hearing from both sides on how to go forward with this policing reform effort. As we know, Senate Republicans are trying to craft their own proposal when it comes to these concerns of police brutality. And Tim Scott, who is the senator from South Carolina, he is, of course, the only African American Senate Republican. Republicans have really made, the only African-American Senate Republican. Republicans have really made him the point person on all of this. What is he prioritizing when he talks about what he wants to see? So he is looking at issues like training,

de-escalation tactics. He wants to see that become a priority for police departments across the country. And he thinks this is the way you get to preventing so much use of chokeholds and other restraints that are considered dangerous, as we saw in the George Floyd case that resulted in his death. And so he's looking at more of these de-escalation tactics. Also, he wants to up federal reporting requirements. He says today about 40 percent of police departments around the country report to the Justice Department via the FBI. And so he wants to make sure that's increased. He wants to get that to 100 percent. And he also wants to see cops using more body

cameras, wants to see funding to help make that happen, or if not, penalties if cops aren't using these body cameras. So he's trying to address all these issues by not necessarily telling police departments, do this, don't do that, but nudging them in the direction of safer practices where we run into these issues less of these kind of George Floyd stories. Have there been any substantial negotiations or conversations between Senate Republicans and either House Democrats for that reform package we talked about before, or, you know, like Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have taken the lead on Senate

versions of that bill as well? Is there any areas of overlap? Not at this time. That's the concern I'm hearing from both sides, from Democrats and Republicans. For example, Roy Blunt of Missouri was just telling us today that we could end up in a side-by-side situation where we have a Republican proposal and a Democratic proposal, and we just don't know where we go from there. Now, we should note that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was just saying today that he's still thinking about speeding up the clock on this Republican bill, getting it on the Senate floor, maybe as early as next week. We're hearing that the bill itself could be rolled out within the next day or so. But what I envision here is an effort to make a law.

And I'm fully aware that it takes 60 votes to get something out of the Senate. So it'll really be up to them to decide how they want to handle this. They can either shoot it down as insufficient or be willing to take the risk to go to the bill and see what changes, if any, we can all agree to in order to get to 60. So does it seem like at this point, both chambers are moving towards passing legislation, but it's not clear whether we'll actually have something that will make it into law, right? Exactly. The Congress story. Yes. The famous Congress story. We know this movie. We've seen it many times before. And the House could pass their bill next week is their plan. Now the Senate is weighing whether to push theirs out before the Fourth of July holiday. And yes, we could end up with the

classic Congress story. All right, that's it for today. It only Tuesday, but it's not too soon to start thinking about what you can't let go of this week. We end every week by talking about the things we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise, of course. But lately, we've been including what you can't let go of. So let us know what that thing is by sending us a recording of about 20 seconds or so. Record it on your phone and email it to nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress.

And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.