As the town of Minneapolis and the nation commemorated the fifth anniversary of George Floyd‘s homicide this previous Memorial Day weekend, the years-long nationwide motion to reform police interactions with Black and brown communities–generally lethal–has seen each progress and main setbacks.
The Black Lives Matter motion, following Floyd’s demise in Could 2020, aimed to remodel the way in which police departments work together with Black and brown communities, garnering large assist from firms and establishments–together with commitments to investing in DEI and different packages supposed to eradicate racial disparities.
The organized motion for police reform additionally resulted within the election of President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black vice chairman, and their administration’s govt actions to curb police violence and reframe the difficulty as a broader public security coverage concern. 5 years later, nonetheless, President Donald Trump, reelected to the White Home final yr after initially being rebuked in 2020 for his stance on policing, reversed course on measures to carry police departments accountable.
Final week, the U.S. Division of Justice’s civil rights workplace rescinded a number of reform agreements, often called consent decrees, with police departments in Minneapolis, the place Floyd was murdered by former officer Derek Chauvin, and in Louisville, Ky., the place officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor months earlier than. The Trump DOJ additionally closed a number of Biden-era investigations of different native police departments.
President Trump additionally rescinded Biden’s govt order on policing, which included measures limiting chokeholds and police no-knock warrants and established a nationwide misconduct database for federal police.
Angela Angel, senior advisor at Black Lives Matter PAC, advised theGrio that the Trump administration’s newest motion on consent decrees is about “making certain that extra Black individuals will be killed with impunity.”
“The cancellation of consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, the precise cities the place George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had been murdered, isn’t coincidence. It’s calculated cruelty,” she mentioned.
She continued, “Consent decrees signify absolutely the ground of accountability, not the ceiling. When police departments can’t cease killing Black individuals on their very own, federal oversight turns into mandatory. Eradicating that oversight is like taking the protection rails off a bridge and calling it ‘native management.’”
Jamarr Brown, govt director at Coloration of Change PAC, mentioned police departments with documented histories of lethal misconduct are “being left off the hook,” including, “That’s finally what occurs when … pulling again on investigatory practices.” Brown continued, “Pulling these again really places energy again within the palms of the police, and I believe that’s the aim of the Trump administration.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson slammed Trump for “sweeping the DOJ’s findings of civil rights violations by police departments nationwide below the rug.”
Nevertheless, he additionally known as out america Congress for failing to go a “single piece of laws to deal with this nation’s policing disaster.”
The civil rights chief famous that final yr, 1,175 individuals died in encounters with police. Johnson mentioned these deaths may have been prevented if elected officers had the “braveness to do one thing.”
“We voted them in to behave in our greatest pursuits — to not sit round and twiddle their thumbs,” mentioned the NAACP president. “How a lot time do they should go a invoice? Persons are dying on daily basis they fail to behave. Sufficient is sufficient.”
Democrats in Congress launched a sweeping police reform invoice named after Floyd in 2020. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would have nationalized sure legislation enforcement practices and accountability measures. Nevertheless, years of negotiations tanked in a divided Congress, largely over the difficulty of certified immunity, which lowers the protection legal responsibility commonplace in non-public civil lawsuits involving officers, and the withholding of federal grants for police departments that don’t adjust to the legislation.
Although probabilities appear bleak in a Republican-controlled Congress and with Trump as president, Coloration of Change’s Government Director believes the George Floyd invoice may someday be handed into legislation.
“It’s as much as the individuals to elect the Congress that can go it,” Brown advised theGrio. “Should you don’t have the votes, it’s important to go earn the votes, and it’s important to go craft the Congress and the federal government you need.”
Regardless of years of setbacks, Angel of Black Lives Matter PAC mentioned advocates and neighborhood leaders are “not begging for reform anymore.”
“We’ve advanced from demanding justice to constructing the ability to implement it ourselves. We’ve moved from protesting in streets to electing prosecutors who gained’t defend killer cops, from chanting ‘Defund the Police’ to truly passing budgets that divest from police and put money into Black futures,” Angel advised theGrio.
The Trump administration and opponents of police reform are “working time beyond regulation” to dismantle the wins for police reform on the federal and native stage, mentioned Angel.
“They wouldn’t be this determined to cease us if we weren’t mobilizing energy,” she argued. “That energy is precisely what terrifies them most. And we is not going to cease preventing till the world we deserve exists. One the place Black people thrive, not simply survive, consent decrees or not.”
