Obama said the Black Lives Matter movement serves to bring attention to inequities in poor and minority communities and is “not meant to suggest that other lives don’t matter”. She condemned the event as a “farce” that was “nothing short of full exploitation of black pain and grief”. Before police were able to kill Johnson, he reportedly taunted law enforcement and admitted his actions were essentially revenge for the deaths of Sterling and Castile.
Advertisement
During a prior interview with ABC News, Shetamia Taylor said she had heard gunshots the night of the shooting that left five law enforcement officers dead.
Since a string of recent shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas, Obama has been blunt about the limitations of presidential words or pat policy proposals to fix the problem.
Hi everybody. Last night in Washington President Barack Obama hosted a special town hall on the issue of police and race relations.
Diamond Reynolds, who was in the vehicle with her 4-year-old daughter when her boyfriend was shot and killed by a police officer in Falcon Heights, was on the guest list for the president’s town hall meeting on race relations and policing. The attacks claimed the lives of five Dallas police officers.
He then asked the president to put on the blue lights at the White House to honor their sacrifice, citing that police have asked him to do that since he has done it for other groups.
“If you are white and you are working in a black community and you are racist you need to be ashamed of yourself”, Jones said in the video. “I just want them to know it in their heart”.
Obama said that a conversation needed to continue in the United States about issues like early childhood education, high-quality daycare and after-school programs as well as making sure that schools had sports and music programs.
Obama told Patrick that he had been unequivocal in condemning rhetoric directed at police officers, beginning with the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I think it’s also important for us to understand that the phrase “Black Lives Matter” simply refers to the notion that there’s a specific vulnerability for African-Americans that needs to be addressed”.
Erica Garner said that despite being promised by the network that she would be allowed to ask a question, the taping concluded before she could speak.
“There’s a greater presumption of dangerousness” when it comes to black men, the president said.
Advertisement
“It just makes me feel like ‘Let’s go back our fellow police departments and make sure we hold each other accountable.’…” He’s called for assigning police officers to the communities where they live, improving training on how to avoid confrontation, expanding access to statistics about police interactions, and ensuring transparent investigations and due process after deadly incidents.
