President Barack Obama thanked police officers on Tuesday for the work they’ve done to reduce the overall crime rate across the US, but said that work doesn’t reduce the need for a “robust debate” over fairness in law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
Advertisement
“I refuse to believe that the only choice we have is to either ignore circumstances of racial bias or make it impossible for police officers to do their job”, Obama said.
“I can’t honestly tell them the country has done everything we could to keep this from happening again, from seeing another officer shot down, from seeing another innocent bystander suffer from a gunshot wound, and that’s a travesty”, Obama said.
Over half (55 percent) of Americans who participated in a Gallup poll released this month said they preferred stricter gun regulations.
On Monday, police chiefs from across the United States requested for universal background checks for firearms purchases. “Most of the time I got a ticket, I deserved it. But there were times when I didn’t”.
“You know, the president is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away”, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump said last week at a rally in Anderson, S.C.
The bloodshed inspired another nickname for the Windy City: “Chiraq”.
“The common denominator from Chicago to Charlotte is that guns are getting in the hands of the wrong people and lives are being erased, all because easy access to guns by people intent on doing harm to themselves or others”, McCarthy said.
Recent mass shootings in America – including eight fatalities at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, the shooting of reporters Allison Parker and Adam Ward in Virginia, and the massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina – have been met with divergent responses on the issue of gun control.
“The coalition called on Congress to specifically expand background checks to cover all gun purchases”. But he stressed that it remains “too easy for criminals to buy guns”. The guidebook came from Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and the president used much of his speech to outline the recommendations the report made.
It is worth noting that while the steep increase in murder rates is troubling, the fact that it comes on the heels of years of declining violent crime makes it appear particularly stark.
“Too often, law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of our society and criminal justice system”, Obama said. And I know you do your jobs with distinction no matter the challenges you face. “That’s part of wearing the badge”, Obama will say.
Chief Will Johnson of the Arlington, Texas Police Department(second from left) speaks on relationships between law enforcement and community as Cornell Brooks, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Chief Kathleen O’Toole of the Seattle Police Department, and Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division(from left to right), listen in a talk on the future of law enforcement.
“But”, he added, “you know as well as I do that the tensions in a few communities, the feeling that law enforcement isn’t always applied fairly, those sentiments don’t just come out of nowhere”.
Advertisement
According to IACP president Richard M. Beary, Obama’s appearance was the first time in 20 years a sitting president has addressed the organization.
