Obama said he rejects “any narrative that seeks to divide police and the communities that they serve”.
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He said that police officers can contribute to a better system by integrating themselves into their communities and getting to know the people who make them up.
Richard Beary, President of IACP and Chief of Police at the University of Florida, said overall immediate reaction to Obama’s comments was positive.
Officers care about fairness in the criminal justice system and “want to do the right thing”, the president said, adding that he was confident “people of good will can and should find common ground” on the issue. They don’t need them. “They don’t need them to hunt a deer”.
When a reporter talked about in that Chicago already has strict gun control laws, Earnest agreed, “It does”. “I reject a storyline that says when it comes to public safety there’s an “us” and a “them” – a narrative that too often gets served up to us by news stations seeking ratings, or tweets seeking retweets, or political candidates seeking a few attention”, Obama said.
The president hasn’t pressed Congress on gun legislation since 2013, when the administration lost an effort in the Senate to expand background checks on gun purchases.
When Obama visited Roseburg, Oregon earlier this month to offer his condolences to the relatives of victims of the community college shooting, gun rights activists, a few carrying holstered guns, arrived at the airport to protest what they saw as the president pushing a gun control agenda amid a national tragedy.
A recent report indicated 60 percent of illegal guns recovered by Chicago police between 2009 and 2013 came from out of state, notably Indiana.
At points in the speech, Obama made attempts to soften criticism of American law enforcement, but in an unexpected way, blaming, in essence, the combined problems of economic inequality (while not using the term) and racism, and saying that cops get “scapegoated” for larger societal failings.
“There are those who criticize any gun safety reforms by pointing to my hometown as an example”, Mr. Obama said. “Most of the time I got a ticket, I deserved it. But there were times when I didn’t”, he said.
Obama mentioned his old South Side neighborhood, where he said adults are too afraid to discipline misbehaving kids because “you don’t know if they’re armed” and guns are easier to get than it is “to get fresh vegetables at a supermarket”.
The president also highlighted sentencing reform, where he said it’s not a “bleeding-heart attitude” to take another look and make sure the “punishment fits the crime”. About 400,000 Americans have been killed by guns since 9/11. In this way, they fit a classic Obama conciliator pattern: When he gives something to one group, he is careful to give to another soon after. That’s the entire population of Cleveland or Minneapolis. Many in law enforcement feel under siege these days – or at the very least not given the benefit of the doubt – by the Black Lives Matter movement and video monitoring by civilians.
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Earnest said there was no evidence that police officers were “shirking” their duties given increased scrutiny on law enforcement. “If we’re serious about protecting our communities and protecting our police departments, then let’s invest in more opportunities, let’s try to stop more crime before it starts”.
