“I’m concerned that police officers across the country, they know you support law enforcement, of course”.
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“I think the one thing that all us need to do, you and me, is to make sure that we don’t pretend as if there aren’t potential problems in how police and certain communities interact”, Obama said.
“Nobody’s more hopeful than me”, Obama told Patrick shortly before he sat back down in the front row.
“Just to hear a lot of [African-Americans] say they hated the police and how they didn’t want to deal with us and didn’t trust us, to now hear them say, ‘You made us want to trust you guys again”. “Police asked was anybody hit, because he didn’t know I was shot”.
“We’re going to have to do more work together in thinking about how we can build confidence that after police officers have used force, particularly deadly force, that there is confidence in how the investigation takes place and that justice is done”, Mr Obama said. In an interview after the Dallas shooting, Patrick said that Black Lives Matter protesters were “hypocrites” for running away from the gunfire.
“My hope is that out of the tragedies that happened and my hope is that we are able to see each other as one family, that the mom of a police officer who is killed and the mom of an individual who is killed by a police officer, they have both lost a son”, the president said.
Hailing the fallen officers as heroes, Obama stated that “the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and risky job fairly and professionally”.
It appears Patrick was referring to Obama’s comments that “we’re not even close” to solving issues between police and minorities.
Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a police officer on Staten Island asks to speak with President Barack Obama outside at a town hall hosted by ABC News.
Another questioner, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, implored Obama to more strongly condemn people who call for killing police and to grant a national law enforcement group’s request that the White House be lit up with blue lights in solidarity.
“I appreciate the sentiment, I think it’s already being expressed”, he added.
The town hall, titled “The President and the People: A National Conversation“, was moderated by “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir. Flynn said at a town-hall meeting featuring the president on ABC.
WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama met with a group of law-enforcement officials, civil-rights and political leaders, educators and activists on Wednesday to discuss how to mend relations between police officers and the communities they serve. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.
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But, he said, it can’t all be on the shoulders of the police.
