| | | Trump Makes Fighting Crime a Priority in Speech and on Website
‘Standing up for the law enforcement community’ listed as one of administration’s priorities
By SHIBANI MAHTANI and ZUSHA ELINSON
Updated Jan. 20, 2017 7:01 p.m. ET WSJ
CHICAGO—The WhiteHouse.gov website, now controlled by President Donald Trump and his administration, singled out “standing up for [the] law enforcement community” as one of the six most important issues to the new presidency.
In the post, published just after Mr. Trump was sworn in as the 45th U.S. president, the administration commits to ending what is describes as “the dangerous anti-police atmosphere” and supporting police in “their mission of protecting the public.”
In his inauguration speech Friday, Mr. Trump also promised to end the “crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives.”
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he said.
The tone of the post and his remarks signal a departure from the Obama administration’s focus on reforming racial biases and stemming the unconstitutional use of force within police departments in some cities after a serious of high-profile deaths of young black men at the hands of police.
The Justice Department under Mr. Obama opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies and is enforcing 20 agreements with law enforcement agencies aimed at changing their practices. In many cities, including in Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and Chicago, such investigations have found that police departments have violated the constitutional rights of residents there.
The Trump administration, in the WhiteHouse.gov post, also committed to reducing violent crime. It says that killings in Washington, D.C. have “risen by 50%,” though FBI statistics show that the city’s murder rate actually fell between 2015 and 2016. Washington, D.C’s murder rate in 2016 was 19.8 per ten thousand residents, lower than 24.1 in 2015 and a fraction of the murder rate two decades ago, which was at 73.1.
Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police chiefs from the country’s largest cities, said President Trump “is correct that crime and violence and drug abuse has in fact stolen way too many lives” in this country.
“I wish it was as easy as saying it stops today,” said Mr. Stephens. “People have worked very hard on those issues for years.”
Mr. Stephens also noted that violent crime is still much lower than its peak in the 1990s.
“We’ve seen a number of cities that have seen spikes and that should be a concern, but on the whole America is a safer place than it was in the 90s.”
Mr. Trump’s administration also pointed to Chicago, where there were over 4,000 shootings in 2016 and over 760 deaths from gun violence. The White House says that “more law enforcement, more community engagement and more effective policing” is needed.
“Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter or the violent disrupter,” the post said. “Our job is to make life more comfortable for parents who want their kids to be able to walk the streets safely.”
Reform of the criminal justice system has in recent years become a bipartisan issue, with politicians on both side of the aisle agreeing that problems like overcrowding in jails and a disconnect between police and minority communities must be resolved.
But criminologists are worried that this momentum could wane under Mr. Trump’s presidency and that police would be encouraged to return to policies such as stop-and-frisk, which was ruled unconstitutional in New York.
Muddying the waters further is Mr. Trump’s pledge to reduce federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities that protect undocumented immigrants, which could also hurt police departments reliant on federal funding in these urban centers like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
The threat of reduced funding to sanctuary cities which would hurt police departments there pushes against “the law and order flavor of the president,” said Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab. “No one can know how that will play out. |
|
