President Donald Trump signed an executive order on police conduct on Tuesday. This marks his first piece of legislation aimed at recent protests over police brutality. Since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, protests nationwide have called for police reform.
At times, Trump appeared to signal his disdain for the protesters. In a series of tweets two weeks ago he seemed to suggest that the military could be called in to quell the civil unrest. This drew swift and widespread condemnation from military officials. The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, derided Trump’s tweets as irresponsible.
Trump’s executive order, signed on Tuesday afternoon, includes new guidelines for police training. These moves come as protests against police brutality grip the nation. The order also calls for the creation of a national database for police hiring. This database could be used by police departments to track if new hires have a history of misconduct.
The event was remarked upon as “awkward” by some pundits, as it showed how difficult it is for Trump to be conciliatory. Police officers flanked the president while he spoke. Families of the victims of police brutality were not present. After unveiling the bill and briefly noting on the protests, the president shifted into pro-police talking points. At times, the event felt like one of Trump’s campaign rallies.
Notably, the bill doesn’t mandate police departments adopt these new standards. Instead, it directs the Department of Justice to prioritize federal grants to departments that cooperate with them. This means that some well-funded police departments in the US can ignore these guidelines entirely.
Many protesters found the bill lacking when Trump unveiled it on Tuesday. It does not include a ban on chokeholds, like the one that killed George Floyd. Some consider a ban on chokeholds to be a necessary part of any move towards reforming modern police departments. Others have stated that even a nod to systematic racism would have helped the bill.
Instead, the order makes no note of the racial element of police brutality. It has required protests and numerous cellphone videos of brutality to even draw attention to the issue in the US. The advent of smartphones like the Apple iPhone XSMax and the Samsung Galaxy has made it much easier for people to record police behavior. Were it not for these technologies, protesters argue, the issue of police brutality would have never become a major focus for politicians.
