Top Trump Officials Deny There’s Systemic Racism In Law Enforcement, DOJ ‘Abandoned’ Investigations Of Police
A number of top members of Donald Trump’s administration have denied that there is a problem with systemic racism in law enforcement, with their defenses coming just days after a report found that the Department of Justice has “abandoned” broad investigations of police department misconduct.
As protests have broken out across the country and spread worldwide in the last two weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, members of the Trump administration have pushed back against allegations that racism has become a systemic problem among law enforcement.
Attorney General William Barr appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, saying that Floyd’s killing is not symptomatic of a larger problem.
Barr added that there has been significant progress since the 1960s.
“I think there’s racism in the United States still but I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist. I understand the distrust, however, of the African American community given the history in this country,” Barr said.
As CNN noted, that sentiment was echoed by a number of top members of Donald Trump’s administration. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said that “some” police officers abuse their jobs, but denied there is a systemic problem.
Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and one of the most high-profile African Americans in Trump’s administration, said that he grew up during a time of “real systemic racism” but believes that is no longer the case.
“We have policemen who are rogue — the vast majority of policemen are wonderful,” he said.
Protesters have said that law enforcement is unfairly targeting minorities, pointing to harsher policing tactics and more aggressive prosecution for people of color when compared to white suspects. The protests that have spread across the country are calling for justice not just for Floyd specifically, but also sweeping changes in law enforcement to address these disparities.
The denials of systemic racism from members of the Trump administration comes just days after a report from CNN finding that the Department of Justice has “abandoned” investigations of unconstitutional policing practices that took place while both Barack Obama and George W. Bush were in office.
“While the Justice Department launched 12 investigations of law enforcement agencies for practices that violate the Constitution during George W. Bush’s first term, and 15 during Barack Obama’s first term, the department has opened only a single public investigation of that kind in the three and a half years since Trump became president, according to legal experts and DOJ records,” the report noted.
Trump was also criticized in the last two weeks for calls to crack down on protests that had grown violent, including threats to use the U.S. military to put down protests. Critics say Trump is failing to acknowledge the larger issues of police misconduct that the protests are addressing.
