The Obama-Biden administration had eight years to legislate police reform that could have included a ban on chokeholds. Why did they not work with Democratic mayors across the country to develop meaningful reform?
During the Obama-Biden years in office, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner were killed in police encounters. Garner was actually killed by chokehold. George Floyd might be alive today if Obama and Biden acted on this important issue.
Instead they left police reform to the Trump administration. President Trump got his First Step Act passed that is a significant reform in criminal justice. Trump commuted Alice Marie Johnson’s sentence because he deemed it to be excessive. Johnson first made her application to Obama, and his administration denied her petition. So much for Obama-Biden criminal justice reform.
In a June 12 “My Turn” article in the Monitor, the writer appealed to the “need to elect leaders who place rights and vulnerabilities of all of our citizens front and center.” Given the missed opportunities noted above, Biden is not one of those leaders to be elected based on his record of no police reform with an African American boss in the White House and Democratic mayors calling for police reform.
Donald Trump, being the only president in the last 12 years to get meaningful legislation passed, has demonstrated Trump’s ability to get meaningful police reform in the next four years.
DYLAN FEDAS
Warner