President Biden is poised to sign orders curbing policing Wednesday to commemorate the two-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder — despite the ongoing violent crime wave that swept pro-cop New York Mayor Eric Adams to office and prompted mayors from DC to San Francisco to try to reverse cuts to police funds.
Biden will order the creation of a national registry of cops fired for misconduct and establish policies to incentivize local governments to restrict chokeholds and no-knock warrants. He also will restrict the transfer of surplus military gear to cops, the New York Times reported.
The idea of a “bad officer” registry comes from a stalled Democratic police reform bill while the notion of incentivizing, rather than ordering, local use of force reform comes from a rival Republican bill.
The restrictions on transfers of military equipment appear to be a resurrection of former President Barack Obama’s 2015 freeze of the Pentagon’s 1033 supplies transfer program following racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo. That policy upset police advocates but was supported by libertarians including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Biden also will order federal agencies to revise their use of force policies, the Times reported.
The focus on police reform follows two years of inaction by Congress as Republicans led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) offered one bill and Democrats led by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) urged a farther-reaching package. As time passed, other issues gained greater focus in Congress and neither police bill passed.
Meanwhile, violent crime surged nationwide, including in major cities such as DC and New York.
Adams, a former cop, was elected last year after running on a pro-police platform amid rising violent crime and San Francisco Mayor London Breed launched a policing crackdown just a year after she reduced the local police budget by $120 million. In DC, Mayor Muriel Bower slammed prosecutors for a revolving door for arrested violent criminals and proposed more police funding after DC cut $15 million from the police department following national protests against Floyd’s death.
Rising violent crime has replaced police brutality at the forefront of public discussion.
In New York City, robberies are up 40.4 percent this year compared to the same point in 2021. Rapes are up 14.8 percent this year and car thefts are up 54.7 percent — with 4,962 cars stolen in the city in just over five months. Murders are down 9.9 percent from last year but are still up 22.6 percent from 2020.
In Washington, DC, violent crime is up 18 percent this year, driven by a 42 percent spike in robberies. Property crime is also up, including a 6 percent bump in car thefts, of which there have been 1,270.
A New York City police officer with nearly two decades on the job told The Post they’re upset by Biden’s new policing reforms.
“It’s beyond a slap in the face. It just goes to show you how far left Biden’s gone now. Law enforcement is a tough job and they’re making it a thousand times harder,” the officer said.
“This job is hard as hell and it’s even harder with everyone recording. Now you’ll saying if I’m fighting with somebody and put a little pressure on his back he could die and I’m going to jail? Let him go. Why would I want to arrest him?”
“Eric Adams must be pissed,” the officer added. “He knows it’s virtually impossible. If you’re fighting with someone, it’s impossible not to put pressure on them. You have to get them on their stomach to cuff them. Scary times. I don’t know who will want to take this job.”
A poll released last month by CBS found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of crime, versus 39 percent who approve. That poll found that 49 percent favor greater funding for the police, 61 percent want stricter punishments for criminals and 63 percent want more mental health services.
It’s unclear why Biden took so long to decide upon issuing the order. Negotiations on a police reform bill in Congress effectively ended in September.
The pending Democratic policing bill would have restricted chokeholds and banned federal agents from conducting no-knock drug raids, curtailed transfers of military equipment to police, created an officer misconduct registry, ended qualified immunity from lawsuits and lowered the threshold to federally prosecute officers if they show “reckless disregard” for someone’s life.
The Republican police reform bill, by contrast, would have incentivized departments to restrict chokeholds, purchase and use body-worn cameras and keep information on use-of-force incidents and no-knock raids. It would have made lynching a federal crime, created a commission to study conditions of black men and boys and funded black police officer recruitment.
Biden authored harsh federal laws in the 1980s and ’90s that critics say “mass incarcerated” poor people and minorities — drawing scorn from leftists in his party and also from some Republicans, but he was conspicuously quiet in 2020 about calls to defund the police during the early phase of protests after Floyd’s death. Last year, however, he urged local officials to use unspent COVID-19 stimulus money to hire more cops.
