The Friends Committee on National Legislation deplores Attorney General Jeff Session’s recent decision to pause reforms designed to protect people from militarized policing.
Washington, D.C. The Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Legislative Associate for Domestic Policy José Santos Woss released the following statement in response to Attorney General Jeff Session’s new agency directive effectively pausing police reforms subject to department review:
“Every day in this country people die or are abused at the hands of police. Too often those deaths or violent incidents are excused away as a reaction to a lack of compliance when people of color are the victim. The implication is clear, those lives are less important because of the color of their skin or the religion they practice. Quakers believe that there’s that of God in all and the seeds of war are sown in communities when we tolerate verbal and physical violence in its many forms. If we as a nation turn away from our failings rooted in slavery and racism, the problem of militarized communities will never cease.
“The Attorney General’s pause of police reforms for agency review ignores the value of these lives lost and the severity of the problem across a number of the more than 18,000 police departments. Serious conversations dealing with institutional racism and implicit bias are ignored for fear of offending good people’s feelings. Police are good people, but these systemic problems will not fix themselves without institutional reforms.”
These consent decrees that Mr. Sessions has paused pending agency review typically look to enact reforms between police departments and the Department of Justice to ensure the protection of the most basic constitutional rights. If our society is truly one where “all [people] are created equal,” we must reform these systems too often steeped in white supremacy.
The Attorney General recently stated that violent crime rates are at a historic low. However, the incidences of police involved shooting are what have not changed. Mayors and police chiefs have been in support of these necessary reforms in order to restore trust between communities and police. Mayors Pugh of Baltimore and Emanuel of Chicago have both stated clearly that these reforms will continue in their police departments.
Who among us does not recall the shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, MN; the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH; or the failure to signal resulting in Sandra Bland’s death at the hands of police?
These tragedies have sadly become common in the United States, and the Attorney General’s disregard for this habitual loss of innocent life is extremely concerning. At a minimum, reforms designed to protect communities from excessive use of force and to begin fixing elements of institutionalized racism should remain in place.
