It’s Time for a National Standard on the Use of Force
We talked to a former Obama Justice Department official on what needs to be done
The long-standing problems of police violence and racism have only grown starker under President Donald Trump. As a wave of protests continues across the U.S. in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis who died after an officer kept his knee on his neck for about eight minutes, the Trump White House’s years-long effort to undo many of the Obama administration’s initiatives to address police bias has come back into view. GEN talked to Becky Monroe, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ Fighting Hate and Bias program and a former policy director for the Civil Rights Division in the Obama Justice Department.
GEN: I saw [former head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division] Vanita Gupta’s tweet saying that under Obama she “would have been in Minneapolis, working with local officials and community leaders and activists.” What would that collaboration have looked like?
Becky Monroe: The role of the Civil Rights Division was to enforce the statutes that we had jurisdiction over, but in order to do that, we recognize the underlying, often systemic issues and problems that were in a particular jurisdiction. Vanita and…
