President Obama thinks people ask too much of their police officers, and that the recent wave of deadly shootings will only end when society tackles underlying social and economic issues in minority communities, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
During his scheduled meeting Wednesday with police and community groups, Obama will ask “what are specific steps that we can take to address some these racial disparities in our criminal justice system that are persistent and measurable?” Earnest said. “But what are also some steps that we can take to do even more to support our men and women in uniform…?”
Obama frequently discusses the matter and brought it up in Warsaw, Poland, when he arrived there for a NATO summit before a black man killed five Dallas police in a racially motivated shooting spree, Earnest said.
Obama “has talked at length … about what a difficult job our men and women in uniform have — that too often we ask our men and women in uniform, police officers — to confront challenges and communities that the rest of us would just as soon forget,” Earnest said.
“[O]ur system has been insufficiently attentive to those core needs that we know have an impact on these communities,” Earnest said. “Instead, we ask law enforcement to go and solve those problems, or at least deal with the consequences of [our] inattention to those problems. That’s not fair.”
“I think it is an illustration of how difficult their job is,” he continued. “And if there are specific things that we can do to better support our men and women in blue, the president believes we should get … to doing it.”
Obama will speak at a memorial service for the fallen officers Tuesday afternoon in Dallas.
