President Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien denied that systemic racism exists in the nation’s law enforcement agencies.
“No, I don’t think there’s systemic racism,” O’Brien told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday when asked if systemic racism was a problem across police forces in the United States.
“I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans, and many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian,” he said.
Unrest erupted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and dozens of other cities across the U.S., with protesters setting fire to buildings in response to the death of an unarmed black man in police custody last week. George Floyd died after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck, despite Floyd pleading with police that he could not breathe. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
O’Brien blamed “some bad apples” for the deaths of unarmed black men in police custody and called Chauvin a “dirty cop.”
“There are some bad apples in there. There are some bad cops that are racist, and there are cops that maybe don’t have the right training, there are some that are just bad cops. And they need to be rooted out because there’s a few bad apples that are giving law enforcement a terrible name, and there’s no doubt there’s some racist police. I think they’re the minority,” he said.
