Attorney General William Barr condemned what he saw as efforts to “demonize” the police amid calls from some to “defund” or “abolish” the police.
During an interview set to air Monday evening on Fox News, Barr defended the majority of law enforcement officers while acknowledging the need for reform.
“Today, the police chiefs, the rank-and-file officers, understand the need for change, and there has been great change,” Barr told Bret Baier on Special Report. “And I think defunding the police, holding the entire police structure responsible for the actions of certain officers is wrong, and I think it’s dangerous to demonize police.”
George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, died in police custody on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned him down by placing a knee on the back of his neck for nearly nine minutes. Footage of the incident set off a wave of outrage, leading to protests in major cities across the nation, some of which became violent as protesters rioted, looted stores, burned buildings, and clashed with police. Chauvin now faces charges of second-degree murder.
The call to “defund the police” or “abolish the police” has become a rallying cry among some protesters and left-wing activists and politicians. Brian Fallon, who was the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, tweeted “Defund the Police” last week. Protesters painted “Defund The Police” in the street in Washington, D.C., over the weekend alongside the city-commissioned “Black Lives Matter” slogan. The Minneapolis City Council is pursuing a veto-proof resolution to dismantle its current police force. And protesters booed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and told him to “get the f— outta here” over the weekend when he said that “I do not support full abolition of the police department.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign released a statement Monday saying he does not support defunding the police.
“There is no question it is an issue, and it has to be dealt with, but in terms of sheer numbers, is it these police officers who are oppressing African American communities?” Barr said on Monday. “There are a lot more damage, a lot more killing, a lot more fear engendered on the streets from criminal elements. In Chicago, for example, in one weekend, 60 to 70 people shot. If you pull back the police from these communities there will be, there will be more harm done in these communities.”
The University of Chicago’s Crime Lab concluded that 18 people were killed in Chicago on May 31, making it the deadliest day since at least 1961, which is how far the lab’s data stretches back. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that from that Friday through that Sunday in late May, 25 Chicagoans were killed, and another 85 were wounded by gunfire.
On Sunday, Barr was asked by Margaret Brennan of CBS News’s Face The Nation whether he believed there was systemic racism in law enforcement.
“I think there’s racism in the United States still, but I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist. I understand the distrust, however, of the African American community given the history in this country. I think we have to recognize that for most of our history, our institutions were explicitly racist. They denied equal rights to African Americans first under slavery, then under Jim Crow,” Barr said. “I think since the abolition of Jim Crow laws, which really didn’t get struck down completely until the 1960s … Since the 1960s, I think we’ve been in a phase of reforming our institutions and making sure that they’re in sync with our laws and aren’t fighting a rearguard action to impose inequities.”
“I think the reform is a difficult task, but I think it is working, and progress has been made,” Barr said. He also noted, “We have a generation of police leaders in this country, many of whom are now African American, in our major cities, who are firmly committed to equal justice and to fair policing, and we’ve been working hard on this.” He also pointed to the Trump administration pushing for the First Step Act and said that the president “set up the first commission on policing and the administration of the Justice since Lyndon Johnson to look at precisely these issues.”
Recent polling shows U.S. attitudes on race and policing may be shifting in the wake of Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from the weekend showed that 59% of voters were more concerned about the actions of the police and the death of Floyd where 27% were more concerned about the violent protests. A Monmouth poll from last week stated that 57% of people believe that police officers facing a difficult or dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black compared to 33% who said police are just as likely to use excessive force against black and white culprits in the same situation.
