Sweeping Police Reform Won't Happen Overnight
A national movement has notched its first major win with President Trump’s executive order on law enforcement tactics. It’s unlikely to be the last.
"Without police, there is chaos," Trump said on the same afternoon as he signed an executive order on police reform. As the swell of calls to “defund the police” reverberates across the nation, Bloomberg Opinion columnists are examining a wide range of challenges to reforming law enforcement – from spending and data collection to the much-debated qualified immunity clause.
Blame the Police, But Blame Lawmakers, Too: If we’re serious about reducing police violence, we must realize that this dilemma goes beyond controlling police officers themselves. Ask yourself a crucial question: Who tells the police what to do? “There’s every reason for fury, but we mustn’t miss the larger issue. The death of Floyd naturally brings police behavior front and center. This makes sense because police officers are the visible implements of government power, the sharp end of the spear. They do not, however, make the laws they enforce. We all ride our own hobbyhorses into every controversy, and here’s mine: We have too many laws—well over 3,000 federal crimes and countless more state offenses. As I’ve long argued, if we want less violence from the enforcers, we should give them less to enforce. The fewer the laws, the fewer the interactions between citizen and enforcer; and the fewer the interactions between citizen and enforcer, the fewer the occasions for the interaction to turn violent.” – Stephen L. Carter via Businessweek