'Our cops are 99% great!' Donald Trump rails against far-left calls to 'defund' police at law enforcement roundtable - as Joe Biden meets George Floyd's six-year-old daughter and DENIES backing radical plan to disband departments
President Donald Trump vowed on Monday there will not be any defunding or dismantling of police as he met with law enforcement officials at the White House and tried to turn the protests that rose up in the wake of George Floyd's death into an election year issue.
His Democratic rival Joe Biden, meanwhile, traveled to Houston, where he spent over an hour meeting with Floyd's family ahead of George Floyd's funeral on Tuesday. Biden also met with Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna and her mother Roxie Washington. He expressed his sympathies to Gianna and 'promised to push for changes in policing,' according to Washington's attorney Chris Stewart, who posted a photo of the meeting on Instagram.
Trump met with police unions and attorneys general at the White House after protesters surrounded the White House over the weekend to demand police reform as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The president lasered in on one element of the protests, the 'defund the police' movement, promising it won't happen and praising law enforcement officials for doing an 'fantastic job.'
'There won't be defunding. They won't be dismantling of our police. And they are not going to be any disbanding of our police,' Trump said.
The 'defund the police' movement calls for funds to be removed from police departments and allocated to social services instead. Some in the movement are even calling for police departments to be dissolved altogether.
'Our police have been letting us live in peace,' Trump said, praising their work while acknowledging there are a few 'bad actors.'
He said 99 per cent of cops are great people.
'Let's go with 99% of them are great, great people. They have done jobs that are record-setting, record-setting,' the president said.
Joe Biden met with George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna and her mother Roxie Washington. He expressed his sympathies to Gianna and 'promised to push for changes in policing,' according to Washington's attorney Chris Stewart
President Trump vowed there will not be any defunding or dismantling of police as he met with law enforcement officials at the White House
Joe Biden meets with the family of George Floyd in Houston: From left: Congressman Cedric Richmond, Rev. Al Sharpton, Joe Biden, Attorney Ben Crump and Roger Floyd, George Floyd's uncle
Attorney General Bill Barr, who ordered last week's controversial clearing of the area around the White House of peaceful protesters, said law enforcement is committed to reform.
'What makes me very optimistic today is that the law enforcement leaders that we deal with, and you all know this, no one is more committed to reforming the criminal justice system and the profession of policing today,' he said at the round table.
'The time for waiting is over. It’s now incumbent on us to bring good out of bad,' he said.
Trump also criticized Minneapolis for considering disbanding its police force.
‘We can't give up the finest law enforcement anywhere in the world, it's nothing like it,’ Trump said.
‘We’re going to be discussing some ideas and some concepts and some things. But we won't be defending our police we won't be dismantling our police. We won't be disbanding our police. We won't be ending our police force in a city,' he noted.
'I guess you might have some cities and want to try but it's going to be very, very sad situation. If they did, because people aren't going to be protected,' he added.
The president's comments on Monday came after his campaign attacked Biden, accusing the presumptive Democratic nominee of supporting the defund the police movement.
Biden's campaign immediately denied the charge, which came as Team Trump tried to turn it into an election wedge issue to drive voters to the polls in November.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, in a call with reporters, called Biden 'complicit' in the 'defund police movement,' which has garnered strength in the wake of Floyd's death.
'As the protesters like to say, silence is agreement. By his silence, Joe Biden is endorsing defunding the police,' Murtaugh said.
Biden's campaign shot back, noting that, while the former vice president supports reform to the police system, he does back the defund movement.
'As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded,' Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. 'He hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change, and is driven to ensure that justice is done and that we put a stop to this terrible pain.'
President Donald Trump's campaign accused Joe Biden of supporting the 'defund the police' movement, which Biden's campaign denied
The charge from the Trump campaign came the same day Joe and Jill Biden went to Houston to meet with George Floyd's family
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Trump is 'appalled by the defund the police movement'
People, who gathered to protest the death of George Floyd, scuffle with Metropolitan Police District officers near the White House last week
But the Trump campaign didn't let go.
'We still haven’t heard from Joe Biden himself on the radical ‘Defund the Police’ movement in the Democrat Party. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to stick his name on a statement, but he didn’t even do that,' Murtaugh shot back in a statement of his own.
President Trump also sought to tie the movement to 'radical left Democrats' as he called them.
'This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country's recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!,' he tweeted.
Trump and his team have been searching for a rallying cry against Biden as polls show the president trailing his November opponent as more and more people criticize his response to the protests as images of street clashes fill their TV screens.
A CNN poll out Monday gave Biden a 14 point lead in the race, as 55 per cent of voters said they would vote for Biden and 41 per cent said they would vote for Trump.
George Floyd was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis – the latest black death at the hands of a white cop sparked widespread rage leading to violent and peaceful protests and riots across the country
The president is also searching for a new campaign slogan, The Washington Post reported, amid the coronavirus pandemic and the demonstrations that have taken place across the United States. Trump has repeatedly tried out 'Transition to Greatness' and brought back his 'Make America Great Again' slogan. His campaign's online store has merchandise touting 'Keep America Great' slogan, which Trump rolled out after consulting advisers and then polling large campaign rallies before the outbreak.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to tout himself as the 'law and order president' and will participate in a round table with law enforcement officials on Monday but it will be behind closed doors.
And his spokespeople have kept up the attacks on Democrats, trying to tie the party to the 'defund the police' movement.
'The President is appalled by the defund the police movement,' White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at her briefing Monday.
'This is rolling back the protective layers that protect Americans in their homes and in their places of business. He's appalled by it and it's remarkable to hear this coming from today's Democrat Party,' she added.
The 'defund the police' movement, however, could turn into a political hot potato for Democrats, as more liberals sign onto the idea while moderates hesitate to endorse it.
Congresswoman Val Demings, the first female police chief of Orlando and someone on the short list for Biden's running mate, spoke carefully Monday when asked about defunding police departments.
'I do believe there is opportunity here for the police and the community to come together,’ she said on CBS’ ‘This Morning,’ and ‘look at the responsibility, things that police are taking on, that they were never supposed to take on in the first place. And come out with a better plan.’
The issue became tied to the Black Lives Matters movement in the most visual way last week, when volunteers in Washington D.C. painted the words 'Defund the Police' next to a large 'Black Lives Matter' logo on 16th Street, which leads to the White House.
The 'Defund the Police' movement became tied to the Black Lives Matters movement in the most visual way when volunteers in Washington D.C. painted the words 'Defund the Police' next to a large 'Black Lives Matter' logo on 16th Street, which leads to the White House
Democrats maintained social distancing guidelines for Monday's moment of silence in honor of Black Live Matters protests and wore face coverings
The law makers kneeled for eight minutes and 46 seconds – the same amount of time white cop Derek Chauvin had his knee lodged on the back of Floyd's neck during his arrest late last month
Minneapolis' city council vowed to abolish the city's 'toxic' police department and to reinvest the funds in community projects aimed at preventing crime in an historic move (pictured, councilors speak to demonstrators)
Liberal stars in the Democratic Party - like Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar - have endorsed the idea, adding their weight to it.
Ocasio-Cortez told NY1 she's 'actively engaged in advocacy' for a 'reduction of our NYPD budget and defunding a $6 billion NYPD budget that costs us books in the hands of our children.'
And Omar called for her home state of Minnesota to dissolve its police department.
'We need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,' she said a rally over the weekend.
'The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle it, we get rid of that cancer, and we allow for something beautiful to rise, and that reimagining allows us to figure out what public safety looks like for us,' she noted.
Minneapolis' city council did just that on Sunday, pledging to abolish the city's police force. Mayor Jacob Frey objected but he does not have the power to veto the move after a three-quarters majority of the council backed it.
The city cannot officially disband the police but they control its funding so they can render it virtually powerless. Their plan involves moving funds away from the police department - which had a budget of $1.6 billion in 2019 - to community initiatives aimed at preventing crime and reducing its impact.
The money would be directed to affordable housing, addiction support services, youth groups, mental health providers, social services, and arts programs.
Routine jobs such as traffic stops, mental health call-outs, responding to the scene of overdoses and policing schools would be taken out of the hands of officers and given over to EMTs, the fire service, counselors and others who are better placed to provide support.
Campaigners say a 'small, specialized force of public servants' could be used to prevent violent crime - since it does not make up the bulk of modern-day police work.
The aim, they say, is to empower community members to 'look out for one another' as opposed to relying on a police service which often does not draw its members from the neighborhoods they police.
The move will likely face legal challenges, including from the city's police union which has so far resisted attempts at reform, and could get tied up for months in red tape.
And when Democrats on Monday unveiled their sweeping police reform bill aimed at combating police brutality, especially with the black community, it was missing any mention of police defunding.
The legislation, written by the Congressional Black Caucus, includes a ban on police using chokeholds or carotid holds. It also requires nationwide use of body cameras by all police, makes law enforcement officers subject to civilian review boards and abolishes the legal doctrine known as qualified immunity, which protects police from civil lawsuits.
It's unclear if Republicans will support the legislation.
'There are some non-starters in there,' McEnany said at her briefing on Monday.
But she had no announcements on any proposals forth coming from the administration.
'He's looking at various proposals,' she said of President Trump.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi led Democrats in a moment of silence before releasing their police reform bill, which made no mention of defunding police departments
Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, said federal legislation was not the way to handle police departments
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) has called for New York to look at its police funding while Rep. Ilhan Omar (right) called for Minneapolis' police department to be dissolved
A bystander-captured video of the incident showed officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, as he repeatedly said he was in pain and could not breathe and eventually went limp
Democrats, meanwhile, said their legislation was not the place to discuss the defund the police movement.
'I can't imagine that happening in a federal way,' Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, said when asked about it.
And Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a local issue.
'The funding of police is a local matter, as you know. From the standpoint of our legislation, we're not going to that place. What we're doing is talking about how we change policy to make our policing more just and that,' she said on MSNBC on Monday.
Pelosi called Floyd is a 'martyr' of police brutality as Democrats knelt for a moment of silence before unveiling a massive police reform bill.
'The martyrdom of George Floyd gave American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for the black Americans killed by police brutality,' she said at a press conference announcing the Democrats' legislation. 'Today this movement of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action as Americans from across the country peacefully protest to demand an end to injustice.'
'The martyrdom of George Floyd,' she said later in the briefing, 'has made a change in the world.'
A team of Democrats, all wearing kente cloths to either honor those with African heritage, gathered for a moment of silence ahead of announcing their police reform legislation. The lawmakers - most of whom knelt - were silent for 8 minutes 46 seconds, the same amount of time officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck.
Biden spent Monday out of sight. He and his wife Jill traveled to Houston on Monday to meet with the family of George Floyd.
The visit was closed to the media at the request of the Floyd family.
Biden offered his sympathies to Floyd's relatives and recorded a video message for Floyd's funeral service, which will take place Tuesday in Houston. Floyd will be buried next to his mother.
He is not expected to attend the service to avoid any disruption that would be caused by his Secret Service protective detail.
On May 25, Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed African-American man, died after Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
The incident was captured on video, setting off massive street demonstrations that have spread across the United States and around the world.
Floyd repeatedly voiced his pain and claimed he could not breathe, before he went limp underneath Chauvin's knee.
'Our cops are 99% great!' Donald Trump rails against far-left calls to 'defund' police at law enforcement roundtable - as Joe Biden meets George Floyd's six-year-old daughter and DENIES backing radical plan to disband departments
!['Our cops are 99% great!' Donald Trump rails against far-left calls to 'defund' police at law enforcement roundtable - as Joe Biden meets George Floyd's six-year-old daughter and DENIES backing radical plan to disband departments]()
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June 09, 2020
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