Trump, who today called for a boycott of the NFL to punish players who don’t stand for the National Anthem in protest of police abuse, has been sending a message that law enforcement has more latitude now to bend and break the rules.
Steven Greenhut writes:
During a July speech to police in Long Island, Donald Trump joked that when officers “put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head” that “you can take the hand away, okay?”
Many of the cops laughed approvingly, but civil liberties groups—and even some law-enforcement officials—were upset that the president made light of police brutality, especially given some troubling nationally publicized incidents.
Trump’s defenders argued that he was only joking about the treatment of killers, and that the rest of us need to lighten up. Didn’t Ronald Reagan joke about bombing Russia as he prepared for a radio address? Well, yes. But those arguments aren’t persuasive given that the administration’s actual policing policies seem likely to encourage abusive police behavior in a variety of ways.
Even the Republican-controlled House of Representatives seems to understand that point. Last Tuesday, the House overwhelmingly approved amendments to a spending bill that try to limit the U.S. Justice Department’s efforts to let police officers expand the use of a policy known as “civil asset forfeiture.” Some forms of forfeiture have been around for centuries, but it really ramped up in the early days of the drug war, with policies designed to let police grab property and proceeds from major drug enterprises.
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