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'Man who enjoys armed security': Biden's call to 'retrain cops' for reducing use of weapons sparks debate

'Why should you always shoot with deadly force? The fact is if you need to use your weapon, you don’t have to do that,' Biden said

WASHINGTON, DC: On Monday, President Joe Biden called for the retraining of law enforcement to teach cops that deadly force is not an acceptable option in every case. “We have to retrain cops,” President Biden said. He also mentions the fact that there needs to be a change and a fresh approach in the ways of recruitment and training too.

At the National Action Network's Martin Luther King, Jr Day Breakfast in Washington, DC, the 80-year-old US president spoke out against Senate Republicans for their role in obstructing a police reform bill in 2021 that would have limited the use of deadly force by law enforcement. 

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“Why should you always shoot with deadly force? The fact is if you need to use your weapon, you don’t have to do that,” Biden said. He also stated that The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2022, which ultimately failed to pass, inspired the administration to issue an executive order on police reform in May 2022.

After the bill that would have been named in honor of the unarmed black man who was slain by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis in 2020 did not make it to the  president's desk, Biden remarked, "I did the only thing I could do." He remarked on the order that bans chokeholds and substantially restricts no-knock warrants.“I signed a historic executive order that included key elements of that bill at the federal level,” he said.

Biden's statement has sparked a lot of discussions online, and understandably so as it did not sit well with the general public. Opinions ranged from one user to another, one user wrote "someone please escort him back to the basement...what a moronic statement," while another user said, "Coming from a man who enjoys round the clock armed security. What do you think would happen if you even tried to approach him? More ivory tower pontificating."  

One more user wrote, "…because they are cops…the last line of defense….deadly force." One handler pointed out the absurdity of the president's remark about shouting in legs instead of hearts. "You know, all those scenes from the old movies, where the hero shoots the gun out of ruffian’s hand…Yeah, turns out it’s all fiction," he wrote.

A user  wanted the President to be retrained, they wrote "I’m calling for retraining the President." Another user said, "super weird when he made his career hell bent on arming forces" another user wrote.

It was not the first time that the president spoke about retraining the cops. In 2020 the President made similar suggestions at the peak of Gorge Floyd's murder. “Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg,” Biden said.

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.