Joe Biden says not 'all cops are bad cops', pushes against calls to defund police amid George Floyd protests
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden doesn't agree with growing calls for the defunding of police in the light of the George Floyd protests.
Speaking to 'The Daily Show' host Trevor Noah, on Wednesday, June 10, the former vice president spoke about whether it was justified that people were pushing for police departments in the cities to be defunded as they continued to protest police brutality in black communities.
“I don’t think all cops are bad cops,” Biden said at one point, adding that he did not agree with the growing calls for defunding. “But look, 90% of all the funding for police comes from local taxpayers. So the federal government, under our system, cannot — other than taking a civil rights action — say they need to do A, B, C, and D. But what we can do is we can make sure we insist on certain fundamental changes take place now.”
Although he made it clear he did not agree that the police stop getting public funding, as it would also mean taking away security from places like schools, places treating mental illness, in the homelessness community, he also added, “I think that conditions should be placed upon them where departments are having to take significant reforms. We should set up a national use of force standard. If they don’t sign on to it, then in fact they don’t get any of the federal money. In addition, that they have to demonstrate that they release all the data that relates to misconduct by police, that all has to be sent to the justice department. If they don’t send it to the justice department nationally, they don’t get funded."
He then spoke from a personal concern that how his family would be affected if the police were to stop receiving any funding. "For example, my daughter is a social worker, she has her Masters in social work. The idea that she’s going to respond by herself to a 911 call that says that someone is overdosing or someone has a mental problem and they’re acting out, the idea of going by themselves is not rational. Conversely, cops shouldn’t go alone. Cops should go with people who are mental health experts," he said.
Biden emphasized on the importance of building trust between law enforcement and communities to increase safety. "When we were funding community policing, the crime rate went down and the extent of brutality went down, too because people know who’s in the community. But it’s much bigger than that, it’s complicated. But I think we should turn over as much as we can to non-armed police officers to deescalate things related to mental illness, homelessness and drug abuse," he said.
We previously reported that Biden talked about how he was not concerned about Trump exiting the White House upon an election defeat if he refuses to leave. Biden said: "You have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are.’ I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch."
Not everyone was happy about the fact that Trump threatened to implement martial law in the country in his address to the nation on June 1. In the wake of violent protests and riots in several cities, following the death of African-American man, George Floyd, Trump said that if a city or state refused to take the necessary actions, “then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them”. He further said that in Washington DC, he was deploying “thousands and thousands of heavily-armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to stop the rioting.