The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

26 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020

in Pittsburgh, Mr. Biden pledged to draw
both racial-justice activists and police
leaders “to the table” to forge durable so-
lutions.
“I have worked with police in this
country for many years,” Mr. Biden said.
“I know most cops are good, decent peo-
ple. I know how they risk their lives ev-
ery time they put that shield on.”
Yet the 2020 election has also under-
scored the difficulty Mr. Biden may have
in achieving that goal. He is presenting
himself as both a criminal-justice re-
former and a friend to diligent police offi-
cers, a critic of racism and rioting alike.
But Mr. Biden has seen his formal sup-
port from prominent law-enforcement
groups disintegrate as those organiza-
tions closed ranks against reform legisla-
tion. They have objected to Mr. Biden’s
rhetoric about “systemic racism” in po-
licing and to his vows to regulate police
agencies with federal power, even as re-
formers on the left press Mr. Biden to
take up far bolder changes.
Some of Mr. Biden’s colleagues from
the Obama administration, including
Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney
general, have worked to organize law-en-
forcement backing for Mr. Biden outside
traditional police groups, and in Septem-
ber the campaign released a long list of
endorsements stocked with former sher-
iffs and prosecutors. Yet Mr. Trump has
relentlessly exploited gaps between Mr.
Biden and police leaders, running televi-
sion ads accusing Mr. Biden of siding
against the police in a time of unrest and
berating him at the first debate about his
lack of police endorsements.
Mr. Biden’s response captured the
risky political assumption of his candi-
dacy, and a potential Biden presidency:
that through a combination of good faith
and long relationships, he might bring
about peace between warring factions.
“What I’m going to do as president of
the United States is call together an en-
tire group of people at the White House,”
Mr. Biden promised. “Well, everything
from the civil rights groups, to the police
officers, to the police chiefs, and we’re
going to work this out.”

‘So Darn Competent’

Daryl F. Gates was already notorious
when he visited Capitol Hill in the fall of

1990. In his 12 years leading the Los An-
      geles Police Department, he had become
      one of the country’s most polarizing su-
      percops: a high-profile field marshal in
      the war on drugs who dismissed con-
      cerns about racism and police brutality.
      Addressing the Senate Judiciary Com-
      mittee on drug control, Mr. Gates told
      lawmakers that casual drug users
      “ought to be taken out and shot.”
      If the draconian phrasing startled the
      committee’s chairman, the 47-year-old
      Senator Biden of Delaware, he did not
      say so. Concluding the hearing, Mr. Bi-
      den lauded Gates and another chief testi-
      fying with him, Lee P. Brown of New York
      City, the country’s most prominent Black
      policeman.
      “Thank God,” Mr. Biden said, “you are
      both so darn competent.”
      Within six months, the tone of admira-
      tion between Mr. Gates and Mr. Biden
      was gone. When several white police offi-
      cers in Los Angeles brutally beat Rodney
      G. King, a Black man, Mr. Biden called on
      Mr. Gates to resign. The chief responded
      with mockery, invoking the plagiarism
      scandal that scuttled Mr. Biden’s first
      presidential campaign.
      Of the demand that he quit, Mr. Gates
      said, Mr. Biden “probably heard it said
      somewhere else and is repeating it.”
      It was a preview for Mr. Biden of how
      quickly a relationship forged over bat-
      tling crime could unravel in a clash over
      racism in policing.
      For years, Mr. Biden stood out in the
      Senate as a fierce defender of the police.
      He has alluded, during the current cam-
      paign, to an affinity for law enforcement
      dating to his Irish Catholic upbringing in

Pennsylvania and Delaware. (“There

were three things all my friends be-

came,” he said in a September town hall,

“a cop, a firefighter and a priest.”)

And he has spoken over the years

about being drawn to issues of racial jus-

tice and public order after witnessing, in

his youth, both the breakthroughs of the

civil rights movement and the tragedy of

rioting in Wilmington, Del., after the as-

sassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther

King Jr. — events that may have under-

scored, in a young politician’s mind, the

fragility of political support for large-

scale social change.

As a young senator, Mr. Biden sought a

spot on the Judiciary Committee. Deter-

mined not to let Republicans outflank his

party in confronting a national crime

wave, Mr. Biden spent the 1980s advanc-

ing law-and-order policies like the cre-

ation of a federal anti-narcotics office led

by a “drug czar,” a title he is often cred-

ited with coining.

By 1994, Mr. Biden had worked with

police groups to devise the Violent Crime

Control and Law Enforcement Act, a

sprawling law that poured money into

enforcement, banned assault-style

weapons, toughened sentences for drug-

and gang-related offenses and expanded

the federal death penalty.

The bill was so sweeping in its scope

and so stern in its penalties that it came

to be a political liability for Mr. Biden in

this year’s Democratic primaries. At the

time, it was a popular achievement that

thrilled police groups.

“This translated into a tremendous

amount of good will for Biden, both na-

tionally and in his home state,” said

James Pasco, the executive director of

the Fraternal Order of Police, a group

currently supporting Mr. Trump.

Mr. Brown, who went on to serve as the

drug czar in the Clinton administration

and later became the mayor of Houston,

said Mr. Biden had always been inquisi-

tive about what the police needed in or-

der “to be more effective in carrying out

our responsibilities.”

“He was just upfront in his support of

law enforcement,” said Mr. Brown, re-

calling that Mr. Biden would ask: “What

could the Congress do to be more help-

ful?”

But often left out of those conversa-

tions, Biden allies acknowledged, were

issues of racial bias and police miscon-

duct. And if Mr. Biden formed deep rela-

tionships with police leaders over fight-

ing crime, those bonds have deteriorated

during the extended reckoning over rac-

ism that has stretched from the Fergu-

son, Mo., protests of 2014 to today.

William J. Bratton, who served twice

as New York Police Department com-

missioner, said Mr. Biden had long en-

joyed “very strong support among the

police,” spanning internal divisions in

the law-enforcement community.

But Mr. Bratton also acknowledged

that issues of police racism had not fac-

tored prominently into their collabora-

tion. “We did not have those discus-

sions,” he said.

Ambassador to the Police

It was during the 2008 presidential

transition, as autumn turned to winter

after the election, that Mr. Biden, as vice

president-elect, told a few police officials

that he planned to be their point of con-

tact in the new administration.

“He said that he told the president: I

want to keep law-enforcement in my

portfolio,” recalled J. Thomas Manger,

then the police chief in Montgomery

County, Md., a suburb of Washington. “At

one of our first meetings, he said to me,

‘I’ve always been with the cops. You’ve

always been my guys.’ ”

Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden entered of-

fice confronting multiple urgent crises,

with a mandate to rescue the economy

and resolve failing wars in Iraq and Af-

ghanistan. Violent crime was receding as

a political issue and the law-and-order

ethos of the 1990s was drawing new

skepticism, particularly on the left. Spe-

cial envoy to the cops was not a particu-

larly coveted assignment.

Mr. Biden embraced it with vigor. Dur-

ing meetings at the Executive Office

Building and breakfasts at the Naval Ob-

servatory, Mr. Biden functioned dually

as peacemaker and political whip. Early

on, he helped rouse support from police

groups for the Recovery Act and the

president’s first Supreme Court appoint-

ee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, helping the

administration sell her nomination to the

political middle.

“He was a terrific ambassador for the

Obama presidency, for law enforce-

ment,” said Laurie Robinson, a former

assistant attorney general whose office

distributed grants to police agencies.

“That made a tremendous difference in

the ability to work not just with the lead-

ership organizations, but with the un-

ions.”

On subjects like immigration and gun

control, Mr. Biden sought advice from his

longtime allies in the law-enforcement

world, asking for guidance on how best

to attract police support for Mr. Obama’s

agenda amid signs that the law-enforce-

ment community was shifting rightward.

One ally was Chuck Wexler, the head of

the Police Executive Research Forum, a

law-enforcement think tank.

Mr. Wexler recalled a meeting about

immigration in Mr. Biden’s suite at the

Executive Office Building: In the mo-

ments before it began, Mr. Wexler said, a

vice-presidential aide pulled him aside

and ushered him into a tiny room where

Mr. Biden was waiting. “Listen, you and

I, we’ve got history,” Mr. Biden said, ac-

cording to Mr. Wexler. “Tell me: How do

these folks feel about immigration?

What do I need to know?”

Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle po-

lice chief who worked closely with Mr. Bi-

den as the top federal drug-control offi-

cial, said Mr. Biden has spoken frankly

about the value of enlisting law-enforce-

ment leaders in the pursuit of progres-

sive goals. The former vice president, he

said, saw public safety as a foundational

issue for most voters — one on which

they would not excuse failure.

“The safety and security issue, to the

public, is an important one,” said Mr. Ker-

likowske, who described Mr. Biden as

walking a “very fine line” in the current

campaign.

In their work together, Mr. Ker-

likowske said he had not previously

heard Mr. Biden use language like “sys-

temic racism,” though he said the former

vice president was sensitive to the issue

of bias.

Mr. Biden performed important cere-

monial functions, too: He handed out the

Medal of Valor, an award for police hero-

ism, and hosted events at his residence

for National Police Week. In 2014, when a

gunman killed two New York Police De-

partment officers, Mr. Biden addressed

the funeral of one, Rafael Ramos, and vis-

ited the family of the other, Wenjian Liu,

at their Brooklyn home.

Mr. Bratton, who also spoke at Ra-

mos’s funeral, said Mr. Biden ap-

proached him there to compliment a turn

of phrase in his eulogy: “We don’t see

each other: the police, the people who

are angry at the police,” the commis-

sioner had said, promising, “When we

see each other, we’ll heal.”

“He was very taken with that expres-

sion,” Mr. Bratton said with evident

pride. “He uses it to this day.”

Mr. Biden echoed the sentiment in a

different context not long ago, after the

killing in May of George Floyd, a Black

man, by Minneapolis police.

“To everyone speaking out and peace-

fully demanding justice across the na-

tion,” he tweeted in June, “I see you, I

hear you and I stand with you.”

‘Come On, Guys, You Know Me’

In summer 2016, Mr. Biden sat with

Mr. Obama in the Roosevelt Room at the

White House, an array of police leaders

before them. Five officers had been

gunned down in Dallas by a man driven

STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Biden presided over a 2015 Medal of Valor ceremony for officers and firefighters from Watertown, Mass., for their actions after the Boston Marathon bombing.

President Trump has gained widespread support from law enforcement

groups while relentlessly exploiting gaps between Mr. Biden and the police.

ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

From Page 1

Old Bond With Police Is Frayed,

But Biden Seeks to Regain Trust

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has long been known as a fierce defender of the police, and as the Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee chairman in 1994, below, he helped create the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. In
2007, right, he produced the Biden Crime Bill. His tough legislation would later become a political liability.

Election

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