A2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022
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“We Own This City”
David Simon, writer and executive
Producer, “We Own This City”Moderated by Geoff Edgers
Washington Post Live
eventssaid. “So we got to work on this
executive order.”
He also alluded to Black lead-
ers’ concern that the order falls
short of what is needed. “I know
progress can be slow and frustrat-
ing. And there is a concern that
the reckoning on race inspired
two years ago is beginning to
fade,” he said toward the end of his
remarks, urging the room of activ-
ists and lawmakers to keep push-
ing.
A year ago, on the first anniver-
sary of Floyd’s death, the man’s
family was also at the White
House. Biden at the time assured
Floyd’s relatives that he was still
hoping to sign police reform legis-
lation named in honor of theirBY MATT VISER
President Biden signed an exec-
utive order Wednesday aimed at
preventing and punishing police
misconduct, a step that came on
the second anniversary of the po-
lice killing o f George Floyd but fell
well short of the sweeping reform
legislation the White House had
hoped would be law by now.
The order authorizes the for-
mation of a national accreditation
system for police departments,
and it will create a national data-
base of federal officers who have
disciplinary records or face sub-
stantiated misconduct com-
plaints. Federal law enforcement
agencies will also update their
use-of-force policies to emphasize
de-escalation.
“ It ’s a measure of what we can
do together to heal t he very soul of
this nation, to address profound
fear and trauma — exhaustion —
that particularly B lack Americans
have experienced for genera-
tions,” B iden said. “A nd to channel
that private pain and public out-
rage into a rare mark of progress
for years to come.”
Biden was joined by civil rights
leaders, police officials, members
of Congress and family members
of victims of police violence, in-
cluding Floyd and Breonna Ta y-
lor, a Black woman k illed by police
in Louisville in 2020. The event
came at a tense moment in the
aftermath of several mass shoot-
ings, i ncluding o ne in which B lack
residents of Buffalo were attacked
at a grocery store.The order was the result of a
months-long process that began
in earnest after the collapse last
September of congressional ef-
forts to craft a bipartisan bill.
Police groups denounced a leaked
draft in January that cited “sys-
temic racism” in the criminal jus-
tice system, and the order then
went through several iterations
after that based on input from
police groups and civil rights
a dvocates, according to White
House officials.
Wednesday’s version reflected
a careful balance. It noted that
“the vast majority of law enforce-
ment officers do these difficult
jobs with honor and integrity,”
while adding that “fatal encoun-
ters have disparately impacted
Black and Brown people and oth-
er people of color.”
At the start of his remarks,
Biden addressed the massacre
that o ccurred on Tuesday in Te xas,
when an 18-year-old killed 19 chil-
dren and two teachers at an el-
ementary school, saying he and
first lady Jill Biden would visit the
community in the coming days.
“I’m sick and tired. I’m just sick
and tired of what’s going on and
what continues to go on,” Biden
said, b efore escalating his rhetoric
on the constitutional right to bear
arms.
“The Second Amendment is not
absolute,” he said. “When it was
passed, you couldn’t own a — you
couldn’t own a cannon. You
couldn’t own certain kinds of
weapons. I t’s just always been lim-
itations. But guess what? These
actions we’ve taken before, they
saved lives. And they can do it
again.”
Advocates have been pressing
the White House to take sweeping
action to address systemic r acism,
with a focus on overhauling polic-
ing and the criminal justice sys-
tem. They fear Biden has lost a
sense of urgency about police re-
form after the collapse of legisla-
tion named f or Floyd, a Black man
whose death under the knee of a
Minneapolis police officer in 2020
set off social justice demonstra-
tions nationwide.
Biden said he would have
signed the executive order sooner
but was worried that it would
derail negotiations in the Senate.
“Our Republican colleagues op-
posed any meaningful reform,” hebrother, father and uncle.
During that meeting last year,
Biden t old them h e was frustrated
that the legislation hasn’t passed
but he said, according to those
who attended, that he was willing
to be patient and “make sure it’s
the right bill, not a rushed bill.”
The George Floyd Justice in
Policing Act, which passed the
House but not the Senate, would
have implemented a broader ar-
ray of changes, including banning
the use of chokeholds and
n o-knock warrants, as well as pro-
hibiting racial profiling. The big-
gest sticking point was over end-
ing “qualified immunity,” which
makes it harder to sue individual
law enforcement officers over
their actions on the job.
Without legislation, Biden has
little authority to directly control
the practices of the nation’s
18,000 state and local law enforce-
ment agencies. And while he can
change the policies of federal law
enforcement agencies like the
FBI, those changes can be re-
versed by a future president.
So Biden’s actions on Wednes-
day were intended in many ways
to provide guidelines and incen-
tives for local police.
The executive order authorizes
the Justice Department to use f ed-
eral grant funding to encourage
local police to further restrict the
use of chokeholds and no-knock
warrants, steps that federal law
enforcement agencies have al-
ready taken. The order also estab-lishes new restrictions on the
transfer of military equipment to
local law enforcement agencies.
It says federal agents have a
duty to intervene if they see other
law enforcement officials using
excessive force. That language
echoes changes made by the Jus-
tice Department last week in its
use-of-force policy, which was up-
dated for t he first time in 18 years.
Similarly, the order will encour-
age all law enforcement agencies
to participate in the new miscon-
duct database and to adopt
d e-escalation policies similar to
those that federal agencies will
put in place.
The White House does not have
the power to make some changes
long demanded by advocates,
such as getting rid of qualified
immunity, which protects police
officers from being sued individu-
ally for misconduct and was in-
cluded in the federal bill. Dozens
of statehouse bills that would
eliminate such immunity have
also been defeated.
Other changes, like banning
chokeholds or adopting stricter
policies about when police can use
force, similarly require action on
the state or local level.
But Biden and Vice President
Harris, while acknowledging
Wednesday’s action did not go
nearly as far as they wanted, still
declared it an important moment.
As Harris introduced Biden, she
turned to the family members of
those who’d died at the hands of
police.
“You have felt so much pain a nd
you have endured unimaginable
grief. You have experienced the
anguish of losing someone you
love and cherish,” she said. “A nd
yet you are here, as you have been
throughout the days of your grief,
standing selflessly full of grace
and resilience to speak up, to
speak out, often against odds,
great odds to fight for a world
where no one has to experience
what you have been through.”
After signing the order, Biden
called up Floyd’s daughter,
G ianna.
“You’re getting so big!” he said
to the 10-year-old.
He also recounted what she
told him nearly two years ago.
“ ‘My dad is going to change his-
tory,’ ” Biden recalled her saying.
“A nd he will, honey. He will.”Done waiting for Congress, Biden signs a policing order
ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gianna Floyd, the daughter of George Floyd, joins others affected
by police misconduct who attended the signing at the White House.Download The
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BY HOLLY BAILEY
AND TESS ALLENminneapolis — When Derek
Chauvin was found guilty of mur-
dering George Floyd last year,
cries of joy erupted outside the
courthouse where the former
Minneapolis police officer stood
trial. Many greeted the rare con-
viction in a police brutality case
with a collective exhale of relief,
optimistic that the historic mo-
ment for racial justice would help
heal a city still on edge from the
trauma of Floyd’s killing and the
fiery unrest that followed.
But as residents here gathered
Wednesday to mark the second
anniversary of Floyd’s death, that
sense of hope has been replaced
by disappointment that the de-
mand for police reform that sent
millions of protesters into the
streets two summers ago is fad-
ing.
At the makeshift memorial
marking the south Minneapolis
intersection where Floyd died, a
25-year-old Black woman who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity, citing concerns about her
safety, lamented that police
across the country continue to go
unpunished for killing people of
color.
“Enough is enough,” the wom-
an said as a steady stream of
people stopped to pay respects at
the painting of an angel on theasphalt w here Floyd took h is final
breaths. “I can’t even say it’s time
that we g et j ustice because I know
we’ll never get it.”
That sense of futility has only
grown in Minneapolis, where
residents remain deeply divided
over the future of public safety
despite widespread calls for po-
lice reform in the aftermath of
Floyd’s death.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
(D), who holds administrative
control over the police, has enact-
ed numerous reforms to rein in a
department long accused of rac-
ism and excessive force against
people of color — including a ban
on chokeholds and limits on traf-
fic stops that predominantly tar-
geted Black residents. He also
promised tougher discipline for
bad officers.
But a recent state investigation
found the Minneapolis police
continued to engage in “discrimi-
natory, race-based policing” —
targeting and using force on
Black people at a higher rate than
Whites. The report said the de-
partment routinely failed to hold
its officers accountable for bad
behavior, despite the mayor’s
promised reforms.
Minneapolis voters last fall re-
jected a ballot initiative that
would have replaced the police
department with a new depart-
ment of public safety — a vote
deeply influenced by rising crime
in the city and fears that the
department, which has struggled
to respond t o basic 911 calls d ue to
hundreds of officer departures,
could plunge further into crisis.
Since Floyd’s death, two other
Black men have been killed by
Minneapolis police — adding tothe list of Black men, including
Daunte Wright and Winston
Smith, killed by other law en-
forcement in the Twin Cities in
the last two years.
That includes the fatal shoot-
ing of Amir L ocke, who was killed
in February as officers executed a
no-knock warrant inside a down-
town Minneapolis apartment
even though Frey claimed to have
banned no-knock warrants in the
city.
Locke was not the target of the
warrant, even though police ini-
tially described him as a “sus-
pect.” Locke’s death, w hich result-
ed in no charges against the offi-
cers involved, sparked fresh pro-
tests in the city. One
demonstrator carried a sign that
read: “What changed after
George Floyd? NOTHING.”
A similar sense of dismay
played out this week in other
parts of the country, where pro-
tests fueling the nation’s racial
reckoning two years ago have
been followed by headlines of o th-
er fatal police encounters involv-
ing people of color.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., where
tens of thousands of people took
to the streets after Floyd’s death,
tensions remain high after the
fatal police shooting of Patrick
Lyoya during an April traffic stop.
A prosecutor is still determin-
ing w hether to charge Grand Rap-
ids Police Officer Christopher
Schurr, who remains on paid
leave. Schurr allegedly shot Lyoya
in the back of the head during a
struggle after he pulled the man
over for a license plate violation.
Lyoya’s death has revived com-
plaints of a history of harassment
and racist behavior from Grand
Rapids officers toward Black resi-
dents.
On Tuesday, “Justice for Patrick
Lyoya” demonstrators for the
third time in a month interrupted
a city commission m eeting, p ress-
ing the mayor and other city offi-
cials on why charges have not yet
been filed in the case. Some high-
lighted the speed with which
Chauvin was charged with mur-
der and jailed less than a week
after Floyd’s killing.
John Williamson, a White man
who lives in the same neighbor-
hood where Lyoya lived and has
helped organize protests over his
death, called the evidence against
Schurr “indisputable.”
“It feels like our voices are
falling on deaf ears,” Williamson
said. “The police are bringing vio-
lence into our community. If theywill not be held accountable for
the most e gregious e xecution by a
police officer — if Derek Chauvin
will get arrested, but Christopher
Schurr will not — the city will
crack in half.”
In New York City, where police
came under fire for their brutal
tactics toward racial justice dem-
onstrators in 2020, many of the
promised reforms in response to
Floyd’s death have not come to
pass — including increased trans-
parency about officer miscon-
duct. Meanwhile, many of the
colorful murals of Floyd that o nce
dotted the city have been painted
over.
“It’s been two years, and noth-
ing has changed,” said Te rrell
Harper, a Brooklyn activist and
one of the organizers of a Wednes-
day protest in Floyd’s memory.
In Minneapolis, the city pre-
pared to unveil a sign renaming
the block along Chicago Avenue
where Floyd was killed as George
Perry Floyd Square — a move that
city officials have described a s the
beginning of an effort to not only
memorialize Floyd’s death but re-
vitalize an area that has become
the emotional epicenter of the
nation’s reckoning on race and
justice.
Throughout the day, people
shed t ears at t he spot where Floyd
was killed, including Larisa Geh-
mie, who said she came to 38th
and Chicago to reflect on Floyd’s
life as “a father, a community
member and a friend” but found
herself also thinking of others
killed by police in the last two
years, including Locke and
Wright.
“It’s important that as a com-
munity, especially here in Minne-
sota, that we continue to remem-
ber what happened here and not
just continue to go on with the
flow as usual,” said Gehmie, an
executive assistant at the Minne-
sota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit
that operates a bail fund for peo-
ple it believes have been unjustly
arrested.
“Unfortunately since George
Floyd was murdered two years
ago, the city and the state has not
stopped killing Black people,” she
said. “Until we really decide to
grapple with this issue of white
supremacy, the killings and mur-
ders of Black people will just con-
tinue to happen in this country.”Andy Balaskovitz in Grand Rapids,
Mich.; Jack Wright in New York; and
Grant Stringer in Portland, Ore.;
contributed to this report.Fears rise of a fading urgency for police reform
Frustration hangs over
events on anniversary of
George Floyd’s deathThe executive order
authorizes the Justice
Department to use
federal grant funding to
encourage local police
to further restrict the
use of chokeholds and
no-knock warrants.
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