ELEFA’s Statement on the April 28th Executive Order
On Monday, President Trump signed into effect an Executive Order aimed at “Strengthening and Unleashing” policing in America. The Executive Order focuses on shielding law enforcement agencies and individual officers from perceived “handcuffs” and building the capacity of agencies to pursue “aggressive” policing.
While policing experts, police officers, and the public agree generally in the need for better, clearer policies, improved training, and practices that promote effective policing, the Executive Order’s approach and language are stuck in the past. The idea that agencies must be free of any kind of oversight or commitment to constitutional, procedurally just policing in order to most effectively fight crime has been proven false in cities around the country. In fact, restoring community trust in law enforcement through promoting safer, more effective, and more just policing is key to fighting crime in our cities. Many police agencies and individual officers agree that the police and the public must work together to co-produce safety.
In order to best provide law enforcement, officers need support in the form of better benefits and pay. They also need clear policies, training that prioritizes proportional use of force, including de-escalation, robust accountability and oversight structures, mental healthcare support, data collection and analysis, and a myriad of other elements of nationally accepted best practices in policing that are not and should not be considered an attack on law enforcement or coddling of criminals.
At Effective Law Enforcement for All, we’ve worked with communities and police to create a shared vision of law enforcement that boils down to trust, accountability, safety and effectiveness. In many ways, consent decree cities model this kind of policing precisely because they have undergone intentional reform with the input of police, national experts, and local voices. A commitment to “stopping crime and upholding justice” as described in the Executive Order fact sheet, must also include a commitment to modern practices which are proven to create safer and more effective policing, for both the police and the communities they serve.
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