Surrounded by law enforcement representatives, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday morning that the White House says is aimed at promoting accountability in policing.
The order, according to a preview the White House released on Monday, is focused on three main reforms: credentialing and certifying police departments, better data-sharing to track officers who have had complaints of excessive force and creating response services focused on mental health, drug addiction and homelessness.
The executive order follows the death on May 25 of George Floyd at the knee of a white Minneapolis officer and large protests in cities throughout the country.
Congressional Democrats have written their own police reform bill and in some parts of the country, local leaders have also promised to boost transparency, accountability and reduce police use of force.
The Justice in Policing Act would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, create a national database on police use of force, create a grant program to fund state attorneys general investigations into excessive force, make it easier for civilians to recover damages from police departments when their rights are violated and make lynching a federal hate crime.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed pledged that the city’s police officers would no longer respond to noncriminal calls, with trained, unarmed professionals instead responding to calls about mental health, homelessness, neighborhood disputes and school discipline.
The President’s signing came after he said he met with several families who have lost loved ones in deadly encounters with police officers.
Trump said of the families that "your loved ones will not have died in vain." He also said, "I can never imagine your pain or the depth of your anguish, but I can promise to fight for justice for all of our people."
But the President pushed back against some of the more transformational changes that protestors and some local leaders have supported including reducing police budgets to better fund community services, which advocates say could help stem noncriminal calls to police.
He criticized what he describes as "radical and dangerous efforts to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police departments” and said the ultimate goal of his executive order is “law and order.”
"We want it done fairly, justly. We want it done safely," he said. "But we want law and order. This is about law and order, but it's about justice also."