President Trump is the one who ‘wants to’ defend the police, ‘”Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in an interview Friday.
“I do not want to defend the police departments. I think they need more help, they need more assistance,” Biden told ABC News in a broad interview with Sunday that also included Biden’s running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D embraced -Calif.
Biden accused the president of proposing cuts to programs that support local police, in stark contrast to the rhetoric of the Republican campaign’s campaign trail.
Harris also stressed that voters should look at the president’s actions instead of listening to his words.
“There’s so much about what’s coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth that is designed to distract the American people from what he’s doing,” Harris told ABC.
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Instead of slashing funding, police departments should concentrate on officers abusing their authority, the former vice president said.
“There are unethical senators, there are unethical presidents, there are unethical doctors, unethical lawyers, unethical prosecutors, there are unethical police. They need to be eliminated,” Biden interviewer Robin Roberts said.
Protesters of racial injustice across the country have called for the defeat of police departments in the wake of George Floyd’s death on May 25 in a police officer in Minneapolis and other cases of proven police brutality.
Biden told Roberts that as elected president he would apply national standards to police departments and would make records of police crimes more easily accessible to public scrutiny.
He said Trump plans to cut “half a billion dollars in local police support,” referring to proposed cuts to a federal program aimed at hiring more local officers. Biden said he has more resources and support for social services would call for police.
“We need to make it clear that this is about protecting neighborhoods, protecting people, everyone across the board,” he said.
“The only man who has filed a bill to actually defend the police is Donald Trump,” Biden added, after defending the 1994 crime bill he supported when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware. That legislation, signed into law by former President Bill Clinton, called for community-based policing – but has been criticized for leading to mass imprisonment of African Americans and other minorities.
“Everyone forgets a third of that bill I wrote was to put more police on the streets, not in their cars, but to get out and get to know the community – know who owns the local grocery store, everyone in the community knows, and crime will drop, “he said.
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While Biden has expressed support for diverting police funds, neither he nor Trump has specifically called for “defundering” the police.
The interview with Robin Roberts and David Muir of ABC was the first joint media of Biden and Harris since they nominated their party at the Democratic Convention.
