President Biden will welcome local police chiefs and other law enforcement officials to the White House on Wednesday to discuss the administration’s efforts to combat crime and push back on claims pushed by former President Trump and other Republicans that violent crime is endemic. aims to refute.
“As President, public safety and crime reduction will be a top priority for my administration and for me, and that hasn’t changed since I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” Biden said in a speech to law enforcement leaders. ” he said.
The President participated in a roundtable discussion with various law enforcement officials, including the police chiefs of Philadelphia, Buffalo, Miami, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, and DeKalb County, Georgia, as well as the executive director of the Fraternal Order of the United States. of the police.
The White House noted that while the country saw its largest annual increase in homicides in 2020, homicides have declined under the Biden administration.
Officials noted that millions of dollars are being invested in local police departments through the American Rescue Plan, a massive spending bill signed into law in 2021 and passed with only Democratic votes. The money was spent to hire more police officers and shore up local budgets strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2022, Biden signs executive orders aimed at increasing police accountability, creating a national database of officers fired for misconduct and requiring federal agencies to update their use-of-force policies. Ta.
However, the president has rejected calls from some far-left members of his own party to “defund the police” in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd, and the Justice Department has We are partnering with local police to crack down on violence. .
“Our plan is working, but as everyone at this table knows, we still have a lot of work to do,” Biden said. “And that’s why we’re here today. My administration will choose progress over policy, and communities across the country will be safer as a result.”
Former President Trump, who is likely to be the Republican nominee in November’s election, has long positioned Democratic-run cities as havens for crime and lawlessness.
In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday, Trump focused on what he called “immigrant crime” rampant in New York City and other parts of the country.
“We have a new category of immigration crime. And it’s going to be even more serious than violent crime and crime as we know it,” President Trump said.
The former president said he would guarantee immunity to police officers to take any action they deem necessary to crack down on criminals, and suggested without evidence that his re-election would allow him to quickly address problems in Chicago and New York.
“Chicago will be solved in a day,” Trump said. “In New York, you can solve the problem in half a day.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Wednesday that crime is “ravaging our cities” because of Biden.
“For years, Democrats have refused to condemn the destruction in our cities and called for defunding the police,” McDaniel said. “Homicide rates are rising in communities across America right now, retail theft is devastating small businesses, and police can’t find officers anymore than when Biden took office. No wonder people don’t feel safe anymore. He’s always put criminals ahead of his family and has no intention of holding the job.”
But data shows that the Republican image of a big-city, crime-ridden nation is misleading.
According to FBI data released last October, violent crime in 2022 decreased by 1.7% compared to 2021. Those categories include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. This decline brought violent crime back to pre-pandemic levels, but not as low as it was from 2013 to 2015.
a Report released Wednesday Third Way, a center-left think tank, showed that the murder rate in states that Trump supported in 2020 was 33% higher than in states that Biden won, marking the 23rd consecutive year Trump has voted. had a higher murder rate than states voting for Biden. state.
The report is based on 2021 and 2022 homicide information for all 50 states from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality data.
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