President Biden acknowledged in an interview with BET on Wednesday night that he hasn’t been able to take as much action as he would have liked in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“I had to take my own action on the George Floyd legislation that was not as strong as I would have liked, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the Republican votes,” Biden said during a conversation with Ed Gordon.
In response to Floyd’s killing, Democrats introduced the George Floyd Police Justice Act of 2021, which would have enacted sweeping police reforms, including banning no-knock warrants and the use of carotid chokeholds. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate.
Gordon noted that Black Americans wanted the changes Biden promised.
Biden fired back slightly, pointing to reforms his administration has passed, including requiring federal officers to wear body cameras.
But he acknowledged there is still a lot of work to be done.
“We don’t need more police officers,” Biden said. “We need more social workers. We need more people building coalitions in local communities and scaling them across the country.”
In their interview, Biden and Gordon touched on many of the issues most pressing to black voters, including inflation and abortion.
