Obama Urges All US Mayors To Review Use Of Force Policies, Commit To Reforms

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th June, 2020) Former US President Barack Obama called on mayors in the United States to review their policy on the use of force after more than a week of protests - and riots - across the country, initially sparked by the death of African American man George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Today, I am urging every mayor in this country to review your use of force policies for members of your community and commit to a report on planned reforms," the 44th US president said at a live-streamed event on Wednesday.

The event, "Reimagining Policing in the Wake of Continued Police Violence", was hosted by his Obama Foundation.

The remarks were the first by Obama since the May 25 death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer in the city, pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed face down on the street. Chauvin was charged on Wednesday with second-degree murder while the three officers who witnessed the killing but did not prevent it were charged with aiding and abetting murder.

Obama said it was important for mayors to ensure that police in their cities deployed force in ways that increased safety rather than precipitated tragedy.

As a guide, he referred to a task force established during his presidency after the killing of Michael Brown, another young black man, that developed specific recommendations to strengthen trust and improve relationships between law enforcers and the communities they were to protect.

"We now have more information and more data as to what works," Obama said, citing work by social groups like Campaign Zero and Color of Change. "What the data shows is what works, what doesn't, in terms of reducing incidents of police misconduct and violence. Let's go ahead and start implementing those. We need mayors, county executives and others who are in positions of power to say, 'This is a priority. This is a specific response.'"

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to express their outrage and sorrow over Floyd's death, which came on the back of the killing of other young unarmed black people in recent months, some at the hands of police too. The week-long unrest, with reports of shootings, looting and vandalism in some cities, has confounded mayors and governors trying to fully reopen US states and cities shut down over the past three months by the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite only making up 13 percent of the US population, Black Americans are two-and-a-half times as likely as white Americans to be killed by the police, according to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group.