Daily US Times: US President Donald Trump has said the chokeholds – a very controversial police act- for restraining some suspects should “generally speaking” be ended.
Some police forces in the US already imposed ban on chokeholds since the ant-racism protest sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an African American.
Mr Floyd died after a white officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes, despite he repeatedly saying he could not breathe.
It would be a “very good thing” to ban chokeholds but they may still be needed in some situations, Mr Trump said.
The president’s comments come with Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress trying to hammer out the details of a police reform bill – the proposed Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
Mr Trump told while speaking with the Fox News that the concept of stopping police forces using chokeholds sounded “so innocent, so perfect”, but he continued: “If a police officer is in a bad scuffle and he’s got somebody… you have to be careful.”
“With that being said, it would be, I think, a very good thing that generally speaking it should be ended,” he added.
The police officer who knelt on Mr Floyd’s neck has been sacked and charged with second-degree murder.
Pressure for US police reform
The President – who has faced criticism for his responses to the police brutality and outbreak of the protests against racism – said he wanted to “see really compassionate but strong law enforcement”, adding “toughness is sometimes the most compassionate”.
Interviewer Harris Faulkner asked Mr Trump to explain his tweet last month that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, which created lots of controversy and was censored by Twitter for glorifying violence, the president said: “When the looting starts, it oftentimes means there’s going to be… sure, there’s going to be death, there’s going to be killing. And, it’s a bad thing.”
The Justice in Policing Act was proposed by the opposition Democrats who control the House of Representatives but in order to pass, it must win the support of the Senate. Mr Trump’s Republican Party controls the Senate.
There is potential for the two parties to reach agreement on banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, like the one in the Breonna Taylor shooting.
Meanwhile, the city council in Minneapolis, where Mr Floyd died under police custody, passed a resolution on Friday to replace its police department with a community-led public safety system.
It comes days after the council voted to disband the police department.
The city council will begin a year-long process of engaging “with every willing community member in Minneapolis” to come up with a new public safety model, according to the resolution.
Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York has ordered police departments to undertake major reforms, in response to the demonstrations.
Mr Cuomo said he would stop financing local authorities that failed to adopt reforms addressing excess use of force and bias in their police departments by next April.
The Governor said he would sign an executive order for municipalities to “reinvent and modernize” their police departments to battle racism.
He told Reuters: “That should be done in every police agency in this country.”
Sitting alongside the governor at the news conference were Valerie Bell and Gwen Carr, the mothers of Sean Bell and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men who died in incidents with police.
Mr Garner died when a white police officer used a chokehold on him while making an arrest in 2014.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s re-election campaign rally is set to start again from Tulsa, Oklahoma on the date that African Americans celebrate the end of slavery. This will be his first rally for several months.
The rally will take place on 19 June, known as “Juneteenth”.
The Trump campaign said his Republican Party was proud of its role in ending slavery and winning the Civil War.
While not a federal holiday, it is celebrated widely by African Americans and Juneteenth is an annual commemoration of the end of slavery.
It celebrates the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved African Americans in Texas.
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