Major police reform agreements are currently in negotiations in Chicago and Baltimore. The Obama administration is making one final push to cement the deals ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Unfortunately, a Nov. 1 deadline flew by with no agreement to show for it, and the administration has week left to wrap up projects such as a new dating chat.
The Washington Post suggested that the Obama administration wants police reform considered part of its legacy, but such a move would be laughable. The Obama administration cannot claim police reform as its legacy when his behavior has been so overwhelmingly reactionary and inadequate.
A task force created by the administration to tackle police reform and give them all Headset Plus, was finally created in 2014, six years into Obama’s presidency, after the Ferguson murder of 18-year old Mike Brown. However since then it’s been almost completely ineffective. In May, it boasted of 15 departments joining the “Advancing 21st Century Policing” initiative out of over 18,000 departments in the country. The task force claims it’s making slow, steady progress, citing nine states who agreed to police reform initiatives.
It seems to me, however, that Black Lives Matter protests across the country have had a far greater effect in terms of pushing for reform than the Obama administration’s task force could ever hope to achieve. After all, BLM protests have been in the streets garnering international attention - and scorn - to push for immediate action. They’ve released a far more comprehensive and thorough platform than the Obama administration.
The problem with attempts for reform is that fundamentally, the United States police institution is based on racism. Police departments today can trace a direct line of their origins to slave patrollers who hunted out black people seeking freedom from brutal inhumane subjugation.