Senior law enforcement officials urge Trump to scrap 'ineffective' crime plan

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/trump-crime-law-enforcement-criticism

Jon Swaine
Feb. 10, 2017

Dozens of senior law enforcement officials have urged Donald Trump to abandon his draconian crackdown on crime and to instead revive efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

In a report co-written by David Brown, the former Dallas police chief widely praised for his response to the killing of five officers last year, the officials said Trump should rethink his blunt law-and-order plans.
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“Decades of experience have convinced us of a sobering reality: today’s crime policies, which too often rely only on jail and prison, are simply ineffective in preserving public safety,” they said.

The report was published on Friday by Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, a coalition of more than 200 current and former senior police officers and prosecutors.

They criticized an executive order on crime fighting signed by Trump on Thursday, saying that the president had encouraged police officers to focus on general lawbreaking rather than to target violent crime.

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At the same time, Brown and his co-author, former New Orleans police chief Ronal Serpas, said that Trump should help bolster “community policing”, a philosophy that focuses on strengthening relations between officers and residents rather than promoting confrontation.

They expressed alarm about reports that the Trump administration intends to close the justice department’s community oriented policing services (Cops) office, which works on improving relations between police and residents and has recently reviewed embattled departments in places such as San Francisco and St Louis.

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