{"id":8682,"date":"2015-08-15T08:34:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T15:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=8682"},"modified":"2015-08-15T08:34:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T15:34:03","slug":"presidential-weekly-address-continuing-work-to-improve-community-policing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=8682","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Weekly Address: Continuing Work to Improve Community Policing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Martha&#8217;s Vineyard, MA&#8230; Hi everybody.   It\u2019s now been a year since the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  His death\u2014along with the events in Cleveland, Staten Island, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and other communities\u2014sparked protests and soul searching all across our country.  Over the past year, we\u2019ve come to see, more clearly than ever, the frustration in many communities of color and the feeling that our laws can be applied unevenly.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ed-_KJ4fE0g\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After Ferguson, I said that we had to face these issues squarely.  I convened a task force on community policing to find commonsense steps that can help us drive down crime and build up trust and cooperation between communities and police, who put their lives on the line every single day to help keep us safe.  And I\u2019ve met personally with rank and file officers to hear their ideas.<\/p>\n<p>In May, this task force made up of police officers, activists and academics proposed 59 recommendations \u2013 everything from how we can make better use of data and technology, to how we train police officers, to how law enforcement engages with our schools.  And we\u2019ve been working with communities across America to put these ideas into action.<\/p>\n<p>Dozens of police departments are now sharing more data with the public, including on citations, stops and searches, and shootings involving law enforcement.  We\u2019ve brought together leaders from across the country to explore alternatives to incarceration.  The Justice Department has begun pilot programs to help police use body cameras and collect data on the use of force.  This fall, the department will award more than $160 million in grants to support law enforcement and community organizations that are working to improve policing.  And all across the country \u2013 from states like Illinois and Ohio, to cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and Nashville \u2013 local leaders are working to implement the task force recommendations in a way that works for their communities.<\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019ve made progress.  And we\u2019ll keep at it.  But let\u2019s be clear: the issues raised over the past year aren\u2019t new, and they won\u2019t be solved by policing alone.  We simply can\u2019t ask our police to contain and control issues that the rest of us aren\u2019t willing to address\u2014as a society.  That starts with reforming a criminal justice system that too often is a pipeline from inadequate schools to overcrowded jails, wreaking havoc on communities and families all across the country. So we need Congress to reform our federal sentencing laws for non-violent drug offenders.  We need to keep working to help more prisoners take steps to turn their lives around so they can contribute to their communities after they\u2019ve served their time.<\/p>\n<p>More broadly, we need to truly invest in our children and our communities so that more young people see a better path for their lives.  That means investing in early childhood education, job training, pathways to college.  It means dealing honestly with issues of race, poverty, and class that leave too many communities feeling isolated and segregated from greater opportunity.  It means expanding that opportunity to every American willing to work for it, no matter what zip code they were born into.<\/p>\n<p>Because, in the end, that\u2019s always been the promise of America.  And that\u2019s what I\u2019ll keep working for every single day that I\u2019m President. Thanks everybody, and have a great weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martha&#8217;s Vineyard, MA&#8230; Hi everybody. It\u2019s now been a year since the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. His death\u2014along with the events in Cleveland, Staten Island, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and other communities\u2014sparked protests and soul searching all across our country. Over the past year, we\u2019ve come to see, more clearly than ever, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Fullscreen-capture-8152015-83146-AM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}