U.S. Attorney General to Allow Police Depts to Keep the Number of Citizens they Kill a Secret
Washington,
DC – In complete reversal of course from the stated position of her
predecessor, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the federal government
shouldn’t mandate police departments to report lethal shootings of
civilians.Lynch’s statements diverge drastically from her predecessor Eric Holder, who left the position in April of this year. Former Attorney General Holder is on record calling the lack of official data on police shootings “unacceptable,” with him labeling the collection of this data a “first step” in improving ever deteriorating police-community relations.
Back in January, Holder said,
“I’ve heard from a number of people who have called on policymakers to ensure better record-keeping on injuries and deaths that occur at the hands of police. I’ve also spoken with law enforcement leaders – including the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police – who have urged elected officials to consider strategies for collecting better data on officer fatalities. Today, my response to these legitimate concerns is simple: We need to do both.”The about-face by Lynch reveals an utter contempt for the civil rights of American citizens while pandering to the Fraternal Order of Police’s default position.
“One of the things we are focusing on at the Department of Justice is not trying to reach down from Washington and dictate to every local department how they should handle the minutia of record keeping, but we are stressing to them that these records must be kept,” she said at the Washington Ideas Forum, hosted by AtlanticLIVE and the Aspen Institute.Lynch’s implication that she is attempting to uphold state’s rights is a completely ridiculous notion that has absolutely no validity in reality. Furthermore, “stressing how records must be kept” is akin to asking really nicely, as the records are given to the Department of Justice, by police agencies, on a completely voluntary basis currently.
Read More Here
