Biden approves measures against police abuse two years after the death of George Floyd

May 25, 2020 was a holiday throughout the United States.

Memorial Day, the day of the Fallen.

George Floyd planned to celebrate with a barbecue.

Instead, he suffocated to death under the pressure of police officer Derek Chauvin's knee after a store where he was a regular customer tried to teach him a lesson by calling the police for having paid a pack of $20 with a fake $20 bill. menthol cigarettes.

The video of his death, nine minutes of tragedy under construction, unleashed the largest wave of protests against racism in the United States since the days of Martin Luther King.

Two years later, relatives of George Floyd, civil rights defenders and law enforcement officers have an appointment at the White House this Wednesday.

At 4:00 p.m., Washington time, 10:00 p.m., Spanish peninsular time, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, will sign what his administration describes as “a historic executive order.”

The rule that, had it been in place two years ago, maybe — just maybe — would have prevented Floyd's death.

That police crime and the subsequent protests and riots in the last stretch of the mandate of the previous president, Donald Trump, became the subject of debate in the electoral campaign of the 2020 elections. Biden promised to reform the police if he became president.

He tried to reach the White House by promoting legal reform in Congress, but failed in the attempt by the Republican opposition.

The project was abandoned last September.

Now the part that does not need law rank is recovered.

It initially applies to 100,000 federal agents, but the Biden Administration will encourage it to be taken over by other police forces in exchange for subsidies.

The objective of the order is precisely to prevent police abuses with a reform of some procedures and greater control and surveillance of officers who commit excesses.

The idea is to limit the use of weapons and force to what is really necessary.

The order will limit the use of restraints like the one a police officer used to immobilize Lloyd by kneeling on his neck, causing him to drown while three other officers looked on.

Directs federal forces to adopt policies that prohibit chokeholds and neck restraints unless the use of deadly force is authorized.

The order will also put a stop to

limiting the entrances to homes without a previous call to the cases in which the call implies an imminent threat of violent response.

The new rule stems from Biden's admission that there is "systemic racism" in the United States.

“Police cannot fulfill their role in keeping communities safe without public trust in law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

Yet today there are places in America where the bonds of trust are frayed or broken.

To heal as a nation, we must recognize that deadly encounters with law enforcement have disproportionately involved black and brown people.

Faced with some criticism from police forces that the planned measures harm the fight against crime, Biden's thesis is just the opposite: "Increased trust makes police work more effective and, therefore, strengthens security. public.

Without that trust, victims don't ask for help.

The witnesses do not step forward.

The crimes remain unsolved.

Justice is not served."

A national database

The order creates a new national database on police misconduct, in which all federal law enforcement agencies must participate.

It will include convictions, terminations, license withdrawals, civil judgments, resignations and retirements while serious misconduct, complaints and disciplinary actions are investigated.

All federal agencies must use the database for personnel selection, which will be accessible to state and local bodies, who are encouraged to also feed its content.

The new rule also includes measures to improve the investigation and prosecution of criminal civil rights violations, to promote thorough investigation and preservation of evidence after incidents involving the use of deadly force or death. detainees and to generalize policies for the use of body-worn video cameras that mandate the activation of the same during arrests and searches and that provide for the rapid publication of the recordings after incidents involving serious bodily injury or death.

An act of mourning on the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd. Christian Monterrosa (AP)

One of the keys to the success of the new regulation is that stricter policies on the use of force are applied.

The rule requires at least the scale of the Department of Justice, which authorizes the use of force only when there appears to be no reasonably effective, safe and viable alternative;

and lethal force only when necessary.

In addition, it emphasizes de-escalation, the duty to intervene to stop excessive force and to provide medical assistance.

Among many other measures, law enforcement will be trained on implicit biases and biases and how to avoid inappropriate suspect profiling based on “race, ethnicity, nationality, limited English proficiency , religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity) or disability of the people, "explains the White House.

It is also intended to avoid those same biases in facial recognition technology, other biometric technologies and predictive algorithms.

Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who killed Floyd on May 25, 2020, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison last year.

One of the three officers attending the scene pleaded guilty last week to complicity in the murder.

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