{"id":303522,"date":"2017-04-13T09:10:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T08:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-war-on-urban-carnage-was-a-ruse\/"},"modified":"2017-04-13T09:10:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T08:10:25","slug":"trumps-war-on-urban-carnage-was-a-ruse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-war-on-urban-carnage-was-a-ruse\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s War on Urban \u2018Carnage\u2019 Was a Ruse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One of President Trump\u2019s favorite themes is what he calls “American carnage” \u2014 typified by “the violence” and “the gangs.”<\/p>\n

To that end, he’s repeatedly highlighted<\/a> the violence in Chicago. A few days after he was inaugurated, he even issued this warning via Twitter<\/a>: “If Chicago doesn\u2019t fix the horrible \u2018carnage\u2019 going on\u2026 I will send in the Feds!”<\/p>\n

Trump, a vocal supporter of stop-and-frisk<\/a>, additionally pledged<\/a> that his administration will “stop the gangs and the violence” and “stop the drugs from pouring into our communities” by empowering police offers.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Chicago is facing a uniquely violent moment<\/a> in its history: The city witnessed 762 murders and 4,331 shooting victims in 2016 \u2014 more than in New York and Los Angeles combined<\/a>. The homicide rate was the highest it\u2019s been since 1996.<\/p>\n

Yet the police are a critical component of this violence. A 2016 Justice Department investigation revealed scores of abuses<\/a> by Chicago police, from racial discrimination to witness intimidation to endangering civilians.<\/p>\n

\"police-brutality-reform\"<\/p>\n

(Photo: Wikipedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In a particularly memorable anecdote from 2013, an off-duty Chicago cop watched a man enter a vacant building. Deeming him suspicious, the officer pursued the man. When confronted, the man produced a shiny object, prompting the officer to fire his weapon, killing the man\u00a0on the spot.<\/p>\n

As for the shiny object, it wasn\u2019t a gun: It was the man\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n

Despite not waiting for backup and initiating a deadly confrontation, the officer was put back on the beat. Last November, the same cop killed another man he claimed had brandished a gun. No gun was found.<\/p>\n

Under the Obama administration, the federal government played a key role in exposing abuses like these in scores of local police departments.<\/p>\n

Yet Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has promised to “pull back on<\/a>” suits against police departments over civil rights violations. He recently ordered a review<\/a> of all reform arrangements the Department of Justice reached with local police under Obama, which could imperil programs that have been shown to produce enduring positive changes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why? “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” Sessions insists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this exposes Trump\u2019s promises to curb violence in America’s cities to be what many suspected<\/a> all along: a meaningless ruse. After all, when it comes to civil rights, he’s actually pulling the feds out<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Need more evidence? The administration has also proposed depriving the Department of Justice of over $1 billion<\/a> in funding, including major cuts to the Civil Rights Division<\/a>, which is in charge of managing police reform. And it’s attempting to vacate another reform arrangement with the Baltimore Police Department<\/a>, where the last administration found many similar civil rights abuses.<\/p>\n

It’s no great surprise that choosing an attorney general like Sessions, another stop-and-frisk proponent <\/a>who’s complained that civil rights protections undermine police officers<\/a>, spelled trouble for police reform. Now trouble has come \u2014 and it seems like more is on its way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of President Trump\u2019s favorite themes is what he calls “American carnage” \u2014 typified by “the violence” and “the gangs.” To that end, he’s repeatedly highlighted the violence in Chicago. A few days after he was inaugurated, he even issued this warning via Twitter: “If Chicago doesn\u2019t fix the horrible \u2018carnage\u2019 going on\u2026 I will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":303523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}