President signs orders that include focus on protecting police and promises ‘new era of justice’ despite violent crime rates that remain near historic lows
Donald Trump has launched a sweeping law and order programme to crack down on “the menace of rising crime” and deliver on his promise to do more to protect the police.
As Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general in the Oval Office, the president also moved aggressively to smash international drug cartels and and set up a taskforce on crime reduction and public safety.
Trump, with Sessions at his side, ran a fiery election campaign that put an emphasis on protecting police, citing slogans such as “blue lives matter” rather than the victims of excessive use of police force, a focus of Black Lives Matter protests.
And after waiting more than three weeks to get his hardline attorney general in place, Trump moved swiftly to sign three executive orders which flesh out his dark inauguration day description of the “American carnage” with cities plagued by gang violence.
The orders direct the attorney general to “review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers”.
Grant funding programmes currently administered by the Department of Justice will also be examined, raising the prospect of a struggle over funding priorities – and the possibility of cuts for initiatives which do not directly support and protect police.
A new taskforce will report within a year with emphasis on identifying areas where the law needs to be strengthened, better strategies for fighting crime and evaluating crime statistics to see if they are adequate.
One of the orders focuses on drug cartels, human trafficking, corruption, cybercrime, fraud, intellectual property theft and money laundering. A working group will report within 120 days on the scale of organised international crime and its penetration into the US.
There will be a quarterly report on convictions policy to enhance cooperation for foreign counterparts and improve coordination between agencies.
The order calls for the attorney general to review relevant federal laws to determine ways to disrupt the activity of transnational criminal organisations, “including [how] provisions under the Immigration and Nationality Act, could be better enforced or amended to prevent foreign members of these organizations or their associates from obtaining entry into the United States and from exploiting the United States immigration system”.
Trump said on Thursday: “I’m signing three executive actions today designed to restore safety in America.”
One would “break the back of the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation and are destroying the blood of our youth”, he said. “A new era of justice begins and it begins right now.”
Trump added: “We face the menace of rising crime and the threat of deadly terror.”
