Senate Republicans are already taking aim at a police reform executive order that President Joe Biden is expected to sign in the coming days, warning that the order would effectively defund state and local police departments.
Seven GOP senators, including Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, signed a letter to Biden on Friday that raised a series of concerns about the restrictions outlined in a leaked draft of the order.
“These hard-left policies are extremely ill-advised, dangerous to Americans, and would only further demoralize law enforcement,” the senators wrote. “We are baffled as to why this Administration would want to implement this EO, which is tantamount to defunding the police.”
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Among the objections raised by the Republicans was a ban on common equipment used by local law enforcement officers that, according to the draft of the order, contributes to the “militarization” of police forces.
If implemented as written, the order would prevent police departments from purchasing flash or stun grenades, which are nonlethal tools used by law enforcement to disorient suspects in dangerous situations. The order also bans armored cars, which police use to navigate in active shooting situations, almost all drones, and long-range acoustic devices.
The group of Republicans also took issue with the draft order’s enforcement structure of denying local police departments access to money from the Community Oriented Policing Services grant program and the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grant program if police departments don’t comply with many of the order’s provisions.
Those would include “supporting alternatives to arrest and incarceration” and implementing diversity recruiting and training programs.
The news of Biden’s expected implementation of the order, which could reportedly be as soon as next week, comes as Biden has faced growing pressure from activists to pursue liberal policies in the absence of legislative action.
Biden has turned his focus to voting reforms championed by the Left in recent weeks as well — despite lacking support even from members of his own party to change Senate rules so voting proposals can pass.
Congress has tried unsuccessfully to advance police reform in fits and starts since before Biden took office.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott led negotiations for the GOP, pushing legislation that banned chokeholds by federal law enforcement officers and mandated more reporting on police use of force nationwide, among a number of other reforms.
Senate Democrats blocked Scott’s bill in June 2020 with claims that the legislation did not go far enough in ensuring law enforcement accountability — although their move ensured no reforms of any kind became law.
Talks over police reforms continued after the failure of Scott’s bill, but Democratic lawmakers pulled the plug on negotiations after the South Carolina Republican stood firm against tying police funding to a range of reform requirements.
“I offered to introduce a bill that included our areas of compromise — a bill that activists and law enforcement alike could have supported,” Scott said in a statement in September when the talks broke down. “Despite having plenty of agreement, Democrats said no because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement.”
Biden’s likely effort, through his expected order, to withhold law enforcement grant funding from police forces that don’t comply with a list of new demands could revive charges that the White House has empowered the “defund the police” movement.
The White House has said repeatedly that Biden does not support defunding police. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday responded to questions about the draft executive order by arguing that Biden is actively fighting to secure more funding for police departments.
“Underfunding of some police departments and their need for additional resources, something the president has advocated for consistently through the course of his career, that’s something we know we need to take action on,” Psaki told reporters.
But critics have characterized similar proposals as attempts to deny funding to the police before.
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When reform talks fell apart in September, Scott said he opposed the idea of cutting police departments off from grants in some circumstances because doing so would amount to defunding the police.
The Biden administration requested a significant increase in COPS grant funding for fiscal year 2022 — asking for $537 million, up $300 million from the previous fiscal year.
While the White House is likely to tout that request as an effort to increase police funding, Republicans are likely to argue that the Biden administration is still effectively cutting police funding by tying the grants to liberal reforms that not all police departments may be willing or able to adopt.
