Timothy J. Lynch, University of Melbourne

Violence has erupted across several US cities after the death of a black man, George Floyd, who was shown on video gasping for breath as a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck. The unrest poses serious challenges for President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as each man readies his campaign for the November 3 election.

If the coronavirus had not already posed a threat to civil discourse in the US, the latest flashpoint in American racial politics makes this presidential campaign potentially one of the most incendiary in history.

COVID-19 and Minneapolis may very well form the nexus within which the 2020 campaign will unfold. Trump’s critics have assailed his handling of both and questioned whether he can effectively lead the country in a moment of crisis.

And yet, he may not be any more vulnerable heading into the election.

A presidency in crisis?

As the incumbent, Trump certainly faces the most immediate challenges. Not since Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war has a US president presided over the deaths of so many Americans from a single cause.

The Axis powers and COVID-19 are not analogous, but any presidency is judged by its capacity to respond to enemies like these. With pandemic deaths now surpassing 100,000, Trump’s fortunes will be inexorably tied to this staggering (and still rising) figure.

Worse, the Minneapolis protests are showing how an already precarious social fabric has been frayed by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Read more: Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for the coronavirus crisis. Will voters agree?

Americans have not come together to fight the virus. Rather, they have allowed a public health disaster to deepen divisions along racial, economic, sectional and ideological lines.

Trump has, of course, often sought to gain from such divisions. But the magnitude and severity of the twin crises he is now facing will make this very difficult. By numerous measures, his is a presidency in crisis.

And yet.

Trump, a ferocious campaigner, will try to find ways to use both tragedies to his advantage and, importantly, makes things worse for his challenger.

For starters, Trump did not cause coronavirus. And he will continue to insist that his great geo-strategic adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, did.

And his is not the first presidency to be marked by the conflagration of several US cities.

Before Minneapolis, Detroit (1967), Los Angeles (1992) and Ferguson, Missouri (2014) were all the scenes of angry protests and riots over racial tensions that still haven’t healed.

And in the 19th century, 750,000 Americans were killed in a civil war that was fought over whether the enslavement of African-Americans was constitutional.

Trump may not have healed racial tensions in the US during his presidency. But, like coronavirus, he did not cause them.

How Trump can blame Democrats for Minneapolis

Not unhappily for Trump, Minneapolis is a largely Democratic city in a reliably blue state. He will campaign now on the failure of Democratic state leaders to answer the needs of black voters.

Trump will claim that decades of Democratic policies in Minnesota – including the eight years of the Obama administration – have caused Minneapolis to be one of the most racially unequal cities in the nation.

In 2016, Trump

What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump?

He will repeat this mantra in the coming months.

It also certainly helps that his support among Republican voters has never wavered, no matter how shocking his behaviour.

He has enjoyed a stable 80% approval rating with GOP voters throughout the coronavirus crisis. This has helped keep his approval rating among all voters steady as the pandemic has worsened, hovering between 40 and 50%.

These are not terrible numbers. Yes, Trump’s leadership has contributed to a series of disasters. But if the polls are correct, he has so far avoided the kinds of catastrophe that could imperil his chances of re-election.

Read more: In Trump we trust: why continual disasters fail to shake the president's loyalists

Why this moment is challenging for Biden

Biden should be able to make a good case to the American people at this moment that he is the more effective leader.

But this has not yet been reflected in polls, most of which continue to give the Democrat only a lukewarm advantage over Trump in the election.

The other problem is that the Democratic party remains discordant. And Biden has not yet shown a capacity to heal it.

Read more: Third time's the charm for Joe Biden: now he has an election to win and a country to save

Race has also long been a source of division within Biden’s party. Southern Democrats, for instance, were the key agents of slavery in the 19th century and the segregation that followed it into the 20th.

After the 1960s, Democrats sought to make themselves the natural home of African-American voters as the Republican party courted disaffected white Southern voters. The Democrats largely succeeded on that front – the party routinely gets around 85-90% of black votes in presidential elections.

The challenge for Biden now is how to retain African-American loyalty to his party, while evading responsibility for the socio-economic failures of Democratic policies in cities like Minneapolis.

He is also a white northerner (from Delaware). Between 1964 and 2008, only three Democrats were elected president. All of them were southerners.

To compensate, Biden has had to rely on racial politics to separate himself from his primary challenger – Bernie Sanders struggled to channel black aspirations – and from Republicans. And this has, at times, caused him to court controversy.

In 2012,

Biden is far better than Trump on racial issues and should be able to use the current crises to present himself as a more natural “consoler-in-chief”, but instead, he has appeared somewhat flatfooted and derided for being racially patronising.

The opportunities COVID-19 and the Minneapolis unrest might afford his campaign remain elusive.

There is reason for hope

America enters the final months of the 2020 campaign in a state of despair and disrepair. The choice is between an opportunistic incumbent and a tin-eared challenger.

But the US has faced serious challenges before – and emerged stronger. Neither the civil war in the 19th century or the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th halted the extraordinary growth in power that followed both.

Moreover, the US constitution remains intact and federalism has undergone something of a rebirth since the start of the pandemic. And there is a new generation of younger, more diverse, national leaders being forged in the fire of crisis to help lead the recovery.

Timothy J. Lynch, Associate Professor in American Politics, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jack L. Rozdilsky, York University, Canada and Heriberto Urby, Jr., Western Illinois University

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, American cities are coping with strife and civil unrest comparable to 1968.

In an apparent attempt to divert attention from a lacklustre White House effort to counter the COVID-19 pandemic and a tone-deaf approach to racial injustice, President Donald Trump has entered into another of his many quagmires where he seems to have spoken first and contemplated later.

Despite Trump’s specious symbolic display involving clearing a park of protesters to pose to take photos in front of an empty church, the president’s words at his June 1 news conference were consequential.

He specifically named the Insurrection Act of 1807 as a possible remedy to the current crisis. Surprisingly, due to that obscure act, Trump may indeed have the power to send federal troops into states without a request from the governor, even as the Pentagon tries to distance itself from the threat.

Using military force domestically

In times of disaster, active-duty military troops can be ordered to perform actions to protect life, property and maintain order. In terms of U.S. federal legislation enabling the government to take action to respond to disaster, the Stafford Act authorizes the use of the military for disaster relief. In such cases, a state’s governor must make a request for the military to provide very specific support roles for disaster relief efforts.

However, in the American constitutional republic, there are direct limits on the support roles that the military can play in times of crisis.

Restrictions on the participation of the military in domestic law enforcement are interpreted through the Posse Comitatus Act. It’s been in force since 1878, when it was enacted as part of a backlash against the imposition of federal martial law in the former Confederate States during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

There are four statutory exceptions when the military can act in a domestic law enforcement capacity, in direct contradiction to the Posse Comitatus Act.

Three of the exceptions are based on enabling responses to contemporary threats to the United States, when only the federal government would be capable of mustering the resources necessary to respond to serious national security crises of grave concern.

Those situations pertain to fighting drug and transnational organized crime activities, assistance in the case of crimes involving nuclear material and emergency situations involving the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The Insurrection Act

The fourth exception is the Insurrection Act, which has had very little alteration since it was enacted on March 3, 1807.

The act permits the federal deployment of military force into the states to suppress insurrections and enforce federal law in three circumstances. These circumstances are clearly defined by the legislation.

Federal aid to state governments is the first circumstance that allows for federal military intervention to suppress an insurrection in a state, upon the request of that state’s governor or legislature.

During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, President George H.W. Bush deployed federal troops at the request of the California governor to quell civil uprisings in south-central L.A.

Another section of the act, entitled “Use of Militia and Armed Forces to Enforce Federal Authority” permits the president, on his own initiative, to suppress rebellion or enforce federal laws. If the president believes that …

“Unlawful obstructions, combinations, assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any States by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings …”

… then armed forces of the federal government can be deployed to the states.

The origins for the domestic use of troops are found in the Calling Forth Act of 1792, which allowed for President George Washington to send federal to troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion despite disagreements with the governor of Pennsylvania.

The Calling Forth Act was extended into the 1807 Insurrection Act as the militia acts of the 1790s that first delegated sweeping emergency powers to the president expired.

A section of the Insurrection Act entitled “Interference with States and Federal Law” allows for the president to take any measures necessary to suppress, in a state, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.

The 1957 deployment of federal troops by President Dwight Eisenhower to enforce school desegregation orders in Little Rock, Ark., was an example of the use of that provision.

A divider-in-chief

While Trump has stopped short of invoking the 1807 act to use the military to enforce laws domestically, he’s kept the option open, fomenting further unrest and division.

Rather than staging photo opportunities while awkwardly holding a Bible in Lafayette Square, Trump would have issued a formal proclamation calling on the insurgents to disperse if he’s serious about the application of the Insurrection Act.

Section 334 of the Insurrection Act states:

“Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”

In the event that Trump issues a formal proclamation to disperse, we can then assume that he and his legal team are going down the path of sending federal military forces to the states, with or without the request or permission of governors.

Words we have heard and actions we have witnessed are not those of a commander-in-chief, but a divider who is ill-informed about the appropriate methods and uses of emergency powers available to the executive branch. We dare not believe that the Insurrection Act of 1807 was intended to be a national call to war against the American people.

Jack L. Rozdilsky, Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Canada and Heriberto Urby, Jr., Assistant Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, Western Illinois University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In July of 2016, 32-year-old African-American Minnesota resident Philando Castile was driving his fiancée Diamond Reynolds and four-year-old daughter when he was stopped on the road by a St. Anthony officer, Jeronimo Yanez over a broken taillight.

Castile out of good fate informed the officer he had a license to carry a firearm, which he had on him. Yanez then asked to see his identification but when he attempted to retrieve it, Yanez fired seven bullets into the vehicle killing Castile. Yanez’s defense was that when Castile reached for his ID, he feared for his life believing he was reaching for his gun. Global citizens got to see a slumped Castile bleeding profusely from his gunshot wounds as his partner, Reynolds had the presence of mind to live stream the atrocity which had just happened.

The Black American community was hopeful that the Minnesota police officer would be charged for murder. There was talk Yanez faced a second-degree manslaughter charge which carried up to a 10-year prison term and a fine of $20,000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, when the trial ended on June 16, 2017, Yanez was found not guilty of second-

degree manslaughter by the majority white jury in addition to being acquitted of t

wo counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety.

Despite the wanton murder of Castile and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the hands of racist police officers, which led to nationwide protests, the officers got to walk free.

With about 1,000 police shootings recorded each year in the United States, the history shows that a great deal of officers who are involved in such deaths such as Castile’s have the charges dropped or are acquitted with settlements reached with the affected families.

For officers to act professionally in discharging their duties, some have called for such settlement fees to be deducted from their pensions, as well as, face charges without getting shielded.

Meanwhile, Philando Castile’s uncle Clarence Castile speaking to the BBC in the wake of George Floyd’s murder also in Minnesota noted he felt the life drained out of Floyd’s body physically and emotionally. He stated the American police’s continuous use of excessive force was unacceptable, adding looting was equally not the way to go.

Since Minnesota police officer Derek M. Chauvin used the dangerous police tactic of kneeling on Floyd’s neck and killing him in the process, there has been a demand for him to be charged with murder. There has been six nights of protests across American states, demanding accountability that this should not be business as usual.

Nearly 40 states are under curfew to contain protest marches which in some locations have turned violent. As anger and frustration spills onto American streets in this coronavirus season and with a recorded 40 million job losses, it does appear what will assuage the wrath of the people is for Chauvin to face a murder charge having gone through due process and for the three other offices who were on guard during the attack on Floyd also penalized beyond getting fired at their police station.

For as is known too well, the American judicial system and police union influence which freed Jeronimo Yanez could as well free Chauvin, despite video evidence. Time will tell.

Jill McCorkel, Villanova University

As protests against police violence and racism continue in cities throughout the U.S., the public is learning that several of the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville share a history of complaints by citizens of brutality or misconduct.

Decades of research on police shootings and brutality reveal that officers with a history of shooting civilians, for example, are much more likely to do so in the future compared to other officers.

A similar pattern holds for misconduct complaints. Officers who are the subject of previous civilian complaints – regardless of whether those complaints are for excessive force, verbal abuse or unlawful searches – pose a higher risk of engaging in serious misconduct in the future.

A study published in the American Economic Journal reviewed 50,000 allegations of officer misconduct in Chicago and found that officers with extensive complaint histories were disproportionately more likely to be named subjects in civil rights lawsuits with extensive claims and large settlement payouts.

In spite of this research, many law enforcement agencies not only fail to adequately investigate misconduct allegations, they rarely sustain citizen complaints. Disciplinary sanctions are few and reserved for the most egregious cases.

Complaints, lawsuits – but few consequences

Derek Chauvin, the ex-officer who has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for killing Floyd, is no stranger to situations in which deadly force has been deployed.

During a 2006 roadside stop, Chauvin was among six officers who, in just four seconds, fired 43 rounds into a truck driven by a man wanted for questioning in a domestic assault. The man, Wayne Reyes, who police said aimed a sawed-off shotgun at them, died at the scene. The police department never acknowledged which officers had fired their guns and a grand jury convened by prosecutors did not indict any of the officers.

Chauvin is also the subject of at least 18 separate misconduct complaints and was involved in two additional shooting incidents. According to The Associated Press, 16 of the complaints were “closed with no discipline” and two letters of reprimand were issued for Chauvin related to the other cases.

Tou Thao, one of three Minneapolis officers at the scene as Floyd pleaded for his life, is named in a 2017 civil rights lawsuit against the department. Lamar Ferguson, the plaintiff, said he was walking home with his pregnant girlfriend when Thao and another officer stopped him without cause, handcuffed him and proceeded to kick, punch and knee him with such force that his teeth shattered.

The case was settled by the city for US$25,000, with the officers and the city declaring no liability, but it is not known if Thao was disciplined by the department.

In Louisville, Kentucky, at least three of the officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor while serving a no-knock warrant at her home – allowing them to use a battering ram to open her door – had previously been sanctioned for violating department policies.

One of the officers, Brett Hankison, is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit alleging, according to news reports, harassing suspects and planting drugs on them. He has denied the charges in a response to the lawsuit.

Another officer in the Taylor case, Myles Cosgrove, was sued for excessive force in 2006 by a man whom he shot seven times in the course of a routine traffic stop. The judge dismissed the case. Cosgrove had been put on paid administrative leave as his role in the shooting was investigated by his department, and returned to the department after the investigation closed.

Patterns of misconduct and abuse

I am a scholar of law and the criminal justice system. In

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that across the nation fewer than one in 12 complaints of police misconduct result in any kind of disciplinary action.

And then there is the problem of “gypsy cops” – a derogatory ethnic slur used in law enforcement circles to refer to officers who are fired for serious misconduct from one department only to be rehired by another one.

Timothy Loehmann, the Cleveland officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, resigned before he was fired from his previous department after they deemed him unfit to serve. A grand jury did not indict Loehmann for the killing, but he was fired by the Cleveland Division of Police after they found he had not disclosed the reason for leaving his previous job.

In the largest study of police hiring, researchers concluded that rehired officers, who make up roughly 3% of the police force, present a serious threat to communities because of their propensity to re-offend, if they had engaged in misconduct before.

These officers, wrote the study’s authors, “are more likely … to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a ‘moral character violation.’”

The Newark model

The Obama administration’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended the creation of a national database to identify officers whose law enforcement licenses were revoked due to misconduct. The database that currently exists, the National Decertification Index, is limited, given state level variation in reporting requirements and decertification processes.

Analysts agree that this is a useful step, but it does not address underlying organizational and institutional sources of violence, discrimination and misconduct.

For example, in the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Department of Justice found that the department had a lengthy history of excessive force, unconstitutional stop and searches, racial discrimination and racial bias.

The report noted that the use of force was often punitive and retaliatory and that “the overwhelming majority of force – almost 90% – is used against African Americans.”

One promising solution might be the creation of independent civilian review boards that are able to conduct their own investigations and impose disciplinary measures.

In Newark, New Jersey, the board can issue subpoenas, hold hearings and investigate misconduct.

Research at the national level suggests that jurisdictions with citizen review boards uphold more excessive force complaints than jurisdictions that rely on internal mechanisms.

But historically, the work of civilian review boards has been undercut by limitations on resources and authority. Promising models, including the one in Newark, are frequently the target of lawsuits and harassment by police unions, who say that such boards undermine the police department’s internal disciplinary procedures.

In the case of civilian review board in the Newark, the board largely prevailed in the aftermath of the police union lawsuit. The court ruling restored the board’s ability to investigate police misconduct – but it made the board’s disciplinary recommendations nonbinding.

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Jill McCorkel, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.