The Dystopian Police State the Trump Administration Wants

By Phillip Atiba Goff, The New York Times

21 October 20

Law enforcement’s problems could get even worse.

ince this spring, when Americans watched George Floyd take his last breaths as a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck, we’ve borne witness to the worst that this country’s criminal justice system has to offer: continued extrajudicial killings, failure to hold officers accountable and state-sponsored violence against those standing up for justice.

It’s hard to imagine that things could get worse. But draft recommendations from a Trump-appointed policing commission prove that they could.

In October 2019, President Trump signed an executive order to establish a commission that Attorney General William P. Barr explained was intended to make the police “trusted and effective guardians of our communities.” From the beginning, its membership — made up entirely of law enforcement — spoke volumes about its intentions. A lawsuit brought by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued that the commission makeup violated federal law and this month, a federal judge agreed. He ordered the commission to halt its proceedings, including the release of the report, until it can meet the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s requirement that demands “fairly balanced” viewpoints aired in publicly noticed, open meetings.

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