Joe Biden Had Close Ties With Police Leaders Will They Help Him Now

His proposed solution to addressing both urgent calls for police reform and animosity from law enforcement toward Democrats is one he’s long relied on: He’ll just get everyone in the same room. Bill Johnson knew, before he reached out to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign last spring, that things had changed between the former vice president and the nation’s police unions. A once-close alliance had frayed amid clashes over police brutality and racism in the justice system. Still, Mr. Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, invited Mr. Biden to address the group as it weighed its 2020 endorsement. For weeks, the campaign was politely noncommittal, Mr. Johnson said. Finally, he recalled, on the day NAPO was deciding its endorsement, he heard from a campaign aide asking if there was still time to send a message. “Not to be a jerk, but we were literally starting the meeting,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s kind of a little late.”The police federation, which twice endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket and stayed neutral in 2016, backed President Trump in July. Soon after, its president told the Republican convention that Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris were “the most radical anti-police ticket in history.”That attack marked a low point in a political relationship that had endured for most of Mr. Biden’s career. If elected, Mr. Biden would bring to the White House a long career’s worth of relationships with police chiefs, union leaders and policy experts that is unmatched by any other major figure in the Democratic Party, according to more than a dozen current and former law-enforcement officials who have worked with Mr. Biden in various capacities. During a late-summer speech in Pittsburgh, Mr. Biden pledged to draw both racial-justice activists and police leaders “to the table” to forge durable solutions.“I have worked with police in this country for many years,” Mr. Biden said. “I know most cops are good, decent people. I know how they risk their lives every time they put that shield on.”Yet the 2020 election has also underscored the difficulty Mr. Biden may have in achieving that goal. He is presenting himself as both a criminal-justice reformer and a friend to diligent police officers, a critic of racism and rioting alike. But Mr. Biden has seen his formal support from prominent law-enforcement groups disintegrate as those organizations closed ranks against reform legislation. They have objected to Mr. Biden’s rhetoric about “systemic racism” in policing and to his vows to regulate police agencies with federal power, even as reformers on the left press Mr. Biden to take up far bolder changes. Some of Mr. Biden’s colleagues from the Obama administration, including Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, have worked to organize law-enforcement backing for Mr. All data is taken from the source: http://nytimes.com Article Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us... #biden #newsroom #newsgraphics #newstvlive #newsday #upnews #newsfortnite

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