So what’s next?

[Dill]

(06-05-2020, 09:18 AM)hollodero Wrote: I think hardly anyone blames Trump for police violence against blacks or for the rioting. Both are not his fault. The problem with Trump though is that he does nothing to calm the situation, and this is a failing in leadership that is not "just like Obama" really.

Obama or any reasonable POTUS really would not have teargassed protesters to clear the path to a photo opportunity. He would not have mused about sending the military to the states against those states' will. He would not have used a Wallace saying of when the looting starts the shooting starts. And then some. Trump is responsible for the escalatory (or at least distinctly not deescalatory) words and actions he chooses to handle this situation. And these deserve some critizism, or at least those that critisize them do not deserve to be compared to looters.

Well, he's responsible for a bit more than ignorant bluster after the fact.

Trump Killed Obama’s Police Reforms. Now He’s Getting What He Asked For.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/trumps-george-floyd-obama-protest-police-violence-kneeling.html

The last few years of the Obama administration were one of the most productive periods of criminal justice reform in American history. The Obama administration changed sentencing guidelines to reduce the disparity in the treatment of drug crimes that had disproportionately harmed black defendants. As part of an effort to inculcate a “guardian, not a warrior” mindset, it restricted the transfer of surplus military equipment to police departments. Most importantly, it formed consent decrees with more than a dozen police departments to force them to change their practices. . . .
[Trump] reversed them swiftly. ... Jeff Sessions, ended the restriction on transferring military equipment to police, reviewed all consent decrees struck by his predecessor, and then restricted their use going forward. “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” he insisted.

Minneapolis Police Union President Allegedly Wore a “White Power Patch” 
 and Made Racist Remarks https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/minneapolis-police-union-president-kroll-george-floyd-racism/

“The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” [police union president] Kroll told CBS Minnesota after speaking at the president’s rally last year. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around…he decided to let cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.” Before the rally, Kroll’s union sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts, which brought in close to $100,000, as a way to protest the mayor’s prohibition on officers wearing their uniform to political events.  . . . 

According to a [i]Star Tribune investigation, [Kroll] has been the subject of at least 20 internal-affairs complaints during his three decades there, though all but three were closed without discipline. As a young officer in 1994, he was suspended for five days for excessive force, according to a report by City Pages, but that decision was later reversed by the police chief. The next year, he fought a lawsuit that accused him of “beating, choking and kicking” a biracial 15-year-old boy while saying racial slurs, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported, but a federal jury cleared him of wrongdoing. In 2003, the department demoted him for three months for “code of ethics” violations.[/i]

(It certainly says something about the police culture in the Minn. dept. that someone like Kroll could be elected president of their union.)

PS Please don't show this post to Bfine. I have been keeping him in the dark about Trump's role in shaping police policy from the federal level down to local.