Obama Did Reform Criminal Justice

Acording to Samuel Walker, an expert on policing policy and a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Trump’s claim is “absolutely wrong.”

CNN stated that “Obama and his administration took multiple significant steps to try to improve policing,” adding, “Obama's Department of Justice initiated ‘pattern-or-practice’ investigations into troubled police departments and secured court-enforceable consent decrees or other agreements in which cities including Baltimore, Cleveland, Portland and Miami formally agreed to make changes.”

In addition, Obama “launched a task force that made dozens of recommendations for change, secured federal funding for departments to purchase body cameras, and limited the transfer of surplus military gear to police.”

The Department of Justice also reported “since 2009, the Civil Rights Division has opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies and is currently enforcing 19 agreements, including 14 consent decrees and one post-judgment order.”

And with regards to the broader issue of criminal justice reform, “the Obama administration did try to get a criminal justice reform bill passed; a bipartisan bill failed in the Senate during the 2016 presidential election, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided not to bring it up for a vote.”