Trump police reform plan to target bad cops, easing tensions and mental health help

President Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday to track bad police, de-escalate conflicts with suspects, and improve mental health care for suspects by pairing social workers with police officers responding to calls, senior administration officials said Monday.

The Trump administration is working to finalize the executive order intended to establish best practices for law enforcement to improve guidance on hiring, training, and strategies for community policing as a way to address concerns raised by protesters nationwide following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Senior administration officials told reporters on background Monday that the order is not intended to punish or defund police, as some protesters have called for, but rather to incentivize state and local police forces to improve their skills in de-escalating interactions with suspects.

The order will also seek to improve monitoring of officers with repeated complaints of excessive force on their records to make it harder for them to job-hop to another department with their background unnoticed. The executive order will also seek to address suspects struggling with mental health, homelessness, and addiction by pairing social workers with responding officers.

"Once this is signed, the attorney general will then take the principles to the president and work to turn that into specific guidance, and then also Congress is going to need to look at [it], and we'll call on them to work on different areas and see if they can both provide funding and legislation to put some of these programs into place," a senior administration official told Just the News.

"We’re going to have some solutions," Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday when pressed for details about the executive order. "We need some great people in our police departments," he continued. "The overall goal is we want law and order ... It's about justice also. It's about safety. I think this will be very comprehensive." 

Speaking on efforts to pass police reforms in Congress, the president said, “Maybe they can get something passed, maybe they can't."

Trump on Monday was asked about the fatal shooting by police of an African-American man at an Atlanta Wendy's restaurant.  

"I thought it was a terrible situation," Trump said. "To me it was very disturbing."