Donald Trump’s vow to offer police officers “immunity from prosecution” if re-elected to the White House signals a threat to Black and brown communities, legal experts and advocates warn.

The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly vowed to permit law enforcement to do their job without restrictions, a stark contrast to the 2020 movement for Black lives that included mass protests demanding police accountability in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and other police activities -involved deaths.

“We will give power back to our police,” Trump told supporters at a rally last week in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “We will provide them with immunity from prosecution.” The twice-impeached and four-time-impeached former president made an analogous statement in December 2023 at a campaign event in Iowa, where he promised to “compensate” police officers to guard them from prosecutorial harm.

“If the police are not held criminally accountable for criminal behavior, then the fox is guarding the hen house and we are the chickens and we live in a country that is becoming a police state,” said Maya Wiley, a lawyer and civil rights attorney who served as counsel to the New York Commission Civilian Complaint Review Board, the police watchdog.

But she noted that Trump wouldn’t have the power he claims if he were elected president in November. She explained: “The president of the United States does not have the authority to tell states that they must exempt state-controlled police forces from crime.”

But critics warn that the US president’s support for police “immunity” doesn’t bode well for already vulnerable communities which were over-policed ​​and mistreated in the past.

“Trump sees the darkest periods of police brutality and mass incarceration as hallmarks of the ‘good old days,’ and he intends to bring them back,” said Markus Batchelor, national political director at People For the American Way. “He has made clear his preference for state violence to silence dissent or achieve his political goals.”

Batchelor highlighted Trump’s tendency to condone police brutality and violence, including encouraging “violence at his rallies,” ordering the military to “assault peaceful protesters,” and inciting the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

While some police officers have been convicted lately of abusing or murdering unarmed, innocent Black victims — most notably six Mississippi state troopers who abused and brutally tortured two Black men in January 2023 — legal experts emphasize that law enforcement has already significant legal knowledge of security.

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“We still live in a system that does not sufficiently hold police accountable,” said Wiley, a former New York City mayoral candidate who has advocated for police reform. “As a nation, we need to do a lot more work and a lot more confronting what we all wanted to confront in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.”

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill intended to deal with police accountability, failed in the U.S. Congress in 2021 because of this of Republican lawmakers’ refusal to budge on reforming special legal protections for police officers, often called qualified immunity. Given the Republican Party’s lack of appetite, Democrats might want to regain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, maintain control of the U.S. Senate and re-elect President Joe Biden to have any real likelihood at federal police reform.

Despite the failure of the Floyd bill in Congress, Biden has taken executive actions to deal with police accountability, including making a nationwide database to record police misconduct, banning chokeholds and limiting no-knock warrants. However, the president’s actions are only enforceable against federal law enforcement agencies.

The Justice Department under Biden has filled gaps at the state and native levels by opening investigations into misconduct, called pattern or practice investigations. Since Biden took office, the Department of Justice has opened 11 such investigations into police departments, including the Minneapolis Police Department (responsible for Floyd’s murder), the Louisville Metro Police Department, the Louisiana State Police and the Memphis Police Department, following the brutal death of Tyre Nichols in 2023

Criminal justice advocates fear Trump will undermine the Justice Department’s work to carry police accountable. Especially given Trump’s vow to order a historically independent agency to prosecute his political enemies if re-elected, in addition to proposals for the next Republican president to interchange profession federal employees with political appointees.

“He would absolutely shut down (the investigation),” Blake said. “He is a man who claims that he himself should be above punishment. Why on earth would we believe he would want larger local investigations?”

Wiley recalled that while in office, Trump’s Justice Department, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, “withheld police oversight and types of reporting on patterns and practices and systemic police misconduct across departments.”

She said Trump “wants to be authoritarian” and every part he has proposed regarding law enforcement suggests he “wants to be a monarch” reasonably than a president who “will protect the constitutional limits of government.”

“Donald Trump is the same racist who entered public life by falsely accusing the Central Park Five and pushing for stop-and-frisk during his time in the Oval Office,” said Jasmine Harris, the campaign’s black media director. “In 2020, when the rest of the nation was broken and rallied to demand justice for George Floyd’s family, Donald Trump questioned his humanity.”

In 2020, the names of Confederate generals were faraway from the titles of two Virginia schools. On May 10, the varsity board voted to restore those names to the colleges.

According to , school board members in Shenandoah County, Virginia, decided by a 5-to-1 majority restore the names of two schools that previously commemorated Confederate leaders. The move got here after a gathering on May 9 between individuals with different views.

The Shenandoah County School Board renamed Stonewall Jackson High School, originally named for Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Ashby Lee Elementary School, named for Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby, to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School respectively. The name change was intended to condemn racism and reaffirm the district’s “commitment to an inclusive school environment,” it claims documents of the varsity authorities.

Shenandoah County Public Schools, with an enrollment of greater than 5,600 students, is roughly 75% white, 18% Latino and three% black.

At last month’s meeting, six current board members, none of whom served on the board in 2020, took issue with the name change from 2020. They said the name change to “badly done” was done in a rush and didn’t require input public. Board member Gloria E. Carlineo said it “undermined” confidence in the varsity board.

“Therefore, what matters most to me is whether or not we, as a democratic nation of laws, select to ignore the choice made by a government body that took advantage of the Covid-19 tragedy, or whether we correct an inappropriate motion that has deeply divided our community. I select the latter,” Carlineo said before the vote.

Sarah Kohrs, the mother of two students, and other parents and residents disagreed with the names being reinstated and were frustrated that it was being considered.

“It’s very frustrating that four years have passed since this event and there’s still a small portion of the community that just doesn’t want to move on,” Kohrs said.

She said attention needs to be focused on what students want and want to achieve success, reminiscent of fixing leaking roofs, publicizing track meets or having enough college letters with current school names.

The estimated cost to restore the names can be greater than $304,000 district documents.

Kohrs prefers that the funds be used for more essential things for college students, reminiscent of fixing leaky roofs and publicizing the track events.

“We still don’t even have all of our sports equipment after the 2020 name change. We still use the old picket fences, sometimes with the name Stonewall,” Kohrs said.

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A Florida mother caught on video throwing her adopted 4-year-old son right into a swimming pool together with his hands tied behind his back has now been charged with the boy’s murder.

Detectives arrested Patricia Saintizaire, 36, and charged her with first-degree murder, child abuse and witness tampering in reference to the death of four-year-old Bryan Boyer, whom she adopted from Haiti last yr.

Bryan died last week after being hospitalized for serious injuries related to abdominal bleeding that failed to heal during surgery.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office released a timeline of the events leading to his death.

On May 1, investigators said the boy returned home from school “happy and acting normally, with no injuries.” Surveillance videos from his school and bus, in addition to interviews with people he got here into contact with, confirmed his physical and emotional condition that day.

His 16-year-old brother, who was also adopted from Haiti, he told detectives he didn’t see or hear anything happening to his younger brother because he went to one other room after Bryan returned from school.

After two hours, Saintizaire told him to bring Bryan some food. He stated that Bryan couldn’t walk and had difficulty sitting up on his own. The affidavit says Bryan also vomited thrice and started “visibly shaking.”

Saintizaire said he was “faking it,” but Bryan became unresponsive. His older brother tried to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but Saintizaire ultimately decided to take him to the hospital.

Bryan was first hospitalized in Davenport, but his wounds were so severe that he had to be airlifted to one other hospital in Orlando, where he died.

Hospital staff notified deputies on May 2 that the kid had died under suspicious circumstances. On May 3, his body was transported to the forensic medicine facility for an autopsy.

The medical expert found scars on Bryan’s back, in addition to fresh scars that had developed while he was living in America, including a deep laceration brought on by targeted blunt force trauma.

Bryan also suffered liver damage that caused his health to rapidly decline. Bruises were also found on his legs and arms.

The medical expert determined that each one injuries were the results of sustained abuse and concluded that the 4-year-old died from assault/blunt force trauma. His manner of death was ruled a homicide.

“What we learned during this investigation is simply gut-wrenching,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference. published on Facebook. “It is beyond my wildest imagination that anyone could abuse a beautiful baby boy the way this child was abused and neglected.”

Saintizaire’s husband, Rene, told investigators that his wife followed the foundations of discipline at home, but Saintizaire repeatedly said that she never resorted to physical violence as a type of punishment.

However, during a forensic examination of Saintizaire’s phone, detectives found two home surveillance videos showing him actively hitting Bryan with an unknown object while he lay motionless on the ground.

“We have another video clip of him lying face down on the floor and she’s slapping him on the back and he’s not even resisting it. It’s like a normal occurrence.”

Another video clip shows Saintizaire throwing him into the pool while his hands are tied.

“He’s dead because she beat him to death,” Judd said.

When questioned, Bryan’s older brother initially denied being a victim of violence or witnessing violence. After being placed in Child Services custody, he admitted that his mother told him “not to say anything so I wouldn’t get in trouble” and threatened to kill him with a gun.

Rene and Patricia Saintizaire adopted Bryan in April 2023 when he was 3 years old. Rene Saintizaire was at work when Bryan died and no charges have been filed against him presently.