C^i Cy
VOLUME 96 - NUMBER 15
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2017
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS
Republican Attorney General wants return to tough
enforcement police policies; sets sights on African Americans
By Sadie Gurman
WASHINGTON (AP) - For
three decades, America got
tough on crime.
Police used aggressive tac
tics and arrest rates soared.
Small-time drug cases clogged
the courts. Vigorous gun pros
ecutions sent young men away
from their communities and to
faraway prisons for long terms.
But as crime rates dropped
since 2000, enforcement policies
changed. Even conservative law
makers sought to reduce manda
tory minimum sentences and to
lower prison populations, and
law enforcement shifted to new
models that emphasized com
munity partnerships over mass
arrests.
Attorney General Jeff Ses
sions often reflects fondly on
the tough enforcement strategies
of decades ago and sees today’s
comparatively low crime rates as
a sign they worked. He is prepar
ing to revive some of those prac
tices even as some involved in
criminal justice during that pe
riod have come to believe those
approaches went too far, for too
long.
Obama aides push back against
criticism of inaction on Syria
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS MEET WITH JEFF SESSIONS - (From left-right) Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the
National Urban League; Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and
The Leadership Conference Education Fund; Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund;
Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under the Law; and Melanie Camp
bell, the president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation hold a press conference following a meeting with
Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., in March 2017. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA)
Civil Rights Leaders Meet with
Attorney General Jeff Sessions
By Jesse J. Holland
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Obama administration officials
are pushing back against criticism of the former president, saying
they proposed similar airstrikes in Syria to the ones President Don
ald Trump ordered this week, but were stymied by a Republican-
controlled Congress reluctant to go along with the Democratic presi
dent’s plan.
This comes after Trump ordered the missile strikes against Syria
without getting congressional approval, determined to punish the
Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Trump laid part of the blame for the chemical attack on former
President Barack Obama, saying the deaths were a “consequence of
the past administration’s weakness and irresolution.”
Republicans, however, who controlled Congress then as they do
now, were adamant that Obama should not act without their approval,
Obama aides said. Trump also had called for Obama to get congres
sional approval before any attack on Syria.
“Once you put it in Congress’s hand, it became clear at that time
that they were not ready to assume responsibility,” said Dennis Ross,
a former Obama administration adviser on the Middle East. “But the
problem wasn’t that Congress wasn’t seen as lacking in responsibil
ity, it was that the president was seen as having drawn a 'red line’ and
when it came time to act on it, he didn’t and that had an impact on the
way the U.S. was seen in the aftermath.”
Obama aides took to Twitter and the airwaves this week to point
out what they called the hypocrisy from Republicans and from Trump
himself.
“Times change. In 13, Speaker asks Obama how: justification
comports with exclusive authority of Cong authorization’” tweeted
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under Obama.
Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for the Obama National Secu
rity Council, sent out Trump’s tweet demanding Obama get congres
sional approval. “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more
debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional
approval,” the businessman tweeted in 2013.
Now president, Trump ordered the missile strikes on April 7 with
out seeking approval from Congress. This followed Tuesday’s (Feb.
4) chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87
people, including 31 children. U.S. officials said they feel confident
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government was responsible.
The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in
central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that
dropped the chemicals had taken off.
In a statement issued the day of the chemical weapons attack,
Trump said, “President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a
'red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.”
Obama had threatened Assad with military action after an earlier
chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama
had declared the use of such weapons a “red line.” At the time, sev
eral American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch mis
siles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain
and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan.
He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed
to lead to the removal and elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons
stockpiles.
“We had been reckoning with this for five years and there aren’t
easy answers. And just to simply say, you know, 'the president put up
a red line and then didn’t act” is really insufficient in terms of making
policy,” Richard Stengel, former undersecretary of state for public
diplomacy, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
No matter how the United States got to its first assault against the
Assad government, what Trump does next is key, said Frederic C.
Hof, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the
Middle East. He served as special adviser for transition in Syria in
the Obama administration and was the special coordinator for region
al affairs in the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for
Middle East Peace.
(Continued On Page 3)
“In many ways with this
administration we are rolling
back,” said David Baugh, who
worked as a federal prosecutor
in the 1970s and 1980s before
becoming a defense lawyer in
Richmond, Virginia. “We are
implementing plans that have
been proven not to work.”
Sessions, who cut his teeth as
a federal prosecutor in Mobile,
Alabama, at the height of the
drug war, favors strict enforce
ment of drug laws and manda
tory minimum sentences. He
says a recent spike in violence
in some cities shows the need for
more aggressive work. The Jus
tice Department said there won’t
be a repeat of past problems.
“The field of criminal justice
has advanced leaps and bounds
in the past several decades,”
spokesman Ian Prior said. “It is
not our intention to simply jet
tison every lesson learned from
previous administrations.”
Sessions took another step
back from recent practices when
the Justice Department an
nounced last week that it might
back away from federal agree
ments that force cities to agree
to major policing overhauls. His
concern is that such deals might
conflict with his crime-fighting
agenda.
Consent decrees were a staple
of the Obama administration’s
By Lauren Victoria Burke
(NNPA Newswire
Contributor)
Earlier this month, leaders
from six civil rights groups met
with Attorney General Jeff Ses
sions at the Justice Department
to discuss a range of issues that
are critical to the Black commu
nity.
The meeting was attended by
Kristen Clarke, the president and
executive director of the Law
yers Committee for Civil Rights
under the Law; Sherrilyn Ifill,
the president and director-coun
sel ofthe NAACP Legal Defense
Fund; Marc Morial, the presi
dent and CEO of the National
Urban League; Melanie Camp
bell, the president and CEO of
the National Coalition on Black
Civic Participation; Reverend
Al Sharpton, the president of
the National Action Network;
and Wade Henderson, the presi
dent and CEO of the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human
Rights and The Leadership Con
ference Education Fund.
The leaders expressed their
concerns about the future of the
civil rights gains made under the
Obama Administration. They
also expressed concerns about
the recent rash of hate crimes,
the consent decree involving
Baltimore’s police department
and the impact that any poten
tial, “mythical” voting fraud in
vestigation could have on voters’
rights.
During an interview with Fox
News earlier this year, President
Donald Trump announced
efforts to change troubled de
partments, but Sessions has
said those agreements can un
fairly malign an entire police
force. He has advanced the un
proven theory that heavy
that Vice President Mike Pence
would lead a commission to in
vestigate allegations of voter
fraud.
ThinkProgress.org reported
that President Trump claimed
that he would have won the
popular vote if it were not for
three to five million illegal votes.
President Trump has never of
fered any evidence to support
this claim.
“I asked [Attorney General
Sessions] to counsel the presi
dent against the creation of such
a task force and a commission,
because that commission will be
seen to intimidate our communi
ties,” said Ifill. “In the absence of
any evidence of voter fraud, he
should be counseling the presi
dent away from such a course.
We don’t need an investigation
into something that doesn’t ex
ist.”
Ifill continued: “We should
not be crediting the fantasies of
this president at the cost of Afri
can Americans and Latinos feel
ing secure that they’re not being
intimidated from voting and par
ticipating in the process.”
According to the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York
University School of Law, a non-
partisan public policy and law
institute, “claims of voter fraud
are frequently used to justify
policies that do not solve the al
leged wrongs, but that could well
disenfranchise legitimate voters.
Overly restrictive identification
requirements for voters at the
polls—which address a sort of
voter fraud more rare than death
scrutiny of police in recent years
has made officers less aggres
sive, leading to a rise in crime in
Chicago and other cities.
It’s the latest worry for civil
rights activists fretting about a
by lightning —is only the most
prominent example.”
Ifill also noted that there were
a number of issues that Attorney
General Sessions “is not fully in
formed about,” including current
police reform efforts involving
consent decrees and some ongo
ing voting rights discrimination
cases.
“You have your hair trigger
reaction, you have your partisan
reaction, you have your, ‘I’ve
been against consent decrees
since forever’ reaction, and we
were saying, ‘That’s not good
enough. You’re the attorney gen
eral and you have to get your
hands around these issues,” said
Ifill. “You gotta listen. You gotta
study. You gotta look at facts and
you can’t just look at the parti
san talking points for the [issues]
that we are talking about.”
During the meeting that last
ed less than one hour, Henderson
said that the attorney general
did acknowledge his awareness
of the importance of the Civil
Rights Division of the Depart
ment of Justice.
At a press conference outside
of the Department of Justice af
ter the meeting, the civil rights
leaders said that they received
no clear commitments to address
the issues that they raised during
their meeting with the attorney
general.
“This was the first meet
ing, not the last meeting,” said
Clarke. “There are a range of is
sues that are important to all of
our organizations and we will
continue to bring pressure to
return to the kind of aggressive
policing that grew out of the
drug war, when officers were en
couraged to make large numbers
of stops, searches and arrests,
(Continued On Page 3)
bear on this Justice Depart
ment to make sure that they are
doing their job to enforce civil
rights laws.”
Clarke noted that the group
did not discuss the memo penned
by Attorney General Sessions
that overturned an Obama Ad
ministration directive that called
for reducing the use of private
prisons to house federal inmates.
Clarke called the decision
“incredibly problematic” and
said that it reversed years of
work and effort on the bipartisan
justice reform.
“It was an important decision
that came at the end of Attorney
General Lynch’s tenure that Mr.
Sessions has reversed and that
we are all very, very concerned
about,” said Clarke.
Sharpton said that the civil
rights leaders did not want “a
photo-op” meeting with Ses
sions and indicated that they had
no plans to back off of their posi
tions.
“We give him credit for having
that meeting, but we were not look
ing for commitments, we were look
ing for him to hear from us that no
protests that we were involved in
and that we wanted to be clear that
we expected him to uphold the law,”
said Sharpton.
Sharpton continued: “We were
not hostile, but we showed holy in
dignation and we’ll continue to be
indignant about any threats to our
civil rights.”
Lauren Victoria Burke is apoliti
cal analyst who speaks on politics
and African American leadership.
She is also a frequent contributor to,
the NNPA Newswire and BlackPres-
sUSA.com. Freddie Allen contrib
uted to this report.
NCC
NeH