President Joe Biden on Friday will push cities to hire more cops and fund crime prevention programs amid a surge in violence across the U.S.
He also will brag about the $10 billion from the American Rescue Plan being used to prop up communities when he meets with mayors, police chiefs and local public officials at the White House.
In remarks in the Rose Garden, Biden will note the state and local leaders who are using American Rescue Plan funding for safety measures, and call on other state and local leaders to make similar investments quickly, the White House said.
Many cities – including New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles – have reported a surge in violence since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The timing of Biden’s remarks is tied to the summer season, when there has historically been more violent crime compared to winter months.
But crime and the federal response is expected to be a major issue in November’s election, which will determine which party controls Congress.
A senior administration official said Biden wants to call on communities to use these funds ‘now’ because ‘we are approaching another summer and want to stress the priority of using these dollars for public safety and violence prevention.’
‘President Biden believes that the surge in gun violence that has affected communities across the country over the last year and a half is unacceptable, and his administration is moving decisively to act with a whole-of-government approach as we enter the summer months when cities typically experience a spike in violence,’ the White House said.
Worry about crime and violence in the United States is at its highest level since 2016, an April Gallup poll shows, amid a surge in gun deaths in 2020.
Biden, whose overall approval rating is low, also gets low marks in his handling of crime. Only 36% approved of the job he was doing on that issue in a December ABC News/Ipsos poll.
The president, in his remarks, will push local officials to use a greater share of the $350 billion in state and local government funds that Democrats approved last year as part of a larger $1.9 trillion COVID relief package to fight violence.
Of that $350 billion, about $6.5 billion was allocated in 2021 by 300 localities and more than half of states, including $2 billion for crime prevention programs to ease the burden on police and $1 billion for bonuses to help recruit and retain public safety workers, the White House said.
While some progressive Democrats called for defunding police departments after a string of high-profile slayings of black men by white officers, Biden has stressed spending more on police.
Biden wants communities to ‘put more police officers on the beat – with the resources, training, and accountability they need to engage in effective community policing,’ the White House said.
Republican lawmakers have criticized Biden amid rising violent crime, even though the president has said he believes the police need the money.
‘The answer is not to defund the police,’ Biden said in his State of the Union address in March. ‘It´s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them.’
But Republicans are looking to make it a major issue in the midterm election, accusing Democrats of wanting to ‘defund the police.’
Among the officials meeting with Biden are the mayors and police chiefs of Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Missouri, and Tampa, Florida. The mayors of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Toledo, Ohio, will also attend, as will officials from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Mercer County, Pennsylvania.
FBI records released last September suggest that Biden inherited a violent crime problem.
In 2020, the year before Biden took office, homicides rose nearly 30% over the previous year, the largest one-year jump documented by the FBI. There were 21,570 killings, the highest since the early 1990s when homicides stayed above 23,000 a year.