These grants, which total nearly $140 million, will go to 183 law enforcement agencies, and allow them to fund over 1,000 new law enforcement positions and to fund other initiatives to build legitimacy and trust in communities, to address gun violence and other violent crimes, and to combat hate and domestic extremism, and to enhance the response to people in crisis. Everything has an acronym it’s called COPS program. I mean, everything in between.Īnd so, just this morning, the Department of Justice released a significant new investment in community policing through Community Oriented Policing Services. We ask them to be everything from counselors to law enforcement officers to the folks who have to take down the bad guy. Think about what we ask a police officer. That’s why my administration is investing in the community policing we know works, and the training and partnership that law enforcement and our communities have requested, and in community-based programs and interventions that can stop violence before it starts. I emphasize “bipartisan” bills.īefore I turn to the specifics of the bills, I want to say that when you look at what our communities need and what our law enforcement is being asked to do, it’s going to require more resources, not fewer resources. I want to thank everyone who worked together to pass each of these bipartisan bills. Well, Vice President Harris, Attorney General Garland, and Secretary Mayorkas, I want to thank you for your leadership.Īnd in a moment, I’ll be signing into law three bills that extend critical support to our law enforcement and first responders and the communities they serve.
(Laughs.) They should be standing for Pat. I keep forgetting that - I see all my Senate colleagues, and I’m so unaccustomed to them standing up for me that I - (laughter) - no reason why they should either. We were doing a little bit of a check-in with - making sure everybody is clear to come in, in terms of health.Īnyway, thank you all for being here. Sorry to keep you waiting for a few minutes. “My goal is to look for a female that is qualified,” Johnson said.THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everyone. Johnson said she would eventually endorse a successor for her safely Democratic seat, but not yet. Her retirement is likely to attract a rush of hopeful successors.
I will retire,” Johnson said.Īlthough Democrats are in danger of losing their House majority next year, Johnson would have been able to keep winning her district under new congressional maps signed by Republican Gov. But she said plans to keep a promise she made after winning the Democratic primary in March that her current term would be her last. “There is a good reason I should stay: I am a personal friend to the president, I have gained some respect and influence,” Johnson said during her announcement. She grew up in the segregated South and was elected in 1992 to Congress, where she became the first Black woman to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Johnson, 85, is a political fixture in her hometown of Dallas, where early in her career she became the first Black woman to serve the city in the state Senate since Reconstruction. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a trailblazing Black Democrat in Texas who has served in Congress for nearly 30 years, announced Saturday that she will not seek reelection next year.