Trump to sign policing reform executive order - Will the cop unions react?

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President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order that will lay out several new initiatives focused on police reform, including the creation of national standards for use-of-force as well as tracking police misconduct, according to a civil rights lawyer who plans to be at the signing and testify before the Senate this week.

S. Lee Merritt, an attorney who represents a number of black families whose loved ones — including Ahmaud Arbery and Botham Jean — have been killed by police officers, shared the details of the plans with the PBS NewsHour on Sunday after speaking with White House officials. He told the NewsHour that he was told the president also plans to meet privately with a number of black families who have been affected by police violence on Tuesday.

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The president is expected to sign the executive order Tuesday during a Rose Garden event featuring Merritt and Attorney General William Barr, the lawyer said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the executive order.

According to Merritt, the executive order would have five key sections:

1. a statement acknowledging that some law enforcement officers have gravely misused their authority and have caused communities and particularly black communities to mistrust them;
2. an order to establish a national certification and credentialing system for law enforcement agencies;
3. an order to create a federal database to track officers accused of wrongdoing like excessive use-of-force;
4. a directive to the secretary of Health and Human Services to work on encouraging police departments to involve mental health officials when dealing with issues of mental health, homelessness, and addiction;
5. a directive to encourage Congress to pass legislation related to policing. (Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus introduced the Justice in Policing Act last week.)

"It's a step in the right direction," said Merritt, who also plans to meet with Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill and testify before the Senate on Tuesday. "It's too incremental to have, you know, sweeping impact. But it's things that we need to have done among the myriad of things that we need to address this crisis. It's not a cure. But it is a way to deal with the damage from the fallout."

As recently as Thursday, when he hosted a roundtable in Dallas, Trump supported the use of "force, but force with compassion," and dismissed what he described as "radical efforts" to "defund, dismantle, and disband the police," referring to the movement calling for reallocating law enforcement funding to social services.