(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden and New York Mayor Eric Adams will promote increased federal support for police and a crackdown on illegal guns to fight crime on Thursday, policies that risk aggravating a divide with liberals who seek an overhaul of U.S. law enforcement.
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Adams, who took office last month, shares Biden’s opposition to the “defund the police” movement promoted by some progressives in the Democratic Party. They support putting more cops on the street with better training in order to cut down on violence in encounters with civilians — policies that some liberals say don’t go far enough to prevent killings by police.
There were more than 1,100 such deaths in the U.S. last year, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit data project.
Biden, who will travel to New York to meet with Adams as well as Governor Kathy Hochul, has frequently sought to show support for police. During a visit to the site of a collapsed bridge in Pittsburgh last Friday, he remarked to officers at the scene that “we’re going to give you guys more money.”
Senior administration officials told reporters in a briefing before Biden’s trip that he would press Congress to spend $300 million more in fiscal 2023 to hire police and $200 million more for community violence prevention programs.
“They’re both presenting themselves as middle-of-the-road reformers when it comes to criminal justice and public safety,” said Scott Roberts, senior…
