Mayors, police chiefs and other local officials visited the White House on Friday to share with President Joe Biden how they are spending money from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, also known as the American Rescue Plan, on policing and public safety programs.


What You Need To Know

  • Mayors, police chiefs and other local officials visited the White House to share with President Joe Biden how they are spending money from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on policing and public safety programs

  • Biden highlighted some of these efforts during an event in the Rose Garden on Friday and urged cities to spend even more of their coronavirus relief money on public safety before the summer months

  • The 2021 relief package included $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments. That relief money could go to police departments

"I just met with this remarkable group of local officials and police chief standing alongside me here," Biden said at a Rose Garden ceremony following the closed-door meeting. "They want to talk about what they're doing to reduce violence and to keep our communities safe, and how more communities can follow their lead to reduce crime and ensure public safety as we as we head into the summer."

Biden encouraged communities to spend more on public safety and crime prevention before the summer months, which typically bring a spike in violent crime.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: to every governor, every mayor, every county official, the need is clear, my message is clear," the president continued. "It says spend this money now [...] use these funds we made available to prioritize public safety. Do it quickly before the summer when crime rates typically surge. Taking action today is going to save lives tomorrow. So use the money. Hire the police officers. Build up your emergency response systems. Invest in proven solutions." 

The Democratic president has been under pressure from Republicans and others to bring down violent crime across the country, one issue among many that could complicate his party's chances of retaining control of Congress in the November midterm elections.

Biden has announced a strategy to combat gun crimes, including steps to crack down on rogue gun dealers and slow the spread of untraceable ghost guns, privately made firearms without serial numbers.

"The bottom line is this: across the board, we're making sure that communities have the resources available to them that they've never had before," Biden said Friday. "So they don't have to make tough choices between and among doing these things. Reduce violence and ensure safety. And it's up to the cities and towns and the counties to spend the money and spend it now it's there." 

Biden's call for increased spending on public safety comes as the Treasury Department prepares to release the second round of coronavirus relief funding for state and local governments.

Among the officials who met with Biden were the mayors and police chiefs of Detroit; Houston; Kansas City, Missouri; and Tampa, Florida. The mayors of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Toledo, Ohio, also attended, as well as officials from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

Some officials discussed how they used the federal funding — which Republicans in Congress did not support — to do such things as hire new police officers, buy body cameras and new police and fire vehicles, pay overtime and improve mental health and domestic violence response, according to a fact sheet the White House released Friday.

Funds from the American Rescue Plan allowed Detroit to "do a number of different things" to advance policing practices in the city, police chief James White said at a White House press briefing before the Rose Garden ceremony. 

"Number one [...] put officers around our city where we are looking at, statistically, gun violence being higher in those areas than in other areas in our city," White said, adding Detroit has also been able to "provide our officers with state-of-the-art training, being able to develop training protocols based on best practices and use our training facility and bring it up to standards that are necessary in this day and age in law enforcement." 

The 2021 relief package included $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments, money that could go to police departments. Following the killings of several Black Americans by law enforcement officials, some Democrats and civil rights activists have urged cutting police budgets. 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."

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.