Official White House Photo by Shealah CraigheadBy JORDYN PHELPS and BEN GITTLESON, ABC News(WASHINGTON) — As Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill putt forward their proposals on policing reforms, the White House remained vague Monday about what legislative reforms President Donald Trump would be willing to sign onto but have been working on an executive action.The White House has yet to detail specifics of the executive order, but South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott said on Sunday that he thought it would be signed on Tuesday.Scott, the Senate’s only African-American Republican, who has been crafting the GOP proposal for reforms, said on NBC’s Meet The Press that the order would involve creating “a national database on police misconduct” and address the need for “co-responders” to work alongside law enforcement in responding to mental health and addiction related issues.Ja’Ron Smith, the deputy director of the White House Office of American Innovation, led by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, also emphasized the importance of co-responders in an interview with Fox News Monday morning.“What we’re looking to do is sign an executive order that will be good glue to bring community and police together. Again, invest in things like co-responders that would allow for police to do their job but bring in social workers and experts that deal with mental health and issues such as drug addiction, or alcohol addiction, or other issues like homelessness,” he said.Trump said last week that his administration was “working to finalize an executive order that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards for the use of force, including tactics for de-escalation.”“We’ll encourage pilot programs that allow social workers to join certain law enforcement officers so that they work together,” Trump said Thursday during a roundtable with faith and community leaders at a church in Dallas.He provided no other details of what might be included in the order, although he pledged that “we’ll take care of our police.”“We’re going to make sure that our police are well trained — perfectly trained, they have the best equipment,” he said.While the White House continues to condemn calls to “defund the police,” Smith pointed to the example of Camden, New Jersey — a city where the police department was effectively overhauled from the bottom up — as an example of effective police.“There’s a better way to do policing and we have great examples, you can look at Camden, New Jersey, as one of them and we’re looking at those examples as ways to bring the police and communities together and that’s going to be a strong mark for the president and for the country,” Smith said.On the legislative front, Scott said his legislative proposal will aim to improve police training and tactics but said that “qualified immunity” — a legal doctrine that shields law enforcement from liability for actions taken on the job — would be a non-starter.“The president sent the signal that qualified immunity is off the table. They see that as a poison pill on our side,” Scott said on CBS News’ Face The Nation.Scott said he would be open to the “decertification” of officers as a possible alternative to removing qualified immunity but emphasized the need to find an achievable path forward from a legislative perspective.“We’re going to have to find a path that helps us reduce misconduct within the officers. But at the same time, we know that any poison pill in legislation means we get nothing done. That sends the wrong signal, perhaps the worst signal right now in America. I think we’re going to have legislation that can be negotiated that gets us to the place where something becomes law that actually makes a difference. That’s got to be our goal,” Scott said.Congressional Democrats are moving forward with a proposal unveiled last week that calls for a ban chokeholds, move to create new standards for using force, and looks to curtail qualified immunity. Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
