Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager said Wednesday that the Democratic nominee would implement a set of best practices to prevent police-involved shootings like the ones this week in Charlotte, North Carolina and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“There are two prongs to her approach,” Robby Mook, Hillary for America campaign manager told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.” “The first is to have a set of national standards around how to manage the situations that doesn’t exist right now and that could help through training to prevent situations like this.”
“There are no set of national best practices on how to manage situations,” he continued. “These situations are handled by local policies currently. And what she is proposing is that we actually set up national standards so that localities have better policies to work with and train towards.”
Clinton spoke out Tuesday against “systematic racism” following the recent shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Crutcher was shot and killed last week after his car broke down. The 40-year-old black man raised his hands above his head just before Officer Betty Shelby fatally shot him. Crutcher was unarmed at the time.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said Wednesday that “approximately 12 officers” were injured during protests after the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott Tuesday by a police officer.
Mook said the other part of Clinton’s plans involves working to improve the relationship between police and minorities.
“The second piece is to restore bonds between communities and law enforcement, so investing in community policing and making sure that local police have the resources to build the resources in the community to prevent something like this from happening,” he said.
Clinton told radio host Steve Harvey on Tuesday’s “The Steve Harvey Morning Show” that she plans to speak “directly to white people” about implicit bias. Mook said Wednesday Clinton meant she would explain that different ethnic groups are often treated differently in America.
“What she’s saying is our entire country needs to do some real soul-searching here. It is clear that the criminal justice system is not treating everybody the same way,” he said. “If you are African-American or from a minority group, you may not be being treated the same as a white person. And that’s a problem.”
Clinton said Tuesday that while there are “good, honorable, cool-headed police officers” working across the country, “we can do better.”
“We have got to tackle systemic racism,” Clinton said. “This horrible shooting again. How many times do we have to see this in our country?”
“This is just unbearable,” Clinton said. “And it needs to be intolerable.”
Clinton later tweeted on the shooting, writing, “Another unarmed Black man was shot in a police incident. This should be intolerable. We have so much work to do. #TerenceCrutcher -H.”
In response to the Crutcher shooting, both the Department of Justice and state authorities have launched investigations into the officer-involved shooting.
Danny C. Williams, US Attorney of the Northern District of Oklahoma, said prosecutors will attempt to determine whether a federal civil rights violation had occurred. Authorities refused to immediately answer additional questions due to the ongoing investigation.