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Following a series of high-profile deaths of Black Americans while in police custody, a civil rights movement to call attention to systemic racism in U.S. law enforcement emerged as a key issue in the presidential race between Republican U.S. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. In their public responses, both campaigns stripped the nuance from what was a deep-rooted reckoning over American racism and police brutality. Biden tried to align himself with protesters' calls for reforming the country's criminal justice system without going into specifics as to how. Meanwhile, Trump attempted to convince voters his opponent would turn America into a place of lawlessness and destruction by removing or completely eliminating police officers from streets. Biden has vowed to defund the police, Trump said in conference call with supporters on Aug. 12, 2020. We should note here: local governments, not the president's office, decide specific budgets for city, county, and state law-enforcement agencies, though the federal government can levy funding for agencies that meet its chosen requirements. Weeks after the unsubstantiated claim alleging a promise by Biden, the president again suggested without specific evidence that his opponent was essentially a Trojan horse for progressive activists who want to downsize or completely abolish police agencies. If you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments all across America, Trump claimed, while accepting the Republican Party's nomination in the race. (See a transcript of the whole speech here.) Below, we focused on those allegations by the president, considering their frequent appearance in Trump campaign advertisements before the November 2020 election. Snopes relied on evidence to confirm or deny whether Trump was correct — that Biden at one point said he supports defunding U.S. law enforcement agencies nationwide. First, let us define what defund the police means. Per The Associated Press: Additionally, a writer for the Washington Post explained: Next, we analyzed media interviews, social media posts, and other statements by Biden's campaign for any reference to the above-described concept — that he said he agrees with defunding police departments, or protesters' calls to redirect funding from U.S. law-enforcement agencies to social services. In June, Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, told news reporters in a statement: Around the same time, Biden said in an interview with CBS News: Then, in a July interview with activist Ady Barkan, the question surfaced again. Barkan asked Biden if he was open to reducing responsibility on law-enforcement agencies to maintain public safety, and, as a result, redirect existing police funding into social services, mental health counseling, and programs to help people access affordable housing. An edited version of the exchange circulated widely on social media, showing Biden agreeing with Barkan and supposedly providing the proof Trump supporters were seeking. But according to the Washington Post, which obtained a full video of the interview, that shortened version of the interview was misleading. The news outlet reported: Later, in an August interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Biden reiterated that stance. Co-anchor Robin Roberts asked, President Trump says that you want to defund the police. Do you? Biden responded: Then, in early September, Biden made that position clear in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about a week after two people were fatally shot and one person was wounded during a protest against police brutality. The Associated Press reported: In sum, Biden attempted to distance himself from left-wing politicians and activists calling to defund the police in 2020, and no evidence showed he supported their call to shift law-enforcement funding into programs or services that aim to combat the root causes of crime. Instead, the presidential candidate has called for increased federal spending on law enforcement, as well as the creation of new conditions to determine how agencies receive federal support. For those reasons, we rate this claim False.
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