Biden: US policing reforms long overdue

Former US Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday said reforms in US policing methods are long overdue. Biden was speaking during a virtual NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) town hall event on systemic racism. "This is an inflection moment in American history, a moment where we must make substantive changes now, changes the American police as the police is long overdue," Biden said. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate also highlighted his proposals for additional community policing funds.

He called on Americans to seize on the uproar generated by the death of George Floyd to make substantive changes to tackle police brutality and inequality. Black voters remain key to Democrats' chances for victory this fall, and Biden has engaged in a concerted outreach effort to the black community, releasing a plan focused on black economic mobility and racial disparities in health care and education systems earlier this year. He has also issued a criminal justice plan that reverses a number of key provisions of the crime bill and has apologized for supporting some policies in the 1990s that he now says were harmful.