Maya Wiley (’92), President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was quoted by theGrio denouncing Trump’s plan to give police officers “immunity from prosecution” (“Trump’s Vow for Police ‘Immunity’ Could Spell Trouble for Black Communities,” May 11). “If there’s no criminal accountability of police for criminal behavior, then the fox is guarding the henhouse, and we’re the hens, and we’re living in a country that’s becoming a police state.” Maya also pointed to limits on executive power, noting, “The president of the United States has no power to tell states that they must exempt their state-controlled police forces from crime.” Citing overpolicing of Black and brown communities, and how they “experience constitutional violations and police misconduct disproportionately,” she concluded, “We are still in a system that is not sufficiently holding police accountable. . . . As a nation, we have to do a lot more work and a lot more confronting what we were all saying we were willing to confront after George Floyd’s murder.”
