This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 18th, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

The drug war is what broke policing, according to Cato's Trevor Burris, where there's no victim in piles of cash the police departments can use it's not hard to see

how priorities shift away from tackling crimes that have victims. This week I

spoke with Trevor Burris about the drug war, the president's new executive order on policing

and the growing rumblings that Joe Biden will pick former prosecutor and

Senator Kamala Harris as his White House running mate.

Just to start here as of recording, the White House has released an executive order

dealing with what they call safe communities.

They talked about policing. The president talked about the families of

Ahmad Arbury and others that he met with today. So clearly he senses somehow that there's a moment here that he probably ought not miss and that the

policing is especially controversial now and there is sort of a reckoning that is taking place.

So what was in this executive order and we should keep in mind at the outset that this is from the federal government and the federal government does not in any way direct police at the state and local level.

Yeah, so the executive has very few levers on this.

I mean, it's almost the flip side of the sanctuary city's battles

where the law enforcement, you know,

is independent in these states, and even though the feds want them to play ball, they don't have to play ball.

Always their levers over money and funding and any funding that the departments get, they can sort of try and push those and say you don't get funding unless you do this well it's not horrible given if I were president and tried to figure out what I would do it's not it's not horrible

Again the details it has sort of broad principles it talks about credentialing and certifying use of force and other

practices and departments and saying that the attorney general won't give money to these departments until they demonstrate

credentialing. We don't see what the details are on that. One of those credentials

includes an actual ban on chokeholds, which is kind of interesting,

except for where it's, quote, allowed by law.

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