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Obama to place new restrictions on use of military equipment by police
Robinson has met with Obama to discuss the issue.
Obama’s remarks in Camden will be the fourth time in as many weeks that he has held an event to discuss his ideas for improving life for poor black communities.
Obama, the country’s first black president, has often been reticent about discussing race issues.
Following the shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin by a volunteer neighborhood watchman in 2012, Obama discussed the issue in personal terms, saying that if he had a son, he would have looked like Martin.
In response to a question in 2009, Obama said he thought police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had acted “stupidly” when they arrested Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor who was mistaken for a burglar at his own home.
Obama faced a backlash from law enforcement groups who accused him of commenting before he knew all the details of the case. Obama later said he wished he had chosen his words more carefully and invited the professor and the police officer to the White House for a beer.
Michele Jawando, vice president for legal progress at the left-leaning Washington think tank Center for American Progress, said Obama faces a difficult balancing act on race.
“For a long time in this country we’ve had a hard time developing a narrative around poverty, around race, so when there are incidents like this that sit at the apex of both, different people are going to have different reactions to that,” Jawando said.
Source: Reuters
