Washington
Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg wrote that he felt obligated to respond to the president’s comments “because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong.” He cited the agency’s core values — among them integrity, accountability and respect and compassion.
“This is how we conduct ourselves. This is how we treat those whom we encounter in our work: victims, witnesses, subjects, and defendants. This is who we are,” Rosenberg wrote.
The email, sent Saturday, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post also obtained a copy.
The White House has said that Trump was joking when he told law enforcement officers in New York last week that they should not “be too nice” with suspects.
“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump said before miming the motion of an officer shielding a suspect’s head to keep it from bumping against the squad car. “Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, OK?”
While Trump’s comments have been widely criticized by policing leaders, his message marks the first pushback from a federal law enforcement agency.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not address the president’s comments explicitly in a public speech Tuesday to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, commonly referred to as NOBLE, though he told the group’s leaders afterward that he felt the president was making a joke, said incoming NOBLE president Clarence Cox.
“I won’t say that he defended him, but he did say he felt like he made that statement in jest,” he said. Cox said Sessions added that Trump was “not an attorney, he’s not a law enforcement practitioner, so he may not quite understand the effects of what he said.”
The attorney general, Cox said, was “careful not to criticize his boss,” though he tried to assure the group that he would continue to protect people’s civil rights.
“He didn’t offer any criticism, but he did say that as along as he is attorney general, he will utilize his office to make sure that civil rights are not violated,” Cox said.
Cox said the group’s view is the president’s remark “wasn’t funny. We were not laughing.”
Rosenberg wrote that his email was not meant to advance any “political, partisan, or personal agenda,” and he said he did not believe a DEA agent would mistreat a defendant. But he made clear in the first line his remarks were directed at Trump.
“The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement,” Rosenberg wrote.