CNN’s Laura Coates Calls Out ‘Really Big Caveat’ in Trump’s Proposed Chokehold Ban: ‘It Doesn’t Change Anything at All’

CNN legal analyst Laura Coates called out the “really big caveat” in President Donald Trump’s police reform plan, arguing that its carve-out exception for police officers to continue to use chokehold bans when they feel their lives are in danger would undermine its effectiveness.

On Tuesday, in the wake of more than three weeks of nationwide unrest over police killings of unarmed African-Americans, Trump held a White House event where he signed an executive action that included several steps toward police reform, but held off from a total chokehold ban. As the details of his plan became public, some law enforcement officials quickly expressed deep skepticism of Trump’s policy proposals, with one former officer proclaiming “it will not do anything to correct police brutality.”

Coates, appearing on Erin Burnett Out Front on Tuesday evening, echoed those criticisms.

“Laura, the president saying chokeholds should be banned except when an officer’s life is in danger which is a subjective matter, host Erin Burnett noted. “Legally when you add that to it, what does that actually do?”

“It doesn’t change anything at all. The the subjectivity is the question that many people have about the amount of benefit of doubt you give police officers,” Coates explained. “If it’s already in the police officers’ hands, in terms of figuring out whether they are allowed to use a certain level of force, it’s their judgment call. The president’s statements have not changed that judgment call. It still allows for that really big caveat there that say if the officer, essentially, subjectively and reasonably believes that he or she is in danger, they can perform what has been banned by so many. It doesn’t do much actually to elevate the conversation or change the dynamic about reasonableness.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.