Biden says he would work with police chiefs, community leaders to hold officers more accountable

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said during Thursday night's CNN Presidential Town Hall in Scranton that if elected president, he will ensure that police reforms will be made by putting together a coalition of police chiefs, officers, unions, and civil rights and community leaders.

They will "sit at a table and agree on the fundamental things that have to be done, including much more rigorous background checks [for those] that apply for and become officers," Biden said. He called the "vast majority" of police officers "decent, honorable people," adding that "one of the things I've found is, the only people who don't like bad cops more than we don't like them are police officers. And so what we have to do is we have to have a much more transparent means by which we provide for accountability within police departments."

Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Biden about one of author Bob Woodward's recent interviews with President Trump, during which Woodward asked Trump if he benefited from white privilege. "No, I don't feel that way at all," Trump responded. Biden said he feels the opposite way, and did benefit "just because I don't have to go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through."

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Biden pivoted and began talking about classism, and how "growing up here in Scranton, we're used to guys who look down their nose at us. We are used to people looking at us and thinking more suckers, look at us and think that we're not equivalent to them. If you didn't have a college degree, you must be stupid." This is the wrong attitude to have, Biden said, adding, "We are as good as anybody else, and guys like Trump who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited are the people that I've always had a problem with, not the people who are busting their neck."