Biden adds stop to North Carolina trip to visit with families of fallen law enforcement officers
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, who heads to Wilmington, North Carolina, on Thursday to discuss the economy, is making a detour to Charlotte to meet with the families of law enforcement officers shot and killed in the line of duty — just a week after he sat down with grieving relatives of two officers killed in Upstate New York.
The visit is expected to take place behind closed doors with little fanfare as the White House seeks to respect the privacy of grieving families and avoid the appearance of their grief being used for political purposes. The meeting was expected at the airport, an option intended to be the least burdensome for local law enforcement who are still reeling from the deaths but could lend a hand in securing the president’s trip .
Once again, Biden will seek to be an empathetic leader for a community reeling from gun violence, while also calling for stricter regulations around firearms and better funding for law enforcement on the front lines.
Four officers were killed in North Carolina earlier this week when a wanted man opened fire on a joint task force that had come to arrest him on a warrant for possession of a firearm as an ex-felon and was on the run to avoid capture. They were: Sam Poloche and William Elliott of the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Joshua Eyer; and Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Weeks.
Four other officers were injured in the gunfire; the suspect was murdered. An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 40-caliber pistol and ammunition were found at the scene.
An AR-15 is one of the weapons most often used in mass shootings, and it’s the type of weapon Biden is talking about when he says the US should ban “assault weapons.” Congress passed the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in decades in 2022, following a horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But it didn’t go far enough, Biden often says.
And as he campaigns for the 2024 election, Biden has made reducing gun violence a key campaign platform, elusive for Democrats even during the Obama era, as he fends off attacks from Republican challenger Donald Trump that he is soft on crime and anti-police.
Biden said in a statement this week after the killings in North Carolina that the US “must do more to protect our law enforcement officers. That means they need to be funded – so they have the resources they need to do their job and keep us safe.”
The violence occurred about two weeks after another fatal shooting of law enforcement officers in Syracuse, New York; Lt. Michael Hoosock and Officer Michael Jensen were killed while searching for a driver who fled a traffic stop. After his speech, Biden met with family members from both of the officers’ families.
Biden was already scheduled to come to Syracuse to celebrate Micron Technology’s plans to build a campus of computer chip factories, but the local police union said officers were still coming to terms with the deaths and were unhappy with the president’s trip and had hoped he would delay.
On Thursday, Biden will also travel to Wilmington, where he will announce that his administration will provide states with an additional $3 billion to replace lead pipes across the country, building on $5.8 billion in federal funds for water infrastructure projects across the country that have begun in February have been announced.
The money for the pipe replacement comes from one of the administration’s most significant legislative victories, the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law in 2021. The infrastructure bill includes more than $50 billion to upgrade America’s water infrastructure.
“It is well past time to take charge once and for all,” Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Wednesday. “This is a public health issue, an environmental justice issue and a fundamental human rights issue.”
Biden and his administration are committed to using all available tools “to achieve a 100% lead-free future for all Americans,” Regan told reporters at a White House briefing. “Every day we are one step closer to a future where no child has to suffer the lasting effects of lead exposure.”
The new round of funding will help fund projects across the country as Biden aims to replace all lead pipes in the country.
EPA estimates that North Carolina has 370,000 lead pipes, and that $76 million will be spent replacing them statewide. Biden will also meet with teachers and students at a Wilmington school that used funding from the law to replace a water fountain with high levels of lead.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly and Josh Bo contributed to this story.