Six years at the Justice Department may have given Attorney General Eric Holder a few more gray hairs and controversies to deal with, but it hasn’t diminished his basketball skills at all.
Unable to get points from Congressional Republicans, a video posted to the Justice Department website shows that Mr. Holder can at least still score on the hardwood. While visiting a Boys and Girls Club in San Francisco, he took some time to play a quick pickup game.
The video shows Mr. Holder — who played basketball in college and shares his love of the game with President Obama — making a deft pass around a defender, then easily draining a long jumper, all while dressed in a shirt and tie.
The game included not just teens from the club, but local police officers as well. Mr. Holder traveled to California this week for several roundtable meetings with law enforcement and community leaders as part of the department’s “Building Community Trust” campaign.
The agency has been scrambling to repair strained relations between police, citizens and the federal government following several high-profile, racially charged confrontations, including the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.
Though the first town-hall style meeting was held in D.C., department leaders have lately been traveling around the country to try to hear ideas from diverse groups of people.
Friday night, Mr. Holder is set to travel to Pasadena, California, where he will receive the Chairman’s Award at the annual NAACP Image Awards.
The organization’s website says the award is “presented to individuals in special recognition of their efforts to utilize their profession to promote diversity and community involvement.”
• Phillip Swarts can be reached at pswarts@washingtontimes.com.
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