June 09, 2020

Credit: Maryland Matters, Robin Bravender

Congressional Democrats outlined their vision for sweeping police reforms on Capitol Hill Monday, following weeks of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

“Never again should the world be subjected to witnessing what we saw on the streets of Minneapolis: the slow murder of an individual by a uniformed police officer,” said Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat and the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, at a news conference announcing the effort.

The legislation, titled the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, includes a series of measures aimed at increasing police accountability, barring racial profiling and increasing transparency surrounding officers’ actions.

It would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level, limit the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement officials, and require state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data broken down by race and other characteristics.

“This legislation makes it clear that police departments are serving and are answerable to all the residents in their communities, including African Americans,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.

Hoyer is a co-sponsor of the measure on the House side along with Maryland Democratic Reps. Anthony G. Brown, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie B. Raskin, John P. Sarbanes and David J. Trone. Maryland’s two Democratic senators, Benjamin L. Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, are sponsors of the Senate legislation.

In a statement, Van Hollen said the bill should be part of a broader effort to examine and try to eliminate racial inequities in society that extend to housing, health care, education and employment.

“This legislation is long overdue — justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.

The bill would make it easier to prosecute police misconduct in the courts by eliminating the “qualified immunity” doctrine that shields law enforcement officials from lawsuits. It would also change the legal standard for victims alleging police misconduct. Currently, they must show that officers acted “willfully;” the new legislation would require them to show that officers acted “recklessly.”

“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative, structural change,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday. “This is a first step. There is more to come.”

House Democratic leaders said they plan to soon hold hearings and a floor vote on the legislation, which they expect to pass the chamber. Its prospects of clearing the GOP-led Senate and becoming law, however, appear slim.

As Democrats are calling for sweeping changes, the Senate’s top Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, told reporters last week that “there may be a role” for lawmakers in response to police brutality. He said senators would be discussing “what, if anything, is appropriate for us to do.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat backing the legislation in the Senate, warned that just last week, “We could not get an anti-lynching bill passed in the United States Senate.”

The House voted earlier this year to make lynching a federal hate crime, but the effort has been blocked in the Senate due to objections from Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, The New York Times reported last week. The police reform legislation unveiled this week would also make lynching a federal hate crime.

“We’re here because black Americans want to stop being killed,” Harris said Monday. “Reform and change must happen and it must happen now.”