Democrats propose sweeping police overhaul; Trump opposes
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats proposed a far-reaching overhaul of police procedures and accountability Monday, a sweeping legislative response to the mass protests denouncing the deaths of black Americans in the hands of law enforcement.
The political outlook is deeply uncertain for the legislation in a polarized election year. President Donald Trump is staking out a tough “law and order” approach in the face of the outpouring of demonstrations and demands to re-imagine policing in America.
“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, drawing on the nation’s history of slavery.
Before unveiling the package, House and Senate Democrats held a moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and many others killed during police interactions. They knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — now a symbol of police brutality and violence — the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died.
Trump, who met with law enforcement officials at the White House, characterized the Democrats as having “gone CRAZY!”
As activists call for restructuring police departments and even to “ defund the police,” the president tweeted, “LAW & ORDER, NOT DEFUND AND ABOLISH THE POLICE.”
Democratic
leaders pushed back, saying their proposal would not eliminate police
departments — a decision for cities and states — but establish new
oversight.
Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic presidential
nominee, “does not believe that police should be defunded,” said
spokesman Andrew Bates.
The Justice in Policing Act would limit
legal protections for police, create a national database of
excessive-force incidents and ban police choke holds, among other
changes, the most ambitious law enforcement reforms sought by Congress in years.
The
legislation would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute
to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in misconduct
“knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
The package would also change “qualified immunity” protections for police to more broadly enable damage claims in lawsuits.
The
legislation would seek to provide greater transparency of police
behavior in several ways. For one, it would grant subpoena power to the
Justice Department to conduct “pattern and practice” investigations of
potential misconduct and help states conduct independent investigations.
It would ban racial profiling, boost requirements for police body
cameras and limit the transfer of military equipment to local
jurisdictions.
And it would create a “National Police Misconduct
Registry,” a database to try to prevent officers from transferring from
one department to another with past misconduct undetected, the draft
says.
A long-sought federal anti-lynching bill that has stalled in Congress is included in the package.
House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a co-author with
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., and Democratic senators, will convene a
hearing on the legislation Wednesday.
The legislation confronts
several aspects of policing that have come under strong criticism,
especially as more and more police violence is captured on cellphone
video and shared widely across the nation and the world.
“The
world is witnessing the birth of a new movement in this country,” said
Rep. Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is
leading the House effort. She called the proposal “bold” and
“transformative.”
While Democrats are expected to swiftly approve
the legislation this month, it does not go as far as some activists
want. The outlook for passage in the Republican-held Senate is slim.
Republican campaign officials followed Trump’s lead in bashing the effort as extreme.
“No
industry is safe from the Democrats’ abolish culture,” said Micahel
McAdams, a spokesman for the House Republican campaign committee, in an
email blast. “First they wanted to abolish private health insurance,
then it was capitalism and now it’s the police.”
Democrats fought back.
“This
isn’t about that,” Pelosi said. Congress is not calling for any
wholesale defunding of law enforcement, leaving those decisions to local
cities and states, Democrats noted.
It is unclear if law
enforcement and the powerful police unions will back any of the proposed
changes or if congressional Republicans will join the effort.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose Louisville hometown faces unrest
after the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home, said he would
take a look at potential legislation.
Republicans are likely to
stick with Trump, although McConnell was central to passage of a
criminal justice sentencing overhaul and some key GOP senators have
similarly expressed interest in changes to policing practices and
accountability.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, has said his panel intends to hold a hearing to
review use of force issues and police practices. And Sen. Mike Lee,
R-Utah, has said he’d like to review the package coming from Democrats.
Rep.
Will Hurd, R-Texas, who marched in support of Floyd in Houston, penned
an op-ed Monday about how his own black father instructed him as a teen
driver to respond if he was pulled over by the police. Hurd offered his
own proposals for changes in police practices.
What started with
the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Mo., has transformed with the killings of other black
Americans into a diverse and mainstream effort calling for changing the
way America polices its population, advocates say.
“I can’t
breathe” has become a rallying cry for protesters. Floyd pleaded with
police that he couldn’t breathe, echoing the phrase Eric Garner said
while in police custody in 2014 before his death in New York.
“All we’ve ever wanted is to be treated equally — not better, not worse,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Biden’s former presidential primary rivals, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.Y., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., are co-authors of the package in the Senate.
Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.