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Dems Revive Bill to Overhaul Policing 03/04 06:12
Cheered on by President Joe Biden, House Democrats hustled to pass the most
ambitious effort in decades to overhaul policing nationwide, able to avoid
clashing with moderates in their own party who are wary of reigniting a debate
they say hurt them during last fall's election.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cheered on by President Joe Biden, House Democrats
hustled to pass the most ambitious effort in decades to overhaul policing
nationwide, able to avoid clashing with moderates in their own party who are
wary of reigniting a debate they say hurt them during last fall's election.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was approved 220-212 late Wednesday.
The sweeping legislation, which was first approved last summer but stalled
in the Senate, was named in honor of Floyd, whose killing by police in
Minnesota last Memorial Day sparked protests nationwide. The bill would ban
chokeholds and "qualified immunity" for law enforcement and create national
standards for policing in a bid to bolster accountability.
"My city is not an outlier, but rather an example of the inequalities our
country has struggled with for centuries," said Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who
represents the Minneapolis area near where Floyd died. She asked her colleagues
if they would "have the moral courage to pursue justice and secure meaningful
change?"
Democrats say they were determined to pass the bill a second time, to combat
police brutality and institutional racism after the deaths of Floyd, Breonna
Taylor and other Black Americans following interactions with law enforcement
--- images of which were sometimes jarringly captured on video. Those killings
drew a national and international outcry.
Floyd's family watched the emotional debate from a nearby House office
building.
But the debate over legislation has turned into a political liability for
Democrats as Republicans seized on calls by some activists and progressives to
"defund the police" to argue that Democrats were intent on slashing police
force budgets. This bill doesn't do that.
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said it was a reason
the party, after talking confidently of growing its majority in November,
instead saw it shrink to just 10 seats, 221-211.
"We played too much defense on 'defund the police,'" Perez said.
Moderate Democrats said the charge helped drive Democratic defeats in swing
districts around the country.
"No one ran on 'defund the police,' but all you have to do is make that a
political weapon," said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Texas Democrat who has
pushed for more police funding in places like his city of Laredo, where the law
enforcement presence is especially concentrated given the close proximity to
the Mexican border.
While Democrats used their then-larger majority to pass the police reform
measure in the House last summer, it stalled in the then-Republican-controlled
Senate, where GOP senators pushed an alternate plan that Democrats blocked from
consideration, calling it inadequate. Democrats now control both chambers of
Congress, but it seems unlikely the bill could pass the Senate without
substantial changes to win GOP support.
The bill had been set for a vote Thursday, but House leaders abruptly
changed the schedule to wrap up their week's work after U.S. Capitol Police
warned of threats of violence at the Capitol two months after the Jan. 6 siege.
Senior Democratic congressional aides said Wednesday they were eager to get
the bill to the Senate, where negotiations will take longer.
Republicans quickly revived the "defund the police" criticisms. "Our law
enforcement officers need more funding not less," Rep. Scott Fitzgerald,
R-Wis., said during Wednesday's debate.
Despite the political attacks by Republicans, even the House's more centrist
lawmakers, some representing more conservative districts, backed the bill.
"Black Americans have endured generations of systemic racism and
discrimination for too long, and this has been painfully evident in their
treatment by law enforcement," said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash, who chairs the
moderate New Democrat Coalition.
That endorsement came despite the bill's prohibitions on so-called qualified
immunity, which shields law enforcement from certain lawsuits and is one of the
main provisions that will likely need to be negotiated in any compromise with
the Senate.
Police unions and other law enforcement groups have argued that, without
such legal protections, fear of lawsuits will stop people from becoming police
officers --- even though the measure permits such suits only against law
enforcement agencies, rather than all public employees.
California Rep. Karen Bass, who authored the bill, understands the challenge
some House members face in supporting it.
"My colleagues, several of them, I do not make light of the difficulty they
had getting reelected because of the lie around defunding the police," Bass
said.
She called provisions limiting qualified immunity and easing standards for
prosecution "the only measures that hold police accountable --- that will
actually decrease the number of times we have to see people killed on
videotape."
Bass said she would not make concessions before the bill cleared the House.
Changes would only serve to weaken it while failing to shield Democrats from
the false "defund the police" narrative surrounding it, she said.
"Even if they were to vote against the bill, even if they were to have a
press conference denouncing the bill, they are still going to be hit with the
same lie," Bass said of Democrats.
She also acknowledged the challenges Democrats faced last November --- and
may likely see again --- when former President Donald Trump's reelection
campaign and other leading Republicans crowded the airwaves with images of
cities around the country burning. But Bass said those attacks, like much of
the opposition to the bill, are built on racism, promoting fears about how "the
scary Black people are going to attack you if you try to rein in the police."
"That's as old as apple pie in our history," she said. "So do you not act
because of that?"
Still, she conceded that changes are likely to come if the measure is to win
the minimum 60 votes it will need to advance in the Senate, which is now split
50-50. Bass said she'd been in contact with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the
only Black Republican in the chamber, and was confident he would help deliver
some GOP support.
Scott said this week that the legislation's sticking points were qualified
immunity and prosecutorial standards and that in both areas, "We have to
protect individual officers."
"That's a red line for me," Scott said, adding, "Hopefully we'll come up
with something that actually works."
That could prove a tall order, despite the White House's vocal support for
police reform. Biden has promised to combat systemic racism and signed
executive orders he says will begin doing that, though advocates are expecting
the new administration to go further.
Biden has tweeted that he hopes "to be able to sign into law a landmark
police reform bill."
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