The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Tuesday from a number of racial and criminal justice reform experts, as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to debate how to best implement police reform measures.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a leading Democrat on the powerful judiciary panel, used his line of questioning to inquire about the role of the Justice Department in investigating police shootings as well as to ask about the “qualified immunity doctrine” — which shields law enforcement from lawsuits.
“Legal protections against police brutality will only be meaningful if they can be enforced in a court of law,” Leahy said of qualified immunity before asking S. Lee Merritt, the attorney representing the family of George Floyd.
Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer that has spiked protests across the country.
“Using the knee to kill somebody is the kind of thing that gets you qualified immunity in America,” Merritt said, referencing the technique used by law enforcement that has killed Floyd and others.
“The scary thing is, the concern is that if you remove qualified immunity you flood the courts with cases of officers killing people,” Merritt continued. “Most nations don’t kill that many people that that’s a legitimate concern, only in America is that a problem.”
Leahy responded by saying that Merritt and he share the same concerns about the continued use of qualified immunity.
“Thank you. You said what was on my mind,” Leahy said.
Leahy also posed a question to Vanita Gupta, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights who served as principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights from 2014-2017, about the national response to the killing of Floyd and the current appetite to put forward meaningful police reform.
“People say this movement is simply not going to go away after some time — as others have — I hope they’re right,” Leahy said. “What would you tell members of Congress who say we could just wait and see?”
“Waiting and seeing will mean more people will die,” Gupta said.
The discussion in the Senate Judiciary Committee came just hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order tying federal grant money for police departments to compliance with mandated standards that includes a ban on chokeholds except when an officer’s life is at risk.
The executive order would also create a national database on excessive force complaints and would encourage the involvement of mental health professionals when responding to nonviolent cases.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans, shepherded forward by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., are poised to introduce their plan to combat police brutality.
The plan from Scott, the lone African American Republican in the upper chamber, includes a prohibition on chokeholds as well as tracking of use-of-force incidents as well as “no-knock warrants” — the manner by which police can enter a home without consent.
Scott has named the database tracking provision the “Breonna Taylor Reporting Act,” after the 26-year-old African American woman who was shot and killed by Louisville police as she slept in her bed on March 13.
On June 8, Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives, introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a sweeping police reform proposal.
Leahy joined his colleagues in supporting the measure, saying at the time that “it is past time for a national conversation to rethink how we approach policing and racial justice.”
Democrats in the lower chamber are looking to move quickly on the package that is similar to the Republican proposal but goes much further in stripping away legal protections for police.
Under the proposal, the federal civil rights law that governs police misconduct would no longer require prosecutors to prove that an officer’s actions were willful and could allow an officer to be charged for acting with “reckless disregard” for an individual’s life.
“We need to create a culture of police accountability & transparency, & structural change that safeguards every American’s right to safety & justice, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., a co-sponsor of the House bill, tweeted last week.
Meanwhile, Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has called for a ban on the use of rubber bullets by law enforcement as well as a long list of reforms he would like Senate Democrats to adopt.
Sanders has outlined that he would like to prohibit police departments from being able to procure “offensive” military equipment, create a federal model policing program that emphasizes de-escalation, as well as attempting to make the process to become a police officer much more rigorous.
However, while people across the country and in Congress are demanding swift action on criminal justice reform, the Senate is unlikely to take up the proposals until after July 4, according to Politico.
“I think it has enough support if we can get a process to move it, possibly,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told Politico, referring to Scott’s bill.
“But I would say at this moment probably unlikely in this work period — July, more likely.”
