Congress Battles Over Police Reform

The U.S. House passed a sweeping police reform package Thursday night in response to massive civil unrest over police brutality.

The package cleared the chamber largely along partisan lines, with 236 lawmakers (mostly Democrats) voting for it and 181 lawmakers (180 Republicans and one Independent) voting against it. Three Republicans sided with Democrats in backing the bill — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan and Will Hurd of Texas.

Among the Wisconsin delegation, all of the Democrats — Gwen Moore, Mark Pocan and Ron Kind — voted in favor of the ‘George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,’ while Bryan Steil, Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany voted no. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Mike Gallagher did not vote. Sensenbrenner’s wife passed away recently and Gallagher’s wife gave birth to their first child on Wednesday.

Grothman drew lots of attention with his remarks in The Washington Post, the BBC Newshour and elsewhere for his criticism of the bill, He said, “They don’t want to talk about it when white people are killed.” Later asking, “What’s going to happen when we have a timid, neutered police force?” And the New York Daily News’ Mike McAuliff shared another part of Grothman’s speech on Twitter:

“They want to tear this country apart. They want to enrage Black people and they want to make white people feel guilty and not like America.”

Glenn Grothman (Wis.) has a theory about why Dems and the media don’t talk about police killing white people. “They want to tear this country apart.. They want to enrage black people and they want to make white people feel guilty and not like America.” pic.twitter.com/wDZENZmAQo

— Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) June 25, 2020

In response to Grothman’s speech, Wisconsin’s only Black representative. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) gave this statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“I’ve served with Glenn over the years in the state legislature and in Congress. I understand him and respect the fact that he has been consistent. He has always rejected celebrating blackness. He voted against harmless acknowledgements of Juneteenth and Kwaanza resolutions in the state legislature. He went to war with me in the state Senate over a traffic sign I had installed through the budget process directing people to America’s Black Holocaust Museum. He demanded budget after budget that expenditures be made to remove it. He voted against naming a post office after Maya Angelou in Congress.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hailed the package on the House floor Thursday, saying it would “fundamentally transform the culture of policing to address systemic racism, curb police brutality and save lives.”

But the bill — passed one month after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed while in police custody — is unlikely to become law.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried and failed to advance a modest GOP bill Wednesday and is not expected to take up the Democrats’ more comprehensive measure.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, threatened on Wednesday to veto the Democratic bill, arguing it would deter people from pursuing law enforcement careers, erode public safety and weaken relationships between police departments and communities.

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged Democrats to instead “get on board” with the GOP bill, which he said “has a real shot at becoming law.”

The Democratic legislation would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level, bar racial profiling, limit the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement officials and make it easier to prosecute police misconduct in the courts by eliminating the “qualified immunity” doctrine that shields law enforcement officials from lawsuits, among other things.

The bill drew objections from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which called increased funding for law enforcement a non-starter. “The role of policing has to be smaller, more circumscribed and less funded with taxpayer dollars,” ACLU legislative counsel Kanya Bennett said in a statement when the bill was introduced this month.

House passage comes a day after Senate Democrats blocked a GOP bill authored by Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate GOP conference.

Scott’s bill would incentivize departments to increase the use of body cameras, improve training in de-escalation tactics and require that performance records be taken into greater account when making hiring decisions. It would also increase data collection on the use of force, weapon discharge and no-knock warrants, among other provisions.

Unlike the Democratic bill, it would not ban chokeholds or no-knock warrants at the federal level or make it easier for victims of police brutality to sue officers and seek damages. Nor would it bar racial and religious profiling or limit the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement officials.

McConnell tried to bring the bill to the floor Wednesday, but he fell five votes short of the 60 votes he needed to advance it.

Democrats and leading civil rights advocates called the Senate GOP bill “weak” and said it failed to live up to an historic moment in which diverse coalitions of protesters are taking to the streets to demand racial justice and equality in the wake of Floyd’s death. Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis officer who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, was fired and has been charged with second-degree murder.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the GOP bill “weak tea” on the Senate floor Wednesday. He cited a letter from civil rights groups who said the bill “falls woefully short of the comprehensive reform needed to address the current policing crisis and achieve meaningful law enforcement accountability.”

On the other side of the Capitol, Pelosi said the GOP bill is “inconsistent with a genuine belief that Black lives matter” and said she hopes passage of the Democratic bill will force the Senate to act. The Senate, she said, has the choice to either honor Floyd’s life or do nothing.

McConnell, meanwhile, painted Democrats with the do-nothing label. “Our Democratic colleagues tried to say with straight faces that they want the Senate to discuss police reform — while they blocked the Senate from discussing police reform,” he said Thursday.

Melanie Conklin contributed to this story from Wisconsin.

Reprinted with permission of Wisconsin Examiner.