Congressional Democrats are intent on seizing this moment—while the world really is watching and public opinion is turning—to enact policing reforms that would make police more accountable for their actions. That's ultimately all the bill would do, but it's shaping up to be a bridge too far for Senate Republicans and impeached president Donald Trump, who says Democrats have "gone CRAZY." The House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, plans to bring the bill to the floor the week of June 22.
But the reforms included in the bill, introduced by Reps. Karen Bass and Jerry Nadler and Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, are far from crazy, and far from the ground-up restructuring of the police that civil rights advocates and activists are talking about. It includes some changes to federal civil rights law; restrictions of police immunity from prosecution; efforts at independence and separation between prosecutors and the police departments they're investigating; more powers for federal prosecutors in conducting investigations into police departments; and federal bans on practices like "no-knock" warrants. These aren't far-reaching, systemic reforms. There's nothing radical about anything the Democrats are suggesting. But Republicans are going to wholesale reject them—at the federal level, anyway—as crazy. So maybe Democrats should have pushed the envelope further to the kinds of reforms we're talking about when we say defund the police since no matter what they do, they're going to be labeled radical.
The bill would expand federal civil rights law to lower the burden of proof prosecutors have to meet in order to show that police misconduct is willful, and would allow an officer to be charged for acting with reckless disregard rather than having to meet the higher threshold of intent. Under current law, it is a crime for a cop to use their authority to deprive someone of their civil rights, but prosecutors have to prove that the officer knew they were exceeding their authority and breaking the law, and choosing to do it anyway. Under this proposal, prosecutors wouldn't have to prove that the misconduct leading to a person's death was willful.
On top of that, it would amend federal statutes to make it easier for courts to hold individual officers liable for federal civil rights violations, taking away the blanket immunity they now have. They wouldn't be able to go into a situation knowing they could get away with doing anything if the law were actually applied. Significantly, it could take cities off the hook for settling claims against cops, and make the individual officers financially liable.
The bill also has incentives for states to conduct independent investigations in police misconduct cases so that the same prosecutors who work with cops to secure convictions aren't in charge of investigating those cops. It provides grants to state attorneys general to conduct independent investigations of misconduct. It would also set up a national—public—registry to catalogue complaints against departments and individual officers.
It might not keep officers like Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd and who had more than a dozen complaints against him, off the street, but it's a level of transparency that doesn't exist now. That could help federal investigators in the Justice Department's civil rights division as well. The legislation would expand their ability to investigate problem police department with subpoena power.
It would also ban at a federal level the procedure that killed Breonna Taylor in March: no-knock warrants, at least in federal drug cases. Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was killed by police in her bed when they went into her and her boyfriend's apartment in connection with a suspect who didn't even live there. They broke into her home and when her boyfriend, who thought it was a criminal breaking in, shot back, they opened fire. Taylor was shot eight times and killed. Oregon and Florida have banned such warrants, and this would make the ban national.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, is calling for a vote on the legislation in the next month along with another coronavirus response bill. "There is no reason that we cannot respond to this moment of national crisis with vigorous and sustained action, with purposeful action and bipartisan effort on the COVID pandemic and long-simmering issues of police violence and racial justice. We must do both," he said on the Senate floor Monday. "There are four remaining weeks before July 4. The time for waiting is gone." What is actually happening on the floor this week is a public lands bill.