Derailing Police Reform

Democrats this week proved they don’t want law-enforcement reform — they just want to run on the issue this fall instead. That’s the clear bottom line of the Senate minority’s refusal to allow a vote, or even debate, on the GOP bill, shepherded by Sen. Tim Scott.

“Our bill does something. Theirs does nothing,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sniffed. False: In fact, many provisions in Scott’s bill are the same as ones in the Democrats’ House bill.

No, the Republican bill wouldn’t end “qualified immunity,” which can protect cops from being personally held liable for damages for violating someone’s rights.

Scott said the issue is a “nonstarter” for his party — but there might have been a middle ground reached with the House, if Democrats hadn’t impeded the Senate bill.

The Republican bill instructed the attorney general to prohibit federal officers from using chokeholds and encouraged states to ban them (and rein in no-knock warrants) by putting federal funds on the line. It required departments to report all officer-involved deaths to the FBI and, like the Dems’ bill, would have made lynching a federal crime.

The House bill does go further, but not much. And Scott, a black man who’s experienced police misconduct himself, was so passionate about getting reform passed that he told Democrats he’d allow them to offer ample amendments during debate. “They said no. They had no desire to actually solve this issue before the election,” the senator told Fox News. (House Democrats, meanwhile, rammed their bill through without allowing a single Republican amendment.)

Pelosi is being utterly shameless, charging that Republicans are “trying to get away with murder, actually — the murder of George Floyd.” Asked if she wanted to soften that statement, she instead doubled down.

In reality, it’s the Democratic refusal to allow Senate debate that has ended any chance of policing reform passing Congress this year.

By Pelosi’s logic, that means that her party is the one trying to get away with murder.