House passage of George Floyd bill puts eyes on Senate

WASHINGTON — Passage of the House Democrats’ far-reaching police overhaul bill returned attention to the Senate on Friday, as the divided Congress struggles to address the global outcry over the killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled she’s willing to negotiate if the Senate is able to approve its own bill. But she said Democrats have no interest in engaging with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Republican-only package, which collapsed this week after Senate Democrats blocked it from debate.

“The Senate has to do better,” Ms. Pelosi said.

The House approved the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act late Thursday in a vote heavy with emotion and symbolism. It was one month to the day after Floyd’s death, which sparked a national reconsideration of policing tactics and racial injustice.

The legislative package from Democrats is perhaps the most ambitious set of proposed changes to police procedures and accountability in decades. Backed by the nation’s leading civil rights groups, it aims to match the moment of demonstrations that filled streets across the nation. It has almost zero chance of becoming law.

Mr. McConnell has said the bill would not pass the Republican-held chamber. President Donald Trump’s administration said he would veto the bill if it did.

After the GOP policing bill stalled this week, blocked by Democrats, Mr. Trump shrugged.

“If nothing happens with it, it’s one of those things,” he said. “We have different philosophies.”

Congress is now at a familiar impasse despite protests outside their door and polling that shows Americans overwhelmingly want changes after the deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others in interactions with law enforcement. The two parties are instead appealing to voters ahead of the fall election, which will determine control of the House, Senate and White House.

In the month since Floyd’s May 25 death, funeral services were held for Rayshard Brooks, a Black man shot and killed by police in Atlanta. Thursday was also what would have been the 18th birthday of Tamir Rice, a Black boy killed by police in Ohio in 2014. In New York, prosecutors this week filed criminal charges against an officer who put a Black man in what they said was a banned chokehold.

Even though the proposals from Congress share common ground, they diverge widely. One main difference is that several of the changes proposed by Republicans — such as restrictions on police use of chokeholds, which are already prohibited in many jurisdictions — are banned by Democrats.

Ms. Pelosi said she’s all for bringing ideas to the table, but “if one person is saying chokeholds and the other is saying no chokeholds, it’s very hard to compromise.”

Law enforcement organizations and some of the nation’s leading business groups, including the influential Business Roundtable of leading CEOs, are encouraging Congress to keep working toward a solution. But that seems unlikely, with lawmakers’ positions hardening and the parties settled in for a political standoff ahead of campaign season and elections.

Sen. Tim Scott, of South Carolina, the only Black Republican senator, who drafted the GOP package, said Thursday that his bill is now “closer to the trash can than it’s ever been.”

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis City Council on Friday unanimously advanced a proposal to change the city charter to allow the city’s police department to be dismantled, following widespread criticism of law enforcement after Floyd’s death.

The 12-0 vote is just the first step in a process that faces significant bureaucratic obstacles to make the November ballot, where the city’s voters would have the final say. It also comes amid a spate of recent shootings in Minnesota’s largest city that have heightened many citizens’ concerns about talk of dismantling the department.

The proposed amendment, which would replace the police department with a new “Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention” that has yet to be fully defined, next goes to a policy committee and to the city’s Charter Commission for a formal review, at which point citizens and city officials can weigh in.

Also, a Minnesota judge on Friday rejected allowing cameras in the court for pretrial proceedings of the four former Minneapolis police officers who are charged in Floyd’s death.

News media organizations and defense attorneys had requested the audio and visual recordings. But Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill rejected the request, noting that the prosecution had objected.

The legislative package from Democrats is perhaps the most ambitious set of proposed changes to police procedures and accountability in decades.