GOP balks at cop fix
Many states moving to boost police powers
COLUMBUS, Ohio — After a year of protests over police brutality, some Republican-controlled states have ignored or blocked police-reform proposals, moving instead in the other direction by granting greater powers to officers, making it harder to discipline them and expanding their authority to crack down on demonstrations.
The sponsors of the GOP measures acted in the wake of the nationwide protests that followed George Floyd’s death, and they cited the disturbances and destruction that spread last summer through major U.S. cities, including Portland, Ore.; New York, and Minneapolis, where Floyd died at the hands of officers.
“We have to strengthen our laws when it comes to mob violence, to make sure individuals are unequivocally dissuaded from committing violence when they’re in large groups,” Florida state Rep. Juan Fernandez-Barquin, a Republican, said during a hearing for an anti-riot bill that was enacted in April.
Florida is one of the few states this year to both expand police authority and pass reforms: A separate bill awaiting action by the governor would require additional use-of-force training and ensure officers intervene if another uses excessive force.
States where lawmakers pushed back against the police-reform movement included Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming, according to an Associated Press review of legislation.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill Thursday to expand qualified immunity for police officers and enhance penalties for protesters, including elevating rioting to a felony.
“This is about protecting law enforcement and giving them the tools they need to keep our communities safe and showing them that we have their back,” said state Rep. Jarad Klein, a supporter of the bill.
The bill passed the GOP-controlled Legislature despite promises last summer by the Republican governor and GOP legislative leaders to try to end discriminatory police behavior and adopt other criminal-justice reforms.
Reynolds introduced measures at the start of the 2021 legislative session to ban racial profiling by police and establish a system for tracking racial data on police stops. Both ideas were recommended by a task force the governor appointed in 2019.
Instead, Republican lawmakers left out those proposals and pushed through the new bill.
Reynolds acknowledged that she doesn’t always get what she wants, even from her own party.
Reform advocates found the quick reversal by Iowa Republicans disappointing.
“Would it have been too hard to do the right thing?” Democratic state Rep. Ras Smith asked during a floor debate. “You decided to make this an either/or, to trample on freedom, to show support for law enforcement in ways that they didn’t even ask for.”
After Floyd’s death, Oklahoma Democrats tried to pass bills that would ban the use of chokeholds, provide uniform guidance for body cameras and create a database of police use-of-force incidents. None of those proposals received a hearing.
Instead, the Republican-dominated statehouse passed legislation to grant immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters on public streets and to prevent the releasing of personal identifying information of law enforcement officers if the intent is to stalk, harass or threaten the officer.
“I was a little disappointed because these were simply accountability measures,” said state Rep. Monroe Nichols, a Democrat whose father and uncle were police officers.
In Wyoming, Democratic state Rep. Karlee Provenza introduced a bill that would have prevented officers who are dismissed for misconduct from being hired by another law enforcement agency.
Her bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, which are both controlled by Republicans. “If the conversation is, ‘This is an anti-policing bill,’ rather than, ‘This is an accountability bill,’ it has a steeper hill to climb,” she said.
Byron Oedekoven, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, said law enforcement already does a good job vetting officers, including following hiring standards in state law and voluntarily reporting officers who are decertified to a national database.
Some states continue to introduce bills to protect police, including recent proposals in Ohio and Kentucky that would make taunting or filming a police officer a crime. But about half of states have embraced at least some reform measures.
Since May 2020, at least 67 police reforms have been signed into law in 25 states.