San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Dems to push broad bill to curb police misconduct
Democrats in Congress plan to introduce expansive legislation on Monday that would make it easier to prosecute police misconduct and recover damages from officers found to have violated the constitutional rights of civilians, and step up pressure on the Justice Department to address systemic racial discrimination by law enforcement.
The bill, which House and Senate Democrats have named the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, is a direct response to the recent killings of black Americans by white civilians and officers that have prompted protests across the country, but it includes policies that civil rights activists have been pushing for decades to combat racial bias and excessive use of force by law enforcement. The New York Times obtained a copy of a sectionbysection summary of its contents, circulated privately on Capitol Hill late Friday.
It would be the most aggressive intervention into policing by Congress in recent memory, and elements of it are certain to meet with staunch opposition from politically powerful police unions and other law enforcement groups that have fought against such efforts in the past. It is not clear whether President Trump, who often aligns himself with law enforcement, will embrace such measures now.
As currently proposed, it would significantly change federal law and require states and localities to make modifications of their own, such as instituting mandatory bias training, to receive federal funds. It would create a national registry to track police misconduct and require that law enforcement agencies report data on the use of force, as well as ban certain choke holds and other practices that were used in confrontations with the police that left black Americans dead.
“Persistent, unchecked bias in policing and a history of lack of accountability is wreaking havoc on the black community,” House and Senate Democrats who assembled the package wrote in an email to colleagues on Friday accompanying the summary. “Cities are literally on fire with the pain and anguish wrought by the violence visited upon black and brown bodies.”
The effort is being led by Rep. Karen Bass of Los Angeles, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, and Sens. Cory Booker of New
Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, the only two black Democrats in the Senate. They cited the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky that have inspired protests across the country, as well as other wellknown victims of such force in recent years.
Because most police departments are under state and local control, there are limits to the kinds of changes Congress can mandate from Washington. Calls from activists to break up or drastically restructure police departments, for instance, are more likely to be answered at the state and local level.
Still, the changes Democrats are proposing would be significant. If adopted, the bill would rewrite key elements of the federal criminal code related to police misconduct to make it easier to prosecute law enforcement officers and for individuals who are victims of such practices to recover damages.
Nicholas Fandos is a New York Times writer.