Pressure mounts to reform US justice system

HOUSTON. — Mourners gathered in Texas yesterday to pay their respects to African American George Floyd, who died in police custody two weeks ago, as pressure intensified for sweeping reforms to the Unites States justice system in the wake of nationwide protests.

Demonstrators’ anger over the May 25 death of Floyd, 46, is giving way to a growing determination to make his case a turning point in race relations and a lightning rod for change in the way police departments function across the country.

Floyd died after Derek Chauvin, the white officer accused of killing him, knelt on his neck for nine minutes in Minneapolis. A bystander’s cellphone captured the scene as Floyd pleaded with the officer, choking out the words, “I can’t breathe.”

In Houston, where Floyd grew up, American flags fluttered along the route to the Fountain of Praise church as hundreds of people waited in line to view his casket, some wearing T-shirts with the words, “I can’t breathe.”

“It’s a great day today. A lot of changes are being made. It’s a tragedy a life had to be taken,” said Perence Mcintosh, a black Houston resident who was among those in line. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who is challenging Republican President Donald Trump in a Nov 3 election, planned to meet Floyd’s family in Houston later in the day, according to his aides. Floyd will be buried today. Reverend Al Sharpton, a black civil rights leader, is expected to give the eulogy. In Washington, Democrats in Congress unveiled legislation that would make lynching a hate crime and allow victims of misconduct and their families to sue police for damages in civil court, ending a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity.

The 134-page bill also would ban chokeholds and require the use of body cameras by federal law enforcement officers, restrict the use of lethal force, and facilitate independent probes of police departments that show patterns of misconduct. It does not call for the funding of police departments to be cut or abolished, as some protesters and activists have sought. But lawmakers called for spending priorities to change.

“We have confused having safe communities with hiring more cops on the street . . . when in fact the real way to achieve safe and healthy communities is to invest in these communities,” Senator Kamala Harris, seen as a potential running-mate to Biden in the November 3 presidential election, said at a briefing. — Reuters.