This should have been a bipartisan effort authored by Senators Scott, Harris, and Booker. It would have been a much needed comprehensive legislative effort. Senator Scott is the first minority US Senator from a southern state elected to the US Senate from South Carolina. Senator Booker is from New Jersey and has been a mayor from a large, dynamic city in New Jersey and Senator Harris is from the West Coast where she served as the Attorney General from California and implemented prison diversion programs as a district attorney and a “first-of-its-kind” racial bias training for police officers. While in the US Senate she introduced criminal justice reform.
This is the first time there have been three African-American US Senators serving together. There are also Senators Menendez, Marco, Cruz, Hirono and Cortez Mastro serving together. It would have been magnificent if all the minority members of the US Senate authored an effective bill that would actually result in change.
This legislation is a waste of time. While it threatens to remove money from police forces that continue the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrents, it asks "pretty please" giving those forces a way out of the penalty.
The only way to INSURE "violence against Americans" ends is to mandate bans on deadly techniques currently used by police. The "Qualified Immunity" (click here) statutes governing such deadly techniques and methods must also be revised when it comes to protecting American lives.
The current Qualified Immunity practiced with police are outside the reason for the legislation.
Qualified immunity is a type of legal immunity. “Qualified immunity balances two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Pearson v. Callahan ....
These measures in law were never intended to protect killer cops.
June 17, 2020
By Seung Min Kim and John Wagner
Senate Republicans (click here) on Wednesday unveiled a policing reform bill that would discourage, but not ban, tactics such as chokeholds and no-knock warrants, offering a competing approach to legislation being advanced by House Democrats that includes more directives from Washington.
The Republican proposal, which Senate leaders said would be considered on the floor next week, veers away from mandating certain policing practices, as the Democratic plan does.
Instead, it encourages thousands of local police and law enforcement agencies to curtail practices such as chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants by withholding federal funding to departments that allow the tactics or do not submit reports related to them.
The legislation also requires local law enforcement agencies to report all officer-involved deaths to the FBI — an effort pushed by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is spearheading the GOP bill, since 2015 — and it encourages broader use of body-worn cameras for officers....
