The bill includes many items on police reformers’ wishlists, but it would also pump more federal money to police departments instead of shrinking their budgets.
Congressional Democrats released wide-ranging police reform legislation today in response to the national outrage over last month’s killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The Justice in Policing Act would end qualified immunity, establish a national registry for police misconduct, ban police chokeholds and no-knock raids in some circumstances, and limit the transfer of military equipment to state and local police departments. It would also require federal law enforcement officers to wear body cameras and to have dashboard cameras installed in their vehicles.
“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave the American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for the black Americans killed by police brutality today,” House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) said at a Capitol Hill news conference today. “This moment of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action as Americans from across the country peacefully protest to demand an end to injustice.”
The protests that erupted after Floyd’s death have given sudden momentum to reforms that criminal justice activists have been trying to advance for years, such as opening up police disciplinary records and getting police out of schools.
Several of the measures in the bill, like curtailing no-knock police raids and qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that shields cops from liability in civil rights lawsuits—have been on libertarians’ wish lists for a long time.
