Police reform remains a fixture in the public’s mind as the trial for George Floyd’s killing proceeds. What is Washington doing?
Almost a year after the killing of George Floyd, the officer accused of his murder is on trial, but nationwide police reform remains at an impasse. Floyd’s death while in police custody galvanized calls for racial justice that became a major focus of President Biden’s campaign. According to the White House, Mr. Biden and Vice President Harris have been monitoring former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial, while a promise that the president made during his campaign to address police reform remains unfulfilled. At his first in-person gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic on June 1, 2020, Mr. Biden promised if elected he would stand up a police oversight board within his first 100 days in office. But with weeks to go before Mr. Biden reaches the 100-day mark, he hasn’t yet announced a board, and outside criminal justice and civil rights groups told CBS News they do not expect one. “I don’t have an update on the commission,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday when asked about the status of the campaign promise. A White House official told CBS News the administration is “working in a thoughtful manner” on the “important priority” of passing the police reform proposal in the House and are advocating with some Republicans but did not directly comment on the status of the board. Susan Rice, head of the Domestic Policy Council, and senior advisor Cedric Richmond are the point people on police reform for the White House, according to three people familiar with the process, but it’s Congress that is hammering out the details of potential federal legislation. The House police reform proposal Mr. Biden supports is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, reintroduced in the House in February by Representative Karen Bass of California after it failed to pass last summer. Bass and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, both Democrats, have been talking about a possible compromise on police reform with Republican Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, who introduced his own proposal last year, according to two congressional aides. Their discussions are continuing as Chauvin’s trial enters its third week. Bass told CBS News that this latest round of conversations about police reform is different because when it was debated last summer, it was “too close to the election, which took up all the oxygen in the room.” But now, after meeting with Scott and the House Problem Solvers caucus over the past few weeks, she’s predicting movement on police reform soon — “in the next few weeks” — though she declined to divulge any details.
