Federal officers risk up to one year in prison and fines if they fail to help any individual in custody who suffers unnecessary pain, injury, or death as a result of the failure to obtain or provide
Massachusetts legislators Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley announced a bill that hold law enforcement officers criminally liable if they don’t provide medical care to individuals in their custody.
Several Democratic lawmakers in Congress responded to George Floyd’s May 25 death at the hands of Minneapolis police by proposing legislation that requires federal law enforcement to provide medical attention to any suspect experiencing health concerns while in custody.
The bill, the Andrew Kearse Accountability for Denial of Medicare Care Act of 2020, is named after a 36-year-old black man in New York who died of a heart attack in the back of a police cruiser in 2017 after begging unresponsive Schenectady officers for help.
Warren and Pressley’s proposed legislation would only apply to law enforcement employees on the federal level, including the Bureau of Prisons.
