WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans unveiled their version of police reform legislation Wednesday after weeks of nationwide protests over law enforcement treatment of Black Americans, setting up a battle with Democrats who are advancing a more sweeping version of reforms in the House of Representatives.
The bill, put together by the Senate’s lone Black Republican, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, doesn’t ban chokeholds but would withhold federal funding from police departments that don’t stop using the potentially deadly technique. In announcing the proposals, Scott defended the bill’s approach, insisting that it will lead to a practical ban on the tactic. “If you think about the inability to have any grants if your department has chokeholds that, frankly, is by default a ban on chokeholds,” Scott said.
It also requires police departments to keep and update disciplinary information on officers and share them with other departments when an officer tries to get a job, but does not call for a national database to track complaints against individual officers. And it focuses on data collection about other contentious police practices, including no-knock warrants and use of force that results in serious injury or death.
The measure does not include a provision to eliminate qualified immunity, a legal mechanism that protects police officers from being personally liable for their actions while on the job. The idea of curbing that did not gain widespread buy-in from other Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who has said he would not support a police reform bill if it was included.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., a top member of GOP leadership, said it was still “a bridge too far” for many Republicans who worry that it will harm recruitment and retention of police officers. Qualified immunity is a central component in the Democrats’ bill.
Another major difference between the Democrats’ and Republicans’ bill is the use of federal funds. Democrats don’t provide new federal funding to implement their reforms while the Republican bill provides funding through Department of Justice grants for new training and de-escalation programs.
The GOP bill comes at a pivotal moment in the country on an issue that Republicans have been reluctant to address but have swiftly moved on after protests swept the nation following the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man, after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes.
“The George Floyd incident certainly accelerated this conversation,” Scott said Wednesday.
Scott, who has publicly detailed instances when he has been racially profiled by the police both in his home state and inside the U.S. Capitol, led his colleagues in crafting the legislation and unveiled it at a Wednesday morning news conference where he was joined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and half a dozen other Senate Republicans.
House and Senate Democrats, led by the Congressional Black Caucus and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, unveiled their legislation earlier this month, and the House Judiciary Committee is marking it up Wednesday. It is expected to be voted on in the House next week.
McConnell said he is going to move Scott’s legislation to the floor next week, setting up a clash between the Democratic-led House and the Republican-led Senate on the legislation.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said that the GOP bill does “not meet the moment” but he signaled that he wouldn’t block the Republican bill from being brought to the Senate floor.
“This bill will need dramatic improvements,” Schumer said. “This is not about the perfect being the enemy of the good. It’s about replacing what’s ineffective with the effective,” Schumer said.
The president signed an executive order Tuesday that Democrats have called inadequate.
The death of Floyd has moved Republicans further along on the issue of police reform than they have been in the past, but they are resistant to creating any national standards of policing.
But the use of chokeholds has come under specific scrutiny, a broad term used to describe the blocking of air and blood. Local police departments have begun banning them in the wake of Floyd’s death, but how often they are used is relatively unknown.
Under the GOP Senate bill, failure to comply with collecting data on no-knock warrants and body camera use results in a reduction of federal funds. Police departments can apply for $1 million grants to implement the data collection.
The bill also increases the punishment for officers filing false police reports, increases grants for the use of body cameras and would make lynching a federal hate crime, a measure that has been blocked in the Senate.
It also requires police departments to keep and update disciplinary records of officers and share the records with other local departments when an officer moves departments.
Sen. Harris, who helped author the Democrats’ bill said the GOP version “gives lip service to the problem.”
“There’s not teeth in it,” Harris added. “Literally what he is proposing would not save a life.”
While the bill is expected the gain the support of most Republicans, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., said that the measure doesn’t go far enough.
“I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t as a Republican Conference been more aggressive here,” Braun said. He plans to introduce his own legislation eliminating qualified immunity.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also introduced a bill that would ban no-knock warrants, a measure that was not included in Scott’s bill.
“We’re still advocating that the bill needs to be fixed to make it better,” Paul said.
Leigh Ann CaldwellJulie Tsirkin contributed.
