The Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives on Thursday approved an overhaul of policing policy, but the collapse a day earlier of a bill in the Republican-majority US Senate leaves final legislation in doubt.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, challenging opponents not to allow deaths of black men in police custody to have been in vain or the outpouring of public support for changes to go unmatched.
“Exactly one month ago, George Floyd spoke his final words — ‘I can’t breathe’ — and changed the course of history,” Pelosi said.
Photo: Bloomberg
She said that the Senate faces a choice “to honor George Floyd’s life or to do nothing.”
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is perhaps the most ambitious set of proposed changes to police procedures and accountability in the US in decades. It aims to match the momentum of demonstrations that filled streets across the nation, but has almost no chance of becoming law.
On the eve of the vote on Thursday, US President Donald Trump’s administration said that he would veto the Democrat bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also said that it would not pass the chamber.
After the Republican bill stalled this week, blocked by Democrats, Trump said: “If nothing happens with it, it’s one of those things. We have different philosophies.”
Congress is now at a familiar impasse, despite protests outside its door and polling that shows Americans overwhelmingly want changes after the deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others in interactions with law enforcement. The two parties are instead appealing to voters ahead of the fall presidential election, which would determine control of the House, Senate and White House.
“We hear you. We see you. We are you,” US Representative Hakeem Jeffries said during the debate on Thursday.
Lawmakers who have been working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic were summoned to the Capitol for hours of debate. Dozens voted by proxy under new pandemic rules.
During the day, several Democratic lawmakers read the names of those killed, shared experiences of racial bias and echoed support of Black Lives Matter activists.
US Representative Karen Bass, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that hundreds of thousands of people “in every state in the union” are marching in the streets to make sure Floyd “will not be just another black man dead at the hands of the police.”
Republican lawmakers said that the Floyd bill goes too far and failed to include Republican input.
“All lives matter,” US Representative Debbie Lesko said.
US Representative Pete King said that it is time to stand with law enforcement, the “men and women in blue.”
Both bills share common elements that could be grounds for a compromise. Central to both would be the creation of a national database of use-of-force incidents, which is viewed as a way to provide transparency on officers’ records if they transfer from one agency to another. The bills would restrict police chokeholds and set up new training procedures, including beefing up the use of body cameras.
The Floyd bill goes much further, mandating many of those changes, while also revising the federal statute for police misconduct and holding officers personally liable for damages in lawsuits. It also would halt the practice of sending military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.
Neither bill goes as far as some activists want with calls to defund the police and shift resources to other community services.
US Senator Tim Scott, who drafted the Republican package, said that the bill was now “closer to the trash can than it’s ever been.”
“I’m frustrated,” he said on Fox News Channel.
Scott said that he was open to amending his bill with changes proposed by Democrats.
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