Killing of Tyre Nichols revives calls for police reform in Congress

In the release of footage of a Memphis police violently beating Tire Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died of injuries three days later, has renewed calls to pass federal police reform. But with the House of Representatives now in Republican hands and the Senate closely divided, the prospect for such reforms remains unlikely.

Chief among existing proposals is the Democratic George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 without a Republican vote, but failed in the Senate.

Ben Crump, the lawyer for the Nichols family, has publicly urged Congress to pass the bill, saying in an interview with CNN Sunday that he hopes the death of Nichols will prove to be a turning point. Democrats have echoed that sentiment, one of which is rallying the bill is special or call to further bipartisan negotiations in the hope of reaching a compromise that has a chance to pass.

Both Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC), who led the failed negotiations on the police reform package in 2021, seemed receptive to giving bipartisan talks another chance in their statements on Friday. Booker said that he “will never stop working to build the broad coalition” needed to pass police reform, and Scott said Nichols’ death should be “a call to action for every lawmaker in our country at every level.” The Congressional Black Caucus also called for a meeting with President Joe Biden and a strong push for national criminal justice reform.

Still, many Republicans have expressed opposition to key reforms proposed by Democrats, including limitations on qualified immunity, which protects officials from certain lawsuits. Others reject the need for reform at the federal level. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), for example, said in an interview with NBC that, “Democrats always think that it is a new law that will fix something bad. We think that … no new law will do it.

While a divided Congress, especially a thin Democratic Senate majority, makes bipartisan policing bills unlikely, new legislation is not impossible: Tragedy has galvanized bipartisan action on divisive topics in the past.

In December, two years after George Floyd was killed by police, Congress passed legislation supporting deescalation training for law enforcement officers dealing with individuals with mental health issues. And after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year, Congress passed the first federal gun safety law in nearly thirty years, making strides in preventing guns from falling into the hands of dangerous individuals.

Neither bill is a panacea for the epidemic of violence it targets, but it represents incremental progress. So far, further compromise on police reform has been elusive.

Why police reform is at an impasse

Police reform has long stalled in Congress for a simple reason: disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over how the legislation should be enacted. In 2020, after the killing of George Floyd and massive protests about law enforcement and racism, both parties introduced their own versions of the law.

The Democratic version, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act mentioned above, would lower the legal standard by which law enforcement officers can face criminal charges for wrongdoing and limit protection from civil liability under qualified immunity, as well as hinder the ability of federal officials to use. force, no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and carotid holds. It would also establish new reporting requirements, a new national database of police misconduct, and national accreditation standards for law enforcement agencies where officers would be trained on racial profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when other officers use excessive force, in between. other provisions.

The Republican bill — the JUSTICE Act — focuses heavily on the collection of data on police use of force and other documentation of police misconduct, and is narrower than the Democratic proposal.

Qualified immunity, in particular, continues to be a sticking point between the two parties, with Democrats determined to end the protections, and Republicans arguing that doing so would leave police officers too vulnerable to liability. Under existing law, qualified immunity makes it difficult to file a civil suit against a police officer for harm caused unless there is a prior case holding that the same harm was unlawful or unconstitutional. As a result, the police are not held accountable in many cases when they kill people, cause serious injuries, and damage property.

One of the compromises floated by Scott, although it was never enacted into law, was the idea that instead of holding individual officers responsible for harm, the police department would be held accountable, in a way that would reduce pressure from individuals while still increasing accountability. Sen. Lindsey Graham, in a tweet this weekonce again referred to this idea, noting that it “holds the police department with an important responsibility.”

Generally, the federal government faces limitations when it comes to policing practices, as most departments operate at the state and local levels, and are governed by these laws. That limitation is reflected in some similarities between previous Democratic and Republican bills, both of which have tried to use federal dollars to encourage policy changes that the US government has been unable to implement. For example, both give money to state and local law enforcement agencies based on whether they break chokeholds.

One important area of ​​overlap between the two bills is the requirement that regional agencies do a better job of reporting the use of force to the Department of Justice. This can also be a starting point for new negotiations.

Booker, Scott, and former Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) – now the mayor of Los Angeles – previously led discussions in Congress on the rule. In September 2021, discussions on police reform collapsed due to party differences. That same divide remains, and with the current makeup of Congress, the chances of police reform moving forward will be narrower and harder to pass.