Senate Republicans pledge vote on police reform bill as early as next week

Senate Republicans introduced the JUSTICE Act on Wednesday to reform policing after national unrest over the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota cop — and vowed a vote as early as next week.

The bill, drafted by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), contains incentives for local departments to restrict use of chokeholds, purchase and use body-worn cameras and keep information on use-of-force incidents and no-knock raids.

The bill also would make lynching a federal crime, create a commission to study conditions of African-American men and boys and fund efforts to recruit black police officers.

Scott, the only black Republican senator, said at a morning press conference that he understands the need for police reform because he’s been stopped “driving while black” repeatedly — including this year, he said, when he was pulled over for allegedly not activating his blinker early enough while changing lanes.

“Too often we’re having a discussion in this nation about, are you supporting the law enforcement community, or are you supporting communities of color? This is a false binary choice,” Scott said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said he would move for a vote swiftly, as early as next week.

“Senator Scott has made it possible for those of us in the Senate Republican conference who are not African American to understand that this problem still exists,” McConnell said.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who pushed for funding to recruit black officers, said “this is about making a law, not just making a point.”

President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that will create a national system for tracking police misconduct, encourage departments to send social workers on some nonviolent police calls and incentivize officer training programs that teach a ban on chokeholds in most instances.

Trump called for legislation that goes beyond his executive order.

The Senate Republican bill focuses heavily on incentives rather than federal mandates, but Scott said “if you think about the inability to have any grants if your department has chokeholds, that frankly is by default a ban on chokeholds.”It’s unclear if Senate Democrats will consent to a speedy vote. It’s possible they won’t, especially as House Democrats move toward a vote on their own Justice in Policing Act. A lack of consensus could scrap Senate passage before the July 4 holiday.

Democrats are pushing for further steps, including limiting safeguards that protect officers from facing legal or civil action in court — a major point of contention with Republicans.

The Democratic bill also would ban police from conducting no-knock raids when serving drug warrants, curtail the transfer of surplus military equipment to local and state police agencies and lower the threshold to federally prosecute officers if they exhibit a “reckless disregard” for someone’s life.

Scott argued there’s “an overlap of 70-75 percent” on Republican and Democratic ideas.

But when a reporter on Wednesday asked Scott about Democrats talking often about “systemic racism,” he said the terminology was a distraction. 

Scott scoffed at “the fact that some people enjoy talking about systemic racism, the fact that some people wanted to define everything from racism-racist perspective” and said “we don’t spend time on the definition of a word, but we spend time on the definition of the problem.”

Scott added: “We’re not a racist country. We deal with racism because there’s racism in the country. Both are mutually true.”

Republicans face a tough sell with House Democrats moving forward on their own bill. But GOP senators said there still can be a breakthrough, recalling passage of four major coronavirus response bills this year after negotiations.

On Tuesday afternoon White House adviser Ja’Ron Smith, who worked with Scott on the Republican bill, expressed optimism that there would be passage akin to the successful criminal sentencing and prison reform First Step Act of 2018, Trump’s first major bipartisan legislative achievement. 

“It’s just like criminal justice reform,” Smith said. “A lot of the criminal justice reform elements didn’t move because law enforcement didn’t agree with a lot of the pieces. So let’s start on all of the things that we agree [on], and get those things done because they can be very beneficial.”