The Case for a Better Justice in Policing Act: The Memphis Police Beats a Black Man, Write Another Black Man’s Obituary
Protesters took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality and the death of a man in Memphis after a violent police beating.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act needs to be known in order for it to stand a chance in the current political climate.
President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.
The Congressional Black Caucus wants a meeting with Biden this week. The chair of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corp. wants the House and Senate to speed up negotiations and work together to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities.
The president of the Tennessee State Conference NAACP called on Congress to do something during a Sunday news conference in Memphis. “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary. You’re responsible for the blood of Black America. Stand up and do something.
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The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.
It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.
The legislation would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and mandate the use of deadly force only as a last resort, according to the fact sheet.
The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. The Senate did not take action on it even after Democrats gained control of the Senate in 2021.
A deal that would garner the necessary 60 votes in the Senate was difficult to reach due to a number of complicated issues.
“It was clear at this negotiating table, in this moment, we were not making progress,” Booker told reporters in the spring of 2021. “In fact, recent back-and-forth with paper showed me that we were actually moving away from it. The negotiations we were in stopped. The work will keep going.
On the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, Biden signed an executive order to tighten policing. Several actions that can be applied to federal officers are: ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras, and restrict no-knock warrants.
The president cannot make local law enforcement adopt the measures he has ordered, but the executive action lays out ways the federal government can help.
Here’s the reality: the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.
State officials are starting investigations into local police departments because the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.
Some local governments have taken their own actions. In the year after Floyd was killed, at least 25 states had considered some form of qualified immunity reform. The governor signed into law a series of police reforms designed to make sure that law enforcement officers who are found to engage in serious wrongdoing are dethroned.
“Many have noted the police assault on Nichols is reminiscent of that on Rodney King, a Black man whose beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was captured on video. But the beating of Nichols is actually much worse because it shows that after nearly 32 years, the needle of police reform has barely moved, and seemingly minor traffic violations continue to lead to the deaths of Black and other minority men and women in police encounters.”
He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs and waiting for a stretcher to get to him. He died three days after being hospitalized.
Ben Crump, a family attorney, said all of the officers failed their oath. They didn’t fulfill their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video: Was anybody trying to protect and serve Tyre Nichols?”
Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, among other cities across the nation on Saturday, raising signs bearing Nichols’ name and calling for an end to abuses of authority.
The events unfold in a way that is heartbreaking. I have a son,” said Kiara Hill, standing at a makeshift memorial near the Memphis corner where Nichols was beaten. “And Tyre, out of the officers on the scene, he was the calmest.”
The release of video and the quick firing of police officers should be a signal for how brutality allegations will be handled in the future. He was happy that Cerelyn Davis of the Memphis Police Department was able to charge officers within 20 days.
The five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, among other charges, according to the Shelby County district attorney.
It’s expected that the officers will be in court February 17.
The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation.
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Memphis police announced Saturday that it will disband the unit, saying that “it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit.”
The city council chair told CNN that giving officers new training would be the best way to disassemble the unit.
“We have to fight the bad players in our community, and now we’ve got to fight our own police officers. Robinson said that is not good. “We’re going to have to do something.”
Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were a part of the initial care have been relieved of duty pending an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.
A pair of Democratic state lawmakers said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.
The bills will look at mental health care for law enforcement officers as well as other topics, said Rep G.A. Hardaway.
While Democrats hold the minority with 24 representatives compared to the Republican majority of 99 representatives, Towns said this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/us/tyre-nichols-protests-sunday/index.html
Tyre Nichols: A GoFundMe for a Human, Responsible, and Humanly Responsible Citizen of Policing
“You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something. If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?” The Towns said.
As for national legislation, Crump called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but not the evenly split Senate.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, called for Congress to revive national police reform legislation, saying the bill was a good starting point.
Sen.Cory Booker has been working on this for years, and it is the right starting point. I think he and Sen. (Tim) Scott should sit down again quickly to see if we can revive that effort, but that in and of itself is not enough. He pointed to a need for a national conversation about policing in a responsible, constitutional, and humane way.
The 29-year-old was a father and also the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. He was a “good boy” who spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week, his mother said.
A GoFundMe created by Nichols’ mother has raised over $1,085,600 as of Sunday afternoon. The money raised will be used to cover the costs of Wells and her husband’s mental health services and time away from their jobs, according to the page. It also adds that they want to build a memorial skate park in honor of Tyre and his love for skating and sunsets.
The Case of the Martin Luther King, Jr.: a bipartisan effort to reform the policing laws against a teen beating
Although calls for congressional action in the wake of the fatal police beating of a teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, have not been taken seriously, the prospects of bipartisan talks on Capitol Hill to reform policing laws remain very low.
But any effort would need bipartisan support and 60 votes to clear the Senate and would then have to pass a GOP-controlled House, an extremely difficult task and at this point, unlikely, outcome.
Jordan said that it wasn’t easy to watch the evil that was shown on “Meet the Press.” I do not know if any law, training, or reform is going to change as a result of this man being handcuffed. They continued to beat him.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the GOP leadership and Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN that “I don’t know what the pathway is” to finding a deal on policing legislation.
Cornyn said that the issue of changing qualified immunity on police officers — to make it easier to sue them in civil court — remains a central sticking point.