ANDERSON FOR 5TH DISTRICT U S CONGRESS COMMITTEE issued the following announcement on June 17.
In this article we cover the federal legislative policies that have been proposed by some of the advocates, organizers, and everyday Americans participating in Black Lives Matter protests and this moment of the civil rights movement. We examine what Congress can do about these proposals, and what it has already done.
Defunding Police
On BlackLivesMatter.com and all over the internet and news, the call to defund police has become a center of the national conversation. Proponents of defunding or abolishing police believe that police budgets are used to deploy overwhelming force upon civilians, and that they take away from other social services such as mental health counseling and poverty relief. Police budgets have increased over the last 40 years while funding for other services have declined. Additionally, they argue that there is evidence that more policing doesn’t actually reduce crime, and that spending that money providing better access to education, health care, and other social services would be more effective.
“Even if you ‘fixed’ or ‘reformed’ the police, how would you reform the broadly racist public that sics the cops on Black people they deem inconvenient or suspicious?” tweeted Gene Demby, co-host of NPR’s Code Switch, “It’s more efficient to just take the cops off the table as an option.”
What can Congress do?
Most police budgets are determined at the state and local level, so any decisions on defunding or abolishing state and local police would have to happen there. But Congress does have ways of impacting those budgets and how they are spent — — with grants. Congress frequently offers federal grants to state or local governments to encourage particular behaviors, and policing is no exception. Within the Department of Justice, the COPS, BJA, and NIJ programs have given out a combined $29 billion in federal grant funding for state and local law enforcement since 1994. Congress could potentially end this type of funding for good, use it as a bargaining chip to encourage other reforms, or change the grants to more closely align with protesters’ demands.
Democratic Party leadership has expressed a strong preference for reforming the police over defunding them. Presidential nominee Joe Biden supports increasing grants to local police through the COPS program and said he prefers “conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.” Leadership in Congress said that police funding should not be addressed at a federal level. The Justice in Policing Act of 2020, a Democratic leadership-endorsed omnibus police reform bill introduced on June 8, would require that states and localities use a minimum of five percent of federal law enforcement grant money “to study and implement effective oversight procedures,” and would require “adequate policies designed to eliminate racial profiling” as a condition for receiving grants.
Progressive Members of Congress, however, have sided with the protesters. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that defunding police “means that Black & Brown communities are asking for the same budget priorities that White communities have already created for themselves,” adding “People asked in other ways, but were always told ‘No, how do you pay for it?’ So they found the line item.”
Congress could also implement changes to the dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Capitol Police, which protects Congress. However, we are not aware of any current proposals to do so.
Demilitarizing Police
Campaign Zero, a prominent organization advocating for an end to police brutality and racial profiling, has released a list of eight bullet point demands called #8toAbolition. The list begins with defunding the police, the top line item for most of the protesters, but it goes on to include demilitarization of communities.
The military’s 1033 Program, which transfers military equipment to state and local civilian police, has been estimated to have provided $7.4 billion worth of equipment to over 8,000 state and local law enforcement agencies to date. It is one of a few ways that police can obtain excess military equipment, and although President Obama limited the types of equipment that could be distributed back in 2015, President Trump rolled back those limitations in 2017. Since then, equipment such as armored vehicles and heavy-duty rifles have been available to police across the country.
Proponents of demilitarization have argued that providing military equipment to police encourages the use of deadly force, and that regulation of the placement and use of such equipment is lackluster.
What can Congress do?
In short, Congress could prohibit the transfer of excess military equipment to law enforcement. The Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act would place restrictions on the kinds of military equipment that law enforcement agencies could obtain, banning the transfer of most ammunition, weaponry and combat vehicles, and would require stricter reporting of the needs and use of such equipment for approval of the purchase. This bill is included in the Democratic leadership’s’ Justice in Policing omnibus bill.
Congress could also potentially pass a law to require law enforcement agencies to turn over any military equipment they have already obtained, and could ban police use of military weapons or other weapons such as tear gas or rubber bullets.
Banning Targeted Policing and Over-Policing
Campaign Zero’s call for demilitarization doesn’t stop at disarming the police. It also includes ending law enforcement practices such as “broken windows policing, ‘precision policing,’ and community policing,” wherein police target specific communities based on quality of life and level of poverty. They argue that these practices result in targeted harassment of innocent people, especially Black Americans and other Americans of color, and can actually increase rates of crime.
Protesters also demand an end to “stop-and-frisk” policing, where police detain a person based on suspicion of criminal activity. They argue that this policy inevitably leads to racial profiling and further harassment of minorities. According to the 2019 NYPD Crime and Enforcement Activity Report, Black Americans were most suspected for all criminal activity, making between 40% to 70% of suspects depending on the type of crime. For perspective, only 22% of New York City is Black.
What can Congress do?
he End Racial and Religious Profiling Act, which would explicitly prohibit all law enforcement from racial profiling, and would allow victims of racial profiling to take police to court. The bill states that proof that law enforcement activities have had a disproportionate impact on a targeted group would constitute evidence of a violation, meaning the criminal suspect statistics above would likely allow Black residents of New York City to sue the NYPD. The bill would also require that any state or local police force eliminate any existing practice that permits or encourages racial profiling to receive federal grants. This bill is included in the Democratic leadership’s’ Justice in Policing omnibus bill.
Removing Police from Public Spaces
In particular, protesters have called for police to be removed from public schools, where overt surveillance of Black students enables a school to prison pipeline. Black students are generally placed under higher scrutiny in public schools, especially in high-crime neighborhoods where public schools often include drastic security measures such as metal detectors and in-school police. Some localities have already cut ties with police, such as in Minneapolis in response to the murder of George Floyd.
But the call to remove police from public space expands further than public schools. In hospitals, police often access private medical data during their investigations. They have also turned to universities for data analytics as part of a process called “predictive policing,” wherein police use algorithms to identify “high risk areas” where crimes are likely to occur. Protesters have called for an end to these practices as well.
What can Congress do?
Congress has a lot of control over public schools, universities, and hospitals. While these institutions are not federally run, they are federally funded. Congress could make that funding contingent on public schools removing police guards, universities refusing to assist in predictive policing, and hospitals denying police access to patient records.
The Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act would, among other things, require the development of standards of policing related to juvenile justice and school safety by Attorney General Bill Barr. The PRIDE Act would require states to report use of force by law officers, including officers on public school campuses. The Federal Police Camera and Accountability Act would prohibit officers from activating body-worn cameras on elementary or secondary school campuses, except when responding to imminent threat to life. All three bills are included in the Democratic leadership’s’ Justice in Policing omnibus bill.
Holding Police Accountable
Aside from calling for the prosecution of the officers who murdered George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, protesters want to see significant measures to hold all police accountable for their actions. Those include limiting the power of police unions, establishing standards and reporting for police use of force, and empowering civilian oversight of police. The bottom line for many protesters is that police must be held accountable to the law just as any other American.
One particular way that police avoid legal action is with qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that states that government officials cannot be held personally accountable for their actions while working unless they explicitly violate a “clearly established” court ruling. In practice, qualified immunity has led to cases where police are not charged despite killing innocent people, such as in the case of Breonna Taylor’s killers (so far).
What can Congress do?
Title I of the Justice in Policing Act focuses entirely on police accountability. It would reform qualified immunity to restrict defenses for local and state police in court and use the money from the COPS grant program to fund civilian review boards. It also incorporates the text of the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2020, which would fund the research and development of uniform standards of policing, and make federal law enforcement grants contingent on police adhering to such standards. The Justice in Policing Act also incorporates the text of the PRIDE Act, which would require states report police use of force to receive certain grants.
Decriminalizing Nonviolent Offenses
Marijuana possession, sex work, loitering, jaywalking, and biking on the sidewalk can all land someone in jail. Protesters argue that when police disproportionately target communities of color, they will almost always have a reason to make an arrest, which can lead to Black and brown Americans being hurt or killed. George Floyd was murdered during an arrest for suspicion of forging a twenty dollar bill.
Advocates have estimated that misdemeanors account for 80% of all court dockets, and argue that alongside significant racial disparities in criminal suspicion, these misdemeanors often become tools for police to harass people of color.
Protesters argue that if Congress is going to decriminalize any of these misdemeanors, they also ought to forgive past offenses. Reports from the NYPD show Black Americans made up at least 40% of suspects for any given crime, as mentioned above. Black Americans also make up almost 40% of prisoners nationwide, in contrast to being just 14% of the total population.
What can Congress do?
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker introduced the Marijuana Justice Act last year, which would not only decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, but would also allow those imprisoned for federal marijuana violations to petition for their sentence to be reduced. Further, the bill would prohibit states from receiving federal funds for prisons if that state has a disproportionately high rate of incarceration for marijuana violations. That money would instead be reinvested in communities negatively impacted by the war on drugs.
While most misdemeanors are criminalized at state and local levels, the latter half of Booker’s legislation could be replicated to dissuade states from criminalizing various behaviors. Congress could potentially deny grants and federal funding to states that devote that money towards imprisoning individuals for nonviolent crimes. That money could then be reinvested in social services to help disadvantaged communities.
Reinvesting in Social Services
Protesters have an idea of what to do with all the money leftover from defunding law enforcement: invest in improving quality of life for victims of over-policing.
Protesters want to see money put into housing, education, and healthcare. They argue that when communities have reliable access to these basic needs, crime reduces not for fear of punishment, but for lack of motivation. When asked what an America with defunded police would look like, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez replied: “It looks like a suburb. Affluent white communities already live in a world where they choose to fund youth, health, housing, etc. more than they fund the police. These communities have lower crime rates not because they have more police, but because they have more resources to support a healthy society in a way that reduces crime.”
What can Congress do?
Congress controls the purse of the nation. It has more power to provide social services than any other governing body, whether by directly funding federal programs or by offering grants to states and localities. The limit to Congress’ ability to invest in social services is, essentially, however much legislators are willing to spend.
Progressive Members of Congress have proposed reinvesting significant portions of the federal budget into services such as Medicare for All, free public college, and public housing. But while progressive policies may have the support of a majority of the public, without the support of Democratic or Republican leadership they are a long way from being enacted into law.
This list does not speak for the perspectives or demands of all protesters — — no one does. Even organizations like Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero, while prominent voices, do not speak for the countless people in America and overseas who are expressing their anger over police brutality. In understanding this movement it is crucial to understand that there are myriad perspectives and voices, most of which are not included in this article.
Original source here.
Alerts Sign-up