[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2802-S2804]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          National Police Week

  Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, this week is National Police Week--a 
time to honor the sacrifices and the service of our Federal, State, and 
local law enforcement officers.
  I want to take this opportunity as a Senator from West Virginia to 
thank the officers who keep our communities across our country safe.

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  I especially want to thank the State troopers, the sheriffs, the 
deputy sheriffs of all 55 of our counties, and our city police officers 
across West Virginia who serve and protect the Mountain State.
  Tomorrow, the 38th Annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service--a 
somber service--will honor 158 law enforcement heroes from across this 
Nation who were killed in the line of duty in the year 2018. We all 
mourn the loss of these brave men and women.
  Last night, I joined thousands, I believe, of officers on the 
National Mall for their candlelight vigil in preparation for the Peace 
Officers Memorial Service. What I saw there was really astounding. I 
struck up conversations with a lot of different people. I saw sheriffs 
from Florida. I saw the motorcycle police officers from Texas. We saw 
the mounted officers from all over the country on beautiful equestrian 
horses. We saw city police officers from big cities and small cities, 
men and women, young and old, serving our country as our law 
enforcement officers.
  As we did yesterday evening during the candlelight vigil, we continue 
to stand with not just the fallen heroes' families but those who are 
serving us now. Our country will never forget the sacrifices our fallen 
law enforcement officers and their families have made.
  In the coming days, I hope that we will further honor our police 
officers by passing several pieces of bipartisan legislation.
  One of these bills is the Supporting and Treating Officers in Crisis 
Act. It was introduced by Senator Hawley. The bill will reauthorize and 
improve family support grants for law enforcement officers to better 
address mental health and suicide prevention.
  Our law enforcement officers have to deal with difficult and often 
tragic situations. They are the first to respond to a difficult 
accident or the first to view up close and personal the devastation of 
child abuse and other terrible incidents. Responding to tragedy and 
helping individuals through the worst days of their lives would take a 
toll on anybody. We need to be there for the officers who are there for 
us by providing mental health services when they are needed.
  I also support passage of the Debbie Smith Act, which was introduced 
by Senator Cornyn. This will extend funding for DNA testing to reduce 
the rape kit backlog, which has been historically quite large.
  The West Virginia State Police and Marshall University have partnered 
to utilize some of this funding in my State. It is important that we 
continue providing resources to help our law enforcement officers bring 
justice to the victims of rape and other violent crimes.
  Senator Leahy's bill to continue the Bulletproof Vest Partnership 
Program, which we participate in, again, in West Virginia, is also 
critical to protecting the lives of our police officers.
  All of these bills enjoy broad support and should be passed soon.
  The work of our police officers do influence so many aspects of our 
lives. In West Virginia, where the opioid epidemic continues to 
devastate families and communities across the State, our police play a 
vital role. They help others to stop bringing the drugs into our towns 
to begin with. They assist with those who are caught in the cycle of 
addiction. By going to schools and being school resource officers, they 
prevent that next generation from going down that path.
  This week is also National Drug Prevention Week, and the Martinsburg 
Initiative in West Virginia is a great example of how our police can 
play such a positive role in our children's lives.
  This initiative is spearheaded by the Martinsburg Police Department, 
the Berkeley County Schools, and Shepard University, as well as a wide 
array of local partners, most especially the Boys & Girls Club of the 
Eastern Panhandle. Its goal is to stem the opioid addiction problem by 
identifying and trying to determine the basic causes of drug abuse in 
at-risk families. The effort is actually based on a CDC study that 
shows when children have adverse childhood experiences like exposure to 
drugs and alcohol, it can have a major impact on their physical and 
mental developmental health.
  The work these officers are doing, led by Martinsburg chief of police 
Maury Richards, is incredible. I have seen it firsthand. Whether they 
are playing basketball with the kids at the Boys & Girls Club of the 
Eastern Panhandle or spending times in West Virginia in Berkeley County 
Schools playing interactive learning games and helping students with 
their work, or simply lending a hand and a smile whenever one is 
needed, they are making such a difference and letting kids know that 
their police department is part of the solution, and they are there and 
available to help.
  I saw other prevention efforts underway last year when I visited John 
Adams Middle School in Charleston. I went with Chad Napier, who is from 
the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Task Force to meet with 
students. He was explaining to them just the proliferation of drugs, 
the damage drugs can do, and doing it in a way that could relate to the 
middle schoolers.
  So during National Drug Prevention Week, I want to recognize those 
who use their time and talent to help prevent addiction in our 
communities. During National Police Week, I want to thank our police 
officers again and their loved ones for their service and their 
sacrifice on behalf of our communities.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.


            65th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

  Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, this week marks the 65th anniversary of 
the Supreme Court's unanimous decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
  In Brown, the Justices recognized a profound, moral wrong tearing at 
the soul of this country--racial segregation in our Nation's schools.
  They held fast to the principle inscribed above the entrance to the 
Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' and they appealed to a 
self-evident truth, but not yet realized by our Founding documents, 
that equal means equal.
  Of course, the Supreme Court's decision in Brown didn't stand alone. 
We needed civil rights activists like Thurgood Marshall, who had built 
toward this moment to carry the torch forward. We needed a Congress and 
a White House that would enshrine protections for civil rights, voting 
rights, and housing rights into law. We needed courts committed to this 
principle that racism and White supremacy could no longer hide behind 
the shield of law.
  Most of all, we needed the power of the people fiercely demanding 
equality--students like the Little Rock Nine, who courageously, in the 
face of State-sponsored hostility, walked through the doors of Little 
Rock Central High School to jeers and taunts and threats; people like   
John Lewis, who marched and bled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; 
folks like Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, who lost their lives 
together in the pursuit of justice; and leaders like King, who pointed 
us to the mountaintop.
  Brown v. Board of Education isn't confined to the history books. The 
fight for equality and civil rights still continues to this day. Much 
of this hard-earned progress, unfortunately, almost tragically, is 
being rolled back.
  Now, staggeringly, many judicial nominees for the Trump 
administration have refused to say whether they believe Brown v. Board 
of Education was even rightly decided. They can't even affirm the most 
basic and fundamental principle of American law.
  One judicial nominee is set to receive a floor vote this week--Wendy 
Vitter. She not only refused to say that Brown was correctly decided 
but even suggested at the time that it was, perhaps, the wrong 
decision.
  The nominee for the second highest job at the Justice Department, 
Jeffrey Rosen, refused to say whether Brown was rightly decided, even 
though he would oversee the Solicitor General in day-to-day operations 
of our Federal prosecutors.
  The principle underlying Brown is more than a foundation of our legal 
system. It is also the foundation of democracy. It goes to the heart of 
one of the deepest ideals in our Nation--that we are a Nation where 
equal means equal.
  The principle underlying Brown is sacrosanct. It is not something 
that we in this era, this day and age, should be leaving up to question 
or even debate.
  So I would like to take a moment today to read from the Supreme

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Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
  This decision wasn't written just for lawyers or students at law 
school; it was written for the American people, making the case for 
equal justice under law.
  So here we are--Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS. Chief 
Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Court, and I quote:

       These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South 
     Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. . . . In each of the cases, 
     minors of the Negro race, through their legal 
     representatives, seek the aid of courts in obtaining 
     admissions to public schools of their communities on a 
     nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they have been denied 
     admission to schools attended by white children under laws 
     requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This 
     segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of equal 
     protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.
       In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-
     judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs 
     on the so-called ``separate but equal'' doctrine announced by 
     this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. . . . The plaintiffs 
     contend that segregated public schools are not ``equal'' and 
     cannot be made ``equal,'' and hence they are deprived of the 
     equal protection of the laws. . . . Today, education is 
     perhaps the most important function of state and local 
     governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great 
     expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition 
     of the importance of education toward democratic society. It 
     is required in the performance of our most basic public 
     responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the 
     very foundation of good citizenship.
       Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child 
     to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional 
     training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his 
     environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may 
     reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the 
     opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the 
     state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be 
     made available to all on equal terms.
       We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of 
     children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even 
     though the physical facilities and other ``tangible'' factors 
     may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of 
     equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. . . 
     . To separate them from others of similar age and 
     qualifications solely because of their race generates a 
     feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community 
     that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever 
     to be undone. . . . We conclude that, in the field of public 
     education, the doctrine of ``separate but equal'' has no 
     place. Separate educational facilities are inherently 
     unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others 
     similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought 
     are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of 
     the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth 
     Amendment. . . . It is so ordered.

  It has been 65 years since the nine Justices of the Supreme Court 
unanimously gave those words the force of law. Today, for any nominee 
who would enforce or interpret our laws, it should be far beyond debate 
that Brown was right--the separate-but-equal doctrine has no place in 
American society.
  Sixty-five years on, it is our duty as Americans to continue to fight 
for equality and justice in America. We owe this not just to ourselves 
but we who benefit from the blessings of this democracy, sewn by the 
hands of our ancestors, we who partake of that fruit from their labors. 
We must recognize those heroes in the generations who advocated, 
marched, and insisted that this Nation make good on the promise of 
equal justice under the law.
  I stand here upon the shoulders of those who came before. We as a 
nation have progressed in every generation toward more inclusion, more 
equality. Our courts and our activists and our citizens who came before 
have made this a more perfect union. We still have work to do, but we 
cannot allow ourselves to see undone the progress of our ancestors. We 
cannot allow ourselves to call into question those sacrosanct ideas 
enshrined in our law. This is not the time to go back. We must continue 
to forge a pathway forward.
  Sixty-five years ago, our courts acted in the name of justice and 
equality. It is our duty and obligation to preserve that progress.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.