[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 102 (Tuesday, June 2, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2642-S2645]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Protests

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, today we are on the Senate floor at a 
time when, once again, we are attempting as a country to reconcile 
things that should have been reconciled long ago. The deaths of George 
Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery shocked and outraged the 
country. The three of them, in a very short period of time, brought 
again this division we have in our country where we look at the country 
and particularly look at law enforcement in two different ways.
  The discussion I have had with my sons is different from the 
discussion that many of my African-American friends have had--in fact, 
as far as I know, all of my African-American friends who ever talked to 
me about this have had--with their sons. With my sons, I would say: If 
you get in trouble, look for a police officer.
  That is not the police officer discussion that African-American 
fathers often have with their sons. That discussion goes more like 
this: If you are picked up by the police, do exactly what you are told 
until I get there, and we will straighten it out once I get there.
  Those are the two views of what happens.
  We see in all of these cases some reason to believe that those 
concerns are absolute and legitimate. Because of that, there is a wide 
support for the protests going on around the country. At our leadership 
stakeout today on the Republican side, everybody was great, I think, 
understanding the emotion and empathy, and they talked about the 
importance of peaceful protests as we see these things that have 
happened.
  The problem is we have protests peacefully during the day that turn 
into violence and chaos at night. The peaceful protests shouldn't 
become a cover for violent activity. In fact, one of my good friends 
who planned some protest marches told me today that there has never 
been a peaceful protest march planned for the nighttime. Nighttime is 
not the time for peaceful protest marching. It might be the time for a 
candlelight vigil, but not a time for peaceful protests.
  What we see at night are people who either weren't part of that 
daytime protesting activity or were there in the daytime so they could 
transition to violence and looting at night. It is absolutely 
outrageous and absolutely unacceptable.
  We saw George Floyd's brother yesterday go to the place where his 
brother died and say: If I am not looting, if I am not rioting, if I am 
not destroying other people's property, why would you be doing that?
  He was saying: I lost my brother, and I am not trying to destroy my 
neighborhood because I lost my brother. I am not trying to destroy his 
neighborhood because my brother is gone.
  Yet we see activities happen that are unacceptable on all fronts. 
Last night, in St. Louis, we had four police officers shot in the line 
of duty. Sometime earlier in the day, it had been anticipated that at 
the City Justice Center there would be a planned violent activity. You 
don't manage to shoot four police officers unless you are thinking 
about it and normally thinking about it in advance, but that is what 
happened. Fortunately, those wounds were all survivable.
  I talked to people in the police department in St. Louis today, and 
they had six other events last night where police were shot at during 
the course of the night. We need to realize that the police officers 
who work and the National Guard men and women who are working are out 
there risking their lives trying to protect others. We need

[[Page S2643]]

to realize that when they go to work every day, the members of their 
family have every reason to be concerned all day and every day of what 
might happen. They don't know what door the person they love may be 
asked to knock on, what car they may stop, or what moment may happen 
that makes the difficult life of being in law enforcement even more 
difficult.
  We have certainly seen plenty of tragedies there in recent years, 
too. It hasn't been that long ago that police officers were being 
ambushed routinely and a number of police officers were killed while on 
duty, not while they were trying to apprehend a felon, but when 
somebody just walks up behind them in the car or on the street and 
their life is ended.
  Then we see the horrifying image of George Floyd's murder. We have 
the same fear for people in that situation and the people whom they 
love. In fact, nobody should live in fear in our society of just their 
personal safety--not the law enforcement officers, not their families, 
not people who are peacefully protesting, or people who have violated 
the law and are being arrested, as they should be, but not with the 
result that we saw. Whether that arrest was appropriate or not, no 
arrest is appropriate to decide you are going to be the punishing 
officer as well as the arresting officer.
  Those who are in power should be held accountable. Those who are in 
power should set an example.
  I talked this morning to the police chief in Kansas City, Rick Smith, 
who tomorrow will be joining a unity march with other leaders in the 
community and protesters in the community. Marching along with the 
protesters will be Chief Smith and other officers and other elected 
leaders. That is one way to begin to resolve this.
  I also think, having had some experience with this particular topic, 
that the Justice Department needs to reinstate their full review of 
department pattern and practice. This is something they have walked 
away from in recent years, but in our State we had three departments 
since 2014 that had a full pattern and practice review by the Justice 
Department. At least one of those entered into a consent decree with 
the Department as to how they would focus in the future.
  I think one of those three--St. Louis County--asked for the review. 
St. Louis County, the city of Ferguson, St. Louis city--all believe 
they benefited from that review.
  Reviewing an officer or a number of officers is just often not 
enough, so I am encouraging the Department of Justice to get back to 
having one of the options on the table a full review by the Civil 
Rights Division or some other division in the Justice Department, 
depending on the circumstances, of not only the procedures but also the 
pattern that a department may have fallen into.
  We cannot continue over and over again to have the same thing happen, 
as we as a society try to grapple with the same exact problem. This is 
not a new problem. It is long past the time we should have figured out 
how to deal with it.
  If departments need help in figuring out how to deal with it, that is 
one of the things that--whether it was St. Louis or Baltimore--the 
Justice Department has shown some ability and some success in doing. I 
hope they will look at that again as they look at these three instances 
that I mentioned today and others.
  It is time to move forward. It is well past time to move forward. It 
is a time when people should have a society--have confidence in the 
institutions of the society, and those who serve in law enforcement and 
public assistance of all kinds should also have the appreciation and 
respect that we should have for them, and, of course, that is a 
contract where you earn that respect, but you also get that respect 
when you have earned it, as well over 99.9 percent of those who serve 
every day do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). The Senator from Illinois.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1938

  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask 
unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from 
further consideration of S. 1938 and the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration; further, that the bill be read a third time 
and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and 
laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I think we probably can get there if we 
talk. We just got this thing at 5:30 last night. It is a grant program 
to try to strive for better policing, less bias. I get that. Count me 
in for that concept.
  There is a civilian review process about prosecutorial decisions that 
I don't quite understand. Senator Lee came up and asked me questions 
about the bill.
  So with no animosity, I object at this time. I hope we can get it as 
part of a broader agenda. On June 16, we are going to have a hearing 
about all things related to police and race, and we will try to make 
this part of a package.
  So at this time, I do object, and let it go through the committee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Illinois
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, first he said ``I can't breathe.'' Then 
he called out ``Mama'' for his late mother.
  Last Monday, in broad daylight, George Floyd was slowly, publicly 
killed by someone whose responsibility it was to protect and serve. 
Officer Derek Chauvin, who has since been rightfully fired, spent about 
3 minutes ignoring Floyd's cries of pain, refusing to move his knee 
from Floyd's neck, refusing to let up, to get up, even as the man under 
him begged for life and lost consciousness. Then he spent roughly 
another 6 minutes after Floyd had fallen silent ignoring the number of 
growing of witnesses who begged him to see the obvious--that the man 
under his knee was unresponsive, that he was dying.
  As a mom, there are not words to describe the visceral, gut-wrenching 
feeling of hearing someone cry out for their mother in a moment of such 
desperation.
  George Floyd's death was unnecessary and heartbreaking. It was a 
tragedy, but horrifyingly, it was not an anomaly.
  From Eric Garner, who told us 6 years ago that he, too, could not 
breathe, to Tamir Rice, who never made it to his 13th birthday, the 
senseless killing of unarmed Black Americans at the hands of law 
enforcement has become an all-too-common occurrence. The horror of the 
moment, then the outrage and sadness and, yes, anger that follow have 
turned into a pattern that too many people appear to believe is normal. 
It is not, and we cannot--must not--let ourselves become numb to the 
reality in front of us.
  George Floyd was someone's son who with his dying breath called out 
for his mother who had previously passed away. He had a 6-year-old 
daughter who will not only grow up without a father but knowing that 
she, too, would face the same danger every day just because of the 
color of her skin.
  George Floyd was born in a country built on the belief that we are 
all created equal, but he died in a country that still has not fully 
realized that we must all be treated equally as well.
  It is long, long past time for action. We needed it before George 
Floyd; we needed it before Breonna Taylor, before Laquan McDonald, and 
before countless others were killed too.
  We need real leaders who listen to Americans' cries for help and give 
those fighting for justice a platform to be heard. But sadly, although 
unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has done just the opposite over the past 
few days, trampling First Amendment rights by ordering Federal law 
enforcement to assault those who stood in the way of his photo-op, 
exploiting our military and disrespecting our troops by using them as a 
cudgel to silence our neighbors and further divide our country.
  Donald Trump may be our Commander in Chief, but tear-gassing peaceful 
protestors is not leadership; it is cowardice. Threatening military 
force against Americans exercising their constitutional right is not 
Presidential; it is tin-pot dictatorial.
  You know, in moments like these, it is more important than ever to 
recognize the privilege that many of us

[[Page S2644]]

have. I will never be forced to sit my daughters down and have the same 
talk with them that Black mothers have with their children--especially 
their sons--about how exactly to move and speak when interacting with 
police officers to preemptively reassure them that they pose no danger; 
or about the fundamental racism that mars our society that will 
question their motives and their right to be somewhere just because of 
the shade of their skin; or about the systemic biases that lead too 
many Americans, including those in positions of power, to view unarmed 
Black children as more threatening than White adults holding 
semiautomatic rifles.
  I know that I will never be able to fully comprehend the fear that 
those parents must face every time their child steps outside, every 
time they dare to walk to school or play on the playground or buy some 
Skittles while Black. But what I do know is the burden of all this pain 
and trauma cannot fall and should not fall on those families alone. The 
responsibility, the work, the bending of the moral arc of the universe 
toward justice cannot just be put on the backs of the very people who 
have been feeling its weight this entire time.
  The systemic injustices in our country are not going away by 
themselves, and they will not be solved if too many good, decent 
Americans remain silent. If we choose to avoid difficult realities and 
tough conversations simply because they make us uncomfortable, we are 
failing to do our part in achieving anything close to a more perfect 
union.
  Those of us who have benefited from the privileges we have been 
afforded by society, we have a duty to recognize the costs borne by 
those who have been denied those same privileges for generations.
  I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that we must do 
more. On a personal level, for me, that has included spending time with 
both of my daughters, discussing what true justice and equality means 
and how to practice it so that if they grow up to become police 
officers themselves, they don't reflexively treat Black Americans as 
more dangerous than anyone else; so that when they see a young Black 
man shopping, their first thought would never be that he is 
shoplifting; so that no matter what they do in life, they judge people 
by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
  My girls may be just 5 and 2, but it is never too early for us to 
talk to our kids about treating others how we want to be treated 
because our neighbors, our American brothers and sisters, need more 
vocal allies in this fight. I hope to raise two of those allies in my 
two girls. Today, I hope to find 99 fellow allies in my colleagues here 
in the Senate. It is on each of us lucky enough to serve under this 
great Capitol dome to use this moment to fight for justice and 
accountability for those families like George Floyd's who had someone 
so cruelly and needlessly stolen from them.

  So I have come to the floor today to request unanimous consent on S. 
1938, the Police Training and Independent Review Act, the second bill I 
ever introduced into this august body more than 3 years ago. This bill 
would demand that local law enforcement agencies change use-of-force 
policies and that every American receive fair treatment under the law--
commonsense policies that I believe responsible law enforcement 
officers would welcome so they could better protect and serve their 
communities.
  It would establish a new grant program so States can implement racial 
bias training at police academies to help officers deescalate tense 
situations. It would also encourage States to establish a transparent 
system where independent prosecutors review police uses of force and 
prosecute officers who break the laws they were entrusted to enforce, 
because local prosecutors do have a bias. They rely on the same police 
departments to win other cases, which is why it is so critical that we 
let outside independent prosecutors do the investigating and 
prosecuting of our law enforcement officers who do not follow the law 
themselves instead.
  For me, it comes down to this: We cannot let ourselves accept that, 
in the United States of America, in the year 2020, Black men are still 
being publicly executed without judge or jury. For about 9 minutes last 
Monday, somebody's son and somebody's father was forced to know he was 
dying and forced to beg for his life until he couldn't beg anymore.
  George Floyd cannot breathe anymore. So it is on those of us lucky 
enough to still be here today, to still be breathing, to use every 
breath we have to fight for the justice that he was robbed of on that 
street in Minneapolis last week. I know I will, and I hope every other 
American will join me.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to finish my 
remarks before the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to honor a 
life lost, share in the grief of a family and a Nation in pain, and 
call for this body to take action to reform a system that has been 
broken for too long.
  George Floyd should be alive today, but he isn't. He was murdered by 
police in my State--a death both horrifying and inhumane but not 
unique. We literally saw his life evaporate before our eyes. The whole 
country saw it. The whole world saw it.
  We know that our African-American community in Minneapolis and across 
America has seen this horror before and has experienced injustice for 
far too long. They have had enough. They are angry and in pain, and 
they are calling out for justice.
  Senators, we cannot answer with silence. That would make us 
complicit. We cannot answer with what the President called dominance. 
That would make us monsters. We cannot answer with using churches as 
props and Bibles as props and inflaming violence. We must answer with 
action. That is what makes us lawmakers.
  For 13 years, here in Washington, change has come inch by inch when 
we should be miles ahead. I pick that time because that is when I first 
got here. That is when I first started doing work on crack cocaine and 
sentencing disparity, and I have seen those changes, but it is inch by 
inch.
  First, there needs to be justice for George Floyd. There needs to be 
criminal accountability to the fullest extent of the law. Minnesota 
attorney general Keith Ellison, with whom I have worked closely for 
years, has taken over the investigation and the prosecution of the 
case. I have full faith in his conviction for justice in this case and 
beyond.
  Sweeping reform starts with accountability in this individual case, 
but it doesn't end there. We all know that these officers work within a 
bigger system, so that is why I called for a full-scale investigation 
into the patterns and practices of racially discriminatory policing in 
the Minneapolis Police by the Department of Justice, in addition to 
ongoing local, State, and Federal investigations.
  Senator Smith and I led a request with 26 Senators asking the Justice 
Department to conduct what is called a pattern-and-practice 
investigation. This afternoon, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights 
announced that they are going to investigate the police department as 
well.
  The words engraved on the Supreme Court building, ``Equal Justice 
Under Law,'' we know have never really been true for millions of 
African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and other minority 
groups. There is systematic racism at every level of our judicial 
system, and that calls for systematic change.
  We must take action to end unconstitutional, discriminatory policing 
across the country. We can start by making sure that policemen's 
conduct is independently investigated and that we hold officers 
criminally accountable when they break the law and violate the trust 
that is needed between law enforcement officers and the people they 
have sworn to protect.
  We also need strong Federal requirements for State and local police 
to collect and report data on the use of force. Right now, a patchwork 
of local policies, many of which allow local police to avoid 
accountability, make it far too difficult to identify and address 
patterns of discrimination and excessive force in police departments. 
Better

[[Page S2645]]

data will help hold officers and departments accountable.
  Broader criminal justice reform and the standard for use of force--
all of those things must change. As I mentioned, we have done 
something. We passed the First Step Act when it comes to sentencing, 
but now we need to take on the Second Step Act to create incentives for 
States to restore discretion for mandatory sentencing for nonviolent 
offenders and reform the conditions in State prisons and local jails.
  We know these conditions have gotten even worse during the 
coronavirus pandemic. Earlier today, we held a hearing in the Judiciary 
Committee about the continued injustice we are seeing in our prison 
system during this pandemic. While some people, like Paul Manafort, 
have been transferred to home confinement, others, like Andrea Circle 
Bear or Andrea High Bear, who is serving 26 months for a nonviolent 
drug offense and had just given birth while on a ventilator--why? She 
was exposed to the virus. So the question is, Why did a pregnant woman 
with a preexisting condition--an American Indian woman who was there 
for a nonviolent offense--why was she there in the prison system and 
Paul Manafort gets out?
  We should also create a diverse, bipartisan clemency advisory board--
one that includes victim advocates as well as prison and sentencing 
reform advocates--that would look at these issues from a different 
perspective.
  We should strengthen post-conviction reviews with conviction 
integrity units across the country. According to data from the National 
Registry of Exonerations, there are currently fewer than 60 conviction 
integrity units in the United States, and many of those are too weak to 
be effective. Attorney General Ellison and I have been working with 
prosecutors in Minnesota to set up a conviction integrity unit in the 
Twin Cities with strong, strong standards for independence and 
transparency. This needs to happen nationally.
  We should also expand post-conviction sentencing reviews. Ensuring 
justice isn't just looking back at a case to see whether the evidence 
was right; it is also looking to see whether the sentence was right in 
a situation.
  All of this--expanding our Nation's drug courts, which is something 
that I have been leading on in the Senate for years, changing that 
conversation about drug and alcohol treatment, reforming the cash bail 
system--if there is anything we as a Senate can do to eliminate 
injustice within our justice system, we should do it, and we should do 
it now. Talk is no longer enough.
  We know this pandemic has shed a light on the injustice we have 
already seen, as Senator Durbin, who was here, and I discussed about 
the prison system today. We also see it in the number of people dying. 
In Louisiana, African Americans account for nearly 60 percent of deaths 
but 33 percent of the population. In Georgia, a study of eight 
hospitals found that 80 percent of their COVID-19 patients were African 
Americans yet 30 percent of the population. The workers on the 
frontline, the people who are working not just in the hospitals, not 
just in the emergency rooms, but in the grocery stores, driving the 
public transportation, are getting this virus--this sometimes fatal 
virus--at a much higher rate. This calls for not only the reforms that 
I laid out and that I have been advocating for years but also calls for 
investment, like Jim Clyburn's plan to invest in underserved areas and 
impoverished areas that have been that way for a long, long time. 
Senator Booker is carrying that bill in the Senate.

  Martin Luther King once said that we are ``all tied in a single 
garment of destiny. Whatever affects one of us directly, affects all 
indirectly.'' That means, in the long term, an economy that works for 
everyone, with fair wages, with childcare, and with retirement savings. 
It means closing the wealth gap. Black and Latino households have only 
about a tenth of the medium net worth right now of White households. It 
means voting rights.
  The scene that we saw in Wisconsin where people were standing in the 
rain with homemade masks and garbage bags just to be able to vote, 
risking their lives and their health, while the President of the United 
States was able to vote in the luxury of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 
because he could get a mail-in ballot from Palm Beach, FL--that is a 
split screen for you. That is why people are out peacefully marching. 
That is what they are angry about. It is police misconduct. It is the 
murder of George Floyd. It is the longtime economic disparities, but it 
is also the longtime suppression of the vote and the unfairness of all 
of this.
  This has been a devastating time for Minnesota, but as George Floyd's 
family, whom I had the honor to talk with at length this weekend, said: 
We cannot sink to the level of our oppressors, and we must not endanger 
others during this pandemic. We will demand and ultimately force 
lasting change by shining a light on treatment that is horrific and 
unacceptable and by winning justice.
  That is what they are talking about in Minnesota today. That was the 
spirit that I saw when my husband and I went to drop off food, where 
hundreds of people were there with thousands of bags of groceries 
because their grocery stores in that neighborhood had been burned to 
the core and their stores had been looted, not by the peaceful, 
righteous marchers but the people who were hiding behind them.
  I will end with this. A few years ago I went to Selma, AL, with 
Representative   John Lewis, like so many Senators have done. I stood 
there on the bridge where he had his head beaten in. I was in awe of 
his persistence, his resilience, and his faith that this country could 
be better, if only we put in the work. That weekend, after 48 years, 
the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to 
Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized on behalf of the police for 
not protecting him 48 years before and not protecting his freedom 
marchers.
  I don't want to take 48 years for my city and my State to heal or for 
our Nation to fix a justice system that has been broken since it was 
built. I want justice now. The people of this country deserve justice 
now. Everyone has a role to play in coming back from these crises. The 
protesters are shining a light on injustice that we have pushed to the 
shadows for far too long. The frontline workers and volunteers are 
serving the communities they love, and they are looking to all of us to 
deliver the reforms we promised--not just in speeches, not just in 
campaigns, but in reality, and not just for George Floyd. His legacy 
should be so much more than those 9 minutes--or Philando Castile or 
Jamar Clark or Breonna Taylor--because we took an oath.
  We took an oath, colleagues. We didn't wave a Bible in the air for a 
photo op. We placed our hand on that Bible, and we swore to support and 
defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic. The enemy we face now is racism. The enemy we 
face now is injustice. I don't know what else to say because too many 
words have been said, and maybe it is time to stop talking. Maybe it is 
time to start acting. It is time to get to work. It is time to do our 
jobs.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Democratic leader is 
recognized.