[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 112 (Wednesday, June 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S3053]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Policing Reform

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as everybody knows, this country faces an 
extraordinary set of crises--crises that are unprecedented in the 
modern history of our country.
  Over the last several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Americans have 
taken to the streets and courageously demanded an end to police murder 
and brutality and to urge us all to rethink the nature of policing in 
America. In the midst of all that, we continue, of course, to suffer 
from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken the lives of over 115,000 
Americans and infected over 2 million of our people.
  Then, on top of that, we are experiencing the worst economic meltdown 
since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with over 32 million Americans 
having lost their jobs in the last 3 months. In the midst of all of 
that, enough truly is enough.
  The U.S. Senate must respond to the pain and the suffering of our 
constituents. Let us begin work today, not next week, not next month 
but right now in addressing the unprecedented crises our people are 
facing. If there is anything that the torture and murder of George 
Floyd by Minneapolis police has taught us, it is that we have to 
fundamentally rethink the nature of policing in America and reform our 
broken and racist criminal justice system.
  Let us be clear--and I think everybody understands this--the murder 
of George Floyd is not just an isolated incident. It is the latest in 
an endless series of police killings of African Americans, including 
Rayshard Brooks, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tamir 
Rice, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, Walter Scott, and many, 
many others.
  The American people are rightly demanding justice and an end to 
police brutality and murder. And we have to hear that cry coming from 
all across this country, from large cities and small towns, and the 
Senate must act and act now.
  Here is some good news in the midst of a lot of bad news, and that is 
thanks to a massive grassroots movement, the Senate will finally begin 
to debate legislation dealing with the police. That is a good thing. 
The bad news is that the Republican legislation, at least what I have 
seen this morning, goes nowhere near far enough as to where we need to 
go.
  Now is not the time to think small or respond with superficial, 
bureaucratic proposals. Now is not the time for more studies. Now is 
the time to hold racist and corrupt police officers and police 
departments accountable for their actions. Now is the time to implement 
far-reaching reforms that would protect people and communities that 
have suffered police brutality, torture, and murder for far too long. 
Now is the time to act boldly to protect the First Amendment right to 
protest.
  Let me very briefly describe some of the areas in which I think the 
Congress should move with regard to police brutality and the whole 
issue of policing.
  First, and maybe most importantly, every police officer in our 
country must be held accountable, and those found guilty must be 
punished with the full force of law. That includes officers who stand 
by while brutal acts take place. Every single killing of a person by 
police or while in police custody must be investigated by the 
Department of Justice.
  We must create a process by which police departments look like the 
communities they serve and be part of those communities, not be seen as 
invading, heavily armed, occupying forces. That is not what police 
departments should look like. We must, therefore, prohibit the transfer 
of Department of Defense military equipment to police departments.
  Further, we need to abolish qualified immunity so police officers are 
held civilly liable for abuses. We need to strip Federal funds from 
departments that violate civil rights. We need to provide funding to 
States and municipalities to create a civilian core of unarmed first 
responders to supplement law enforcement.
  For too long, we have asked police departments to do things which 
they are not trained or prepared to do, and we have criminalized 
societal problems like addiction and homelessness and mental illness, 
severe problems that exist in every State in the country. But these are 
not problems that will be solved by incarceration. We are not going to 
solve the crisis of addiction or homelessness or mental illness by 
incarceration. We have done that for too long, and it is a failed 
approach.
  We need to make records of police misconduct publicly available so 
that an officer with a record of misconduct cannot simply move two 
towns over and start again. We need to require all jurisdictions that 
receive Federal grant funding to establish independent police conduct 
review boards that are broadly representative of the community and that 
have the authority to refer deaths that occur at the hands of police or 
in police custody to Federal authorities for investigation. We need to 
amend Federal civil rights laws to allow more effective prosecution of 
police misconduct by changing the standard from willfulness to 
recklessness. We need to ban the use of facial recognition technology 
by the police.
  Finally, and certainly not least importantly, we need to legalize 
marijuana. In the midst of the many crises we face as a country, it is 
absurd that, under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is 
at schedule 1, along with killer drugs like heroin. State after State 
have moved to legalize marijuana, and it is time for the Federal 
Government to do the same. When we talk about police department reform, 
we must end police officers continuing to arrest, search, or jail the 
people of our country, predominantly people of color, for using 
marijuana.
  We need to ban the use of rubber bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas 
on protesters. The right to protest, the right to demonstrate is a 
fundamental, constitutional right and a right that must be respected.