[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 115 (Tuesday, June 23, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3147-S3152]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Justice in Policing Act

  Mr. President, I rise today on another matter, and that is to urge 
the Senate to consider meaningful, comprehensive legislation to make 
systemic changes to our justice system that will save lives--save lives 
in the Black community and save lives in all communities of color that 
have experienced injustice for far too long.

[[Page S3148]]

  I am deeply concerned that the bill on the floor this week fails to 
meet this moment. It has been nearly 1 month since George Floyd was 
murdered in my State. We all watched as his life evaporated before our 
eyes. It was a horrible thing.
  People who watched it, whether they were in law enforcement or 
whether they were just regular citizens who saw this, it hit home to 
many of them for the first time--and many of them, sadly, in the 
African-American community for many, many times before that--how truly 
unjust this is and how immoral this is.
  His death was horrifying and inhumane, and it galvanized a nationwide 
movement for justice.
  As Members of the U.S. Senate, we have a responsibility to respond to 
that call with action, and that means, when you have systemic racism, 
that you must address it with systemic change.
  Some of that is happening in our State and local governments. That is 
a good thing. But some of that must also happen here. This is not just 
an issue for one city or one State--my home State--nor is it an issue 
at just the local level. There is a lot of work that needs to be done 
at the local level, and that has been acknowledged by mayors and police 
chiefs across the country.
  There is also really important work that we must do here. I was proud 
to join my colleagues in introducing the Justice in Policing Act, led 
by Senators Booker and Harris, which makes comprehensive changes to our 
justice system that are long overdue.
  These reforms--including police officers being held accountable for 
misconduct, reforming police practices, and improving transparency--
will be good for our Nation. The Justice in Policing Act will help to 
prevent more tragedies like those we have seen--prevent murders.
  It is widely supported by groups like the NAACP, the Leadership 
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the National Urban League.
  The House is expected to pass the bill this Thursday. Then it comes 
over here. But instead of taking up that bill, the Justice in Policing 
Act, Leader McConnell has brought a different bill to the Senate floor: 
the JUSTICE Act.
  My problem with it is, despite the name and despite a lot of the 
words that we are hearing on the other side, it doesn't get us to where 
we need to be. In this moment, as people are still marching and 
demanding change, we cannot confront these urgent issues with half 
measures or equivocation.
  I have serious concerns that this bill does not respond to the 
nationwide call for justice. Unlike the Justice in Policing Act that is 
going to pass the House, the bill we are considering here in the Senate 
lacks critical reforms to strengthen Federal pattern-and-practice 
investigations, a reform that is urgently needed after we all saw the 
video of the police officers standing right next to each other with 
George Floyd pinned down--pinned to the ground.
  I have called on the Department of Justice, with 26 other Senators, 
to conduct a full-scale investigation into the patterns and practices 
of the Minneapolis Police Department, and any bill that we consider 
should make sure the Civil Rights Division has the authority and the 
resources they need to conduct a thorough investigation.
  By the way, our calls have still gone unheeded. During the Obama 
Justice Department time period, 25 of these cases--pattern-and-practice 
investigations--were brought. During the Trump Justice Department time 
period, just one unit of the Springfield, MA, Police Department went 
through a pattern-and-practice investigation.

  I don't know what more proof we need than the fact of the video and 
the fact that there were other officers standing nearby, the fact that 
we have called for this with 26 Senators but, still, we await any final 
word from the Justice Department.
  They have informed us that they are still looking at this, but in the 
meantime, our Department of Human Rights in the State of Minnesota is 
stepping in to fill the void. I don't think that is the ideal way to do 
it. You would like a Justice Department that has experience doing this 
in other jurisdictions, but our State's Department of Human Rights is 
now stepping in and conducting its own pattern-and-practice 
investigation.
  The bill on the floor fails to help States conduct their own 
investigations, as I just mentioned, to address systemic problems in 
culture, training, and accountability at police departments, like what 
the Minnesota Department of Human Rights is now conducting. By the way, 
with the proper resources and the experience they are gleaning from 
former Justice Department officials and the like, this is one way to 
handle some of this, in addition to the Justice Department.
  At a time when our Justice Department has failed to take up these 
investigations, this provision that is in the Justice in Policing Act 
is even more critical.
  We must also take action to put an end to practices that 
unnecessarily put people's lives at risk. I worked with Senator 
Gillibrand and Senator Smith of my State on provisions in the Justice 
in Policing Act to ban Federal law enforcement officers from using 
choke holds and other neck restraints and to prohibit States from 
receiving certain Federal funding unless they have passed laws to ban 
these practices.
  We have used this method in the past, and if there is significant 
funding attached to it, States will react.
  The bill on the floor this week from our Republican counterparts only 
bans certain types of choke holds--those that restrict airflow but not 
blood flow--and only in certain situations. This does not go to the 
point that we need it to go to get the kind of systemic change we need 
in our criminal justice system.
  Critically, the Republican proposal does not include necessary 
changes to hold individual officers accountable for misconduct, like 
making records of police misconduct public. Real change comes with 
accountability and, as drafted, the Republican bill does not provide 
it. That is why it is opposed by civil rights and criminal justice 
groups, and it is why the attorney for George Floyd's family--and I had 
the honor of speaking with George Floyd's family--has said that this 
bill is ``in direct contrast to the demands of the people.''
  So where do we go from here? Well, we can start by calling up the 
bill that will be coming over from the House. We can start by agreeing 
to work together. Let's have a bipartisan process to develop the 
consensus bill that we need based on the bill that is going to be 
coming over from the House.
  As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I have seen what happens when 
we work together to get something done. That is how we passed the FIRST 
STEP Act, which passed the Senate with a vote of 87 to 12 by reaching 
across the aisle and by actually doing something--not just a bill full 
of platitudes or studies but actually doing something, which is what 
the people are calling out for now.
  By the way, there are a lot of good police officers out there, 
including ones who work around us, and when you put strong standards in 
place, they meet those standards.
  To allow that conduct that we saw on that video to go without 
national changes to our policing would be just to say, well, it is just 
this incident in Minnesota, which, of course, is being prosecuted by 
our attorney general, Keith Ellison. That is how you could resolve it 
if you thought it just happened once and it just happened in one State, 
but we know that is not true, my colleagues. We know that is not true. 
That is why it is so important to take action and pass the actual bill.
  We already started this process in the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
Last week, we held a hearing on these issues. We heard testimony from 
local leaders like St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and law enforcement 
officers from across the country.
  I heard a lot of agreement among many of those who testified--not all 
of them but many of them: support for banning choke holds, establishing 
a national use-of-force policy--these are police chiefs--creating a 
public database of public misconduct, and ensuring independent 
investigations of police-involved deaths, something I pushed for in my 
former job.
  You cannot have the police department that the officer works for 
investigating this conduct. That is wrong, as I said publicly years 
ago.
  There are areas where we can find agreement, but we have to mean it. 
Chairman Graham said at the hearing

[[Page S3149]]

that he hopes the Judiciary Committee could consider what has been 
proposed and ``come up with something in common.''
  Well, we start with the bill that is going to be coming over from the 
House, the bill that has been sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Senators 
Booker and Harris.
  Instead, Leader McConnell is asking us to consider a bill that was 
drafted in their caucus, yes, but without the input of so many of us 
who have seen firsthand the damage that has been done here. He is, 
then, moving that bill directly to the floor instead of letting the 
Judiciary Committee consider it. I think that fails to make the kind of 
meaningful change we need in our system.
  This is a moment for urgent action, but it is also a moment for 
fundamental change. If we respond to all of those people out there and 
the family of George Floyd--whom I got to meet and sat across the pews 
from at that memorial service--if we respond with silence, then we are 
complicit. If we respond as the President has suggested, with dominance 
and by waving a Bible in front of a church for a photo op, then we are 
monsters.
  If we respond with action--meaningful action--colleagues, then we are 
lawmakers, and that is what the people of our State sent us to do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from 
Minnesota for her ongoing leadership on so many issues and, certainly, 
this is one of them. We greatly appreciate and need your voice.
  Mr. President, for over the past month, Americans in all parts of our 
country and from all walks of life have once again been marching for 
the cause of justice. They are raising their voices and raising the 
names of those killed by police violence: Eric Garner, Michael Brown, 
Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks.
  Americans aren't marching because of politics. They are not marching 
because they want the Senate to pretend to address this issue and hope 
it goes away. Americans aren't marching because they want more studies 
and reports. No. Americans from all walks of life--young and old, 
people of all backgrounds, religions, and nationalities--are marching 
because they are sick and tired of learning about more names. They want 
the people who represent them here in this Chamber to finally confront 
this deadly serious issue with the seriousness it deserves.
  It is time we meet their expectations in this historic moment. This 
really is a historic moment. It is a historic opportunity for all of us 
to come together. It is past time to do something to stop the violence. 
It is time to come together and to do something big and consequential, 
and it is going to take all of us to be able to do that.
  Just think about the big things we have been able to get done in the 
past decade or so. I am not trying to equate this current moment and 
this seriousness, but I know we know how to do other big things. The 
Presiding Officer knows that too. We do things across the aisle. We 
work across the aisle when we want to get things done.
  I think about passing a farm bill, a 5-year farm bill. A lot of 
people said we couldn't get it done because of all the different 
interests--the interests of families and food assistance, the interests 
of farmers and ranchers and so on.
  I had my doubts during those times, but we kept on working in a 
bipartisan way, and in the end we got a bipartisan bill that was good 
for farmers and our families, good for our environment, good for our 
economy. In fact, we passed it with an 87-to-13 vote, which is the most 
votes we have ever had in the Senate for a farm bill.
  Police violence and the systemic racism that is behind it deserves at 
least the same bipartisan effort that we gave the farm bill. In much 
the same way, the Senate came together across the aisle and got 
comprehensive immigration reform done. That only happened because 
people sat down together with different views--Republicans and 
Democrats--and worked through the complicated issues that were standing 
in our way, and we got it done in the Senate.
  Police violence and the systemic racism behind it deserve at least 
that same bipartisan effort.
  More recently, there was the CARES Act. Democrats and Republicans 
worked day and night to come together in agreement on the most 
effective way to meet the needs of Americans during an unprecedented 
health and economic crisis--which, by the way, we need to do again 
because we are not done.
  Police violence and the systemic racism behind it deserve at least 
that kind of effort. This is a huge crisis that pulls at the very soul 
of America. This issue certainly deserves the best of all of us right 
now, the best of what we can do.
  Systemic racism and related police violence certainly deserve, at 
minimum, the same kind of bipartisan effort we have focused on other 
issues that have not had the life-and-death consequences of this issue.
  The people who are marching and who are crying out for justice 
deserve a serious response at a serious moment. Leader McConnell needs 
to take this issue seriously and support a bipartisan process, instead 
of just moving to a weak, flawed, Republican bill just to pretend that 
he tried to do something.
  The House of Representatives are serious. They are passing a bill 
this week and sending it over to us. It is a serious bill. I am proud 
to be a cosponsor of the Senate version with our leaders Senator Booker 
and Senator Harris. They are serious about passing the Justice in 
Policing Act.
  Senate Democrats are serious. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans 
must be serious too. This is the moment. This is the moment for us to 
be serious together and address this in a big, profound, systemic way.
  Eric, Michael, Freddie, Breonna, George, Rayshard, and all of those 
who are no longer with us, as well as all of those marching, marching, 
marching and speaking out deserve nothing less than our best at this 
moment. They deserve a serious bipartisan effort. That is what I 
support. That is what my Democratic colleagues support.
  We know it takes sitting down and listening to each other. It takes 
working out differences. That is the only way change happens. We are 
willing to put in whatever time and effort it takes to make this 
happen, and that is what we are going to continue to fight for.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, if you walk outside this building and 
take a few steps toward the White House, you can almost hear the cries 
for justice still ringing out through the air; you can almost still 
smell the tear gas lingering over our Nation's Capital. Listen closely 
and you might still be able to catch the echoes of the peaceful 
protesters chanting the name of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her 
own home after police executed a no-knock warrant; or the name of 
George Floyd, who was forced to beg for his life until he couldn't beg 
any longer, held down under the knee of a police officer who swore an 
oath to protect and serve; or Rayshard Brooks, who was shot in the back 
just 11 days ago, even as this moment of national reckoning over police 
brutality was already under way.
  For nearly a month now, Americans have been lying down, standing up, 
kneeling, marching, and mourning in the streets. They have been tugging 
at and prodding our country, trying to drag it forward until it lives 
up to the words of its Pledge of Allegiance that in this Republic, 
there is ``liberty and justice for all.''
  So far, this Nation has failed to make the promise a reality for 
Black Americans. It has failed the families of Breonna Taylor, George 
Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks. It has failed every Black child who knows 
that playing on a jungle gym could be a death sentence. It has failed 
every Black parent who kisses the top of their child's head before 
school each morning as their heart breaks with the knowledge that this 
time could be the last.
  I know that I would never be able to fully comprehend the fear and 
trauma

[[Page S3150]]

that Black Americans experience every day. But what I do know is that 
the burden of this pain can't fall on them alone. The responsibility, 
the work of bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice can't 
just be put on the backs of those who have been feeling its weight this 
whole time. Rather, it is on all of us--Black, White, Asian, Latinx, 
you name it--to help those families and communities finally receive the 
justice they deserve.
  But I come to the floor today because my Republican colleagues are 
trying to force through a bill that barely even pays lip service to the 
crisis at hand. In some ways, it doesn't even accomplish that. In spite 
of its name, the JUSTICE Act wouldn't begin to bring any semblance of 
real justice to the victims from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Louisville 
and beyond.
  It should be obvious by now that the epidemic of police brutality 
will not be fixed by some bandaid bill. We need to reckon with the 
real, deep, uncomfortable realities and systemic biases that have 
marred our country for years. We need to bring systemic change to our 
law enforcement agencies. We need to force a seismic shift in how we 
root out and respond to police brutality, including banning choke holds 
and no-knock warrants in drug cases at the Federal level. My friend 
Senator Booker has introduced legislation that would do just that; the 
Republican bill would not.
  We need to hold accountable officers who break the laws they were 
trusted to enforce, ensuring that independent prosecutors review police 
uses of force and prosecute officers who act irresponsibly, recognizing 
that local prosecutors often have a conflict of interest because they 
rely on the same police departments to win other cases. I have written 
legislation to do just that, which has been included in the Democratic 
bill, but the Republican bill would not do anything close.
  We need to amend Federal law on qualified immunity so that officers 
can't just violate Americans' constitutional rights with mere impunity, 
and we need to mandate anti-bias Federal law enforcement training. 
Democrats have put forward policy that would do all of that. The 
Republican bill refuses any such attempt at accountability and wouldn't 
even ban racial profiling.
  It comes down to this: Real justice, real accountability requires 
these reforms. Yet the JUSTICE Act itself is silent on so many of them. 
The so-called ``reform'' bill aims more at reforming public opinion 
than actually reforming the policies that got us here.
  The families grieving today deserve better, as George Floyd's family 
made it clear when they themselves spoke out against the bill. They 
know that those who had a loved one stolen from them deserve more than 
just lip service. They deserve for their Senators, for the officials 
elected to represent them in what is supposed to be the world's 
greatest deliberative body to try to pass legislation that would 
actually address the issues in question and the crisis at hand.
  Look, next week our country will celebrate its Independence Day. What 
does freedom for any one of us mean if so many of our neighbors still 
are not free to walk down the street or sleep in their own homes 
without fearing for their lives? Until every Black American can breathe 
without a knee on their neck, no American should feel as if we are 
truly able to take a breath ourselves.
  The Republican bill that we are expected to vote on tomorrow isn't 
just a disappointment. It leaves Black Americans in unnecessary danger. 
And settling for lip service when lives are at stake isn't just 
inadequate. It is cruel too
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to thank my friends, Kamala Harris 
from California and Cory Booker from New Jersey, for leading us in this 
fight for so many years.
  I remember well when I first went to work for the city and county of 
Denver. One of the first tragedies that we had in the city at that time 
was the shooting of a young man named Paul Childs in Park Hill by 
police under circumstances that should never have happened. That was 
almost 20 years ago, but these headlines haven't stopped. If anything, 
matters have gotten worse.
  As the country has grappled with the pandemic over the last few 
months, I heard a lot of people talk about how it has revealed a 
profound sense of inequality in our country, how it has exposed all 
this injustice in the United States of America.
  We should not have needed a pandemic to expose the injustice that 
exists in the United Stated of America. It should not have taken a 
pandemic to alert people to the injustice in our country. If you have 
been paying any attention, if you have listened at all to the Black 
voices in the United States of America, then you know these injustices 
have been with us for generations.
  In the case of our law enforcement system, they have literally had 
life-and-death consequences for Black Americans, and it just keeps 
happening. One reason it keeps happening--the one reason it happened to 
Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, or George Floyd--is that what happened 
to them would never happen to my three daughters; what happened to them 
would never happen to me. It has never occurred to me once, when I am 
walking around my neighborhood in Denver, that what happened to them 
could happen to me or my children. That is what is meant, in part, by 
White privilege--a privilege that almost everybody in this Chamber 
enjoys.
  I think we can never accept that we live in a country where one group 
of people is less safe than another for no reason other than the color 
of their skin. We have to refuse to accept it, but that is the country 
in which we live.
  We have to acknowledge, finally, what Kamala Harris and Cory Booker 
and others have been telling us, which is that our criminal justice 
system in this country is broken.
  Our long history of unequal treatment of poor and minority criminal 
offenders--especially Black Americans--has evolved into a system of 
mass incarceration unlike that of any other developed democracy. A 
network of dystopian, privatized prison spreads across the land to 
house people who, in many cases, shouldn't even be behind bars, who 
were convicted for infractions relating to things that are legal in the 
State of Colorado today.
  According to Ta-Nehisi Coates' definitive article on the subject of 
the U.S. mass incarceration, our country accounts for less than 5 
percent of the world's population but 25 percent of those who are 
incarcerated. Our closest competitor--and it is hard to find one--is 
Russia, a virtual police state.
  In our country, there is nothing equal about who is incarcerated. 
Black males between the ages of 20 and 39 are incarcerated at a rate 10 
times the rate of their White peers. Every one of these issues needs to 
be reexamined and formed not by ideology but by pragmatism and, most 
important, the moral commandments of a just society. That is what the 
patriotic Americans in our streets in downtowns demand. They are not 
calling for one more commission. They are not calling for one more 
study. They are calling for real reform. That is what people mean when 
they say: This moment calls for real reform. That is what the people 
are saying in the streets.
  With respect to my colleagues on the other side, the proposal Senator 
McConnell has put forward doesn't come close to meeting that test. His 
bill, his proposal, which is meant to paper this over and get through 
to another chapter, not address the issue--his bill still allows the 
use of choke holds, the same choke holds that suffocated the life from 
Eric Garner. It doesn't ban no-knock warrants, the same practice that 
led police to break down Breonna Taylor's door and shoot her eight 
times in her own apartment. It doesn't make it easier for families like 
the family of George Floyd to seek justice when their loved ones have 
been victimized by police brutality. It doesn't even ban racial 
profiling. There is virtually nothing in this bill to respond to the 
families calling for justice or to save lives from police practices 
that have no place in America in the year 2020.
  This is not a time for half measures, for one more attempt to use 
talking points and legislative tricks to make it seem like we are doing 
something when we are not. The idea that the country isn't ready for a 
comprehensive approach is not true.

[[Page S3151]]

  I will yield to my colleague from Connecticut in just a minute.
  Last week in Colorado--my State, a Western State, a purple State--we 
became the first State in America to pass a sweeping police 
accountability bill into law. It is almost exactly like the one we have 
proposed here. We passed that bill 52 to 13 in the State House and 32 
to 2 in the Senate--32 to 2. Only two Republicans in the Senate voted 
against that bill. Every single Democrat voted for that bill. And that 
is Colorado, out in the middle of the country. It sets a standard for 
what we need to do in Washington, which is to pass the Justice in 
Policing Act that Senator Harris and Senator Booker have put forward 
because we will never heal as a nation, as a country, unless we 
confront and dismantle the systemic injustice and the systemic racism 
that still plagues America, running as it does in a straight line from 
slavery to Jim Crow, to the redlining of our housing and banking 
system, to the mass incarceration that we have, to the prisons that Ta-
Nehisi Coates refers to as ``The Gray Wastes.''
  As I said on the floor the other day, anyone who studied the history 
of our democracy knows how tough it is to make progress. The struggle 
has always been a battle from the very beginning of our founding, 
between our highest ideals and our worst instincts as a country. More 
often than not, the fulcrum of that battle from the founding until 
today has been race. Progress on these lines has never been easy. It 
has never come easy.
  Among us are still people whose politics are aimed at stripping some 
citizens of their rights and opportunity, who despise pluralism, who 
succumb to fearful hatreds like racism or who care nothing for anyone 
but themselves. Their presence means that the rest of us, most of us, 
who Martin Luther King, Jr., called the great decent majority, must 
share an even deeper understanding of our patriotic obligation to our 
fellow Americans and to our Republic. Right now, that obligation means 
doing everything in our power to answer the call of Americans in our 
streets and downtowns, from DC to Denver, and beyond, who are calling 
for an America where no one is denied protection of the law or justice 
or their own life because of the color of their skin.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I have been doing a lot of listening 
over these past months. Like Americans across this country, I have been 
doing a lot of listening to the dedicated and passionate people, our 
fellow Americans, who have marched in the streets and our communities 
with passion, but peacefully, in their cries for justice. In fact, I 
have marched with them in 15 or more demonstrations in Connecticut--big 
cities, Hartford, Stamford, New Haven; smaller cities, Lyme, 
Marlborough, Trumbull, Windsor, Glastonbury; and then places like 
Torrington, East Hartford, Danbury--all across the State, proud to be 
with people from Connecticut, led by our young people, as are many 
great social movements and revolutions of our time led by young people 
who have the audacity and hope to cast aside the normal and say: There 
is no going back. There is no rolling back to the old normal. What we 
need is action
  That has been the common theme in these cries for justice--the 
demands for accountability, the pleas for an end to racism, generations 
of racial justice, and racism with historic roots in so many of our 
institutions, including some of our law enforcement. But they are 
demanding more than just our listening and more than just our speaking. 
They are demanding action--real action, real reform, real change with 
real teeth and new laws.
  The time has come for us in this Congress to heed those calls. We 
need legislation that honors the memories and the lives of those who 
have lost their futures: Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, 
and countless others added to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud 
Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks. Some are in the headlines. Some of their 
deaths have been caught on video--but so many thousands never on video, 
never publicized, and never known to the public.
  In their memory, but also for the sake of our future, we should move 
forward with action. We are here today because, simply and starkly, the 
Republican JUSTICE Act fails to meet this moment. It fails that test.
  I have been listening not only to the folks in the streets and our 
communities but also to my great colleagues Cory Booker and Kamala 
Harris. Clearly, from what we have heard from them and the work they 
have done, along with many of us, to fashion the Justice in Policing 
Act, the Republican proposal is a shadow of what it should be--
unacceptably weak, nibbling around the edges of this problem, without 
any guarantee that Black Americans will not again ask us whether their 
lives are worth $20.
  The JUSTICE Act fails completely to address the harmful policing 
practices that we know have cost lives. The deaths of Breonna Taylor 
and Eric Garner are not anomalies. Choke holds and no-knock warrants 
are known to be costly. They have cost Black lives. The JUSTICE Act 
ignores this truth.
  Americans are not marching in the streets so we might ``study'' these 
phenomena. They are not begging us to design programs 
``disincentivizing'' practices that are literally killing Americans--
Black Americans--Americans who deserve justice.
  The notion we could respond to this moment with a commission or 
several commissions and incentives to do better is insulting to all of 
us. We need legislation that explicitly bans the use of choke holds and 
no-knock warrants in drug cases so we can credibly tell the American 
people we hear you, and we will act.
  Communities of color must be able to trust that law enforcement will 
be held accountable if they commit criminal acts. The Republican 
JUSTICE Act completely lacks any mechanism to hold law enforcement 
officers accountable in court for their misconduct. It makes no change 
to section 242 of title XVIII, which makes it a Federal crime to 
willfully deprive a person of constitutional rights.
  This criminal statute can be used to hold officers accountable for 
the use of excessive force--something we all know led to the deaths of 
far too many Black and Brown people in this country. I believe that 
criminal liability is a critical tool in the law enforcement 
accountability toolbox but only if it is used.
  Right now, civil liability is available, albeit an inadequate remedy 
so long as a qualified immunity is not reformed. But very often, in 99 
percent of the cases, any civil remedy involves indemnification by the 
municipal government. Indemnification means the individual officer 
feels no financial penalty and very often little other penalty. 
Criminal liability involving potentially prison concentrates the mind. 
It is a strong deterrent.
  As I said in a hearing that we conducted in the Judiciary Committee, 
we need change to make it a real remedy and a real deterrent. When 
Officer Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd's neck for 8 minutes 46 
seconds, he looked straight into those cameras with impunity because he 
assumed he would never be prosecuted criminally. He never imagined that 
justice would find him, and justice still must find him in a criminal 
court. He ignored the pleas of bystanders telling him to stop. He 
ignored George Floyd, as he begged for his life.
  These kinds of actions by an individual in a system that has shielded 
people like them simply encourage more of them. Section 242's change in 
the standard of criminal intent will provide real criminal culpability 
for police who deserve it.
  The Republican JUSTICE Act relies mainly on data collection, which 
may be used to inform policy proposal at some later time. It pushes 
down the road any real action.
  We already have statistics. Since 2015, there have been 5,000 fatal 
shootings by on-duty police officers. In the past year, over 1,000 
people have been shot and killed by police. Black Americans account for 
less than 13 percent of the country's population, but they are killed 
at more than twice the rate of White Americans.
  Data is important. In fact, I was the lead sponsor of the Death in 
Custody Reporting Act, passed about 6 years ago. Regrettably and 
inexcusably, that measure has never been enforced so that it has never 
really been effective. We must make it so. But it shows the

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limitation of any data collection system. The fact is, systematic 
racism law enforcement has gone unchecked for too long. The time for 
accountability is now. It is long overdue.
  Let me say, finally, for most of my professional career, I have 
helped to enforce the laws. I have been a trial lawyer, yes, but I also 
served as the chief Federal prosecutor--the U.S. attorney--for 
Connecticut for 4\1/2\ years and then as attorney general of my State 
for 20. I have seen some of the best in law enforcement and some of the 
worst.
  We need a higher standard, not just in words or paper but in fact. We 
need a standard that is worthy of the people who have marched and cried 
for justice throughout American history, who have tried to dream of a 
better system and a fairer country. There is so much work for us to do. 
At this moment, we must seize the opportunity, a point of consensus, to 
come together and act in a way that is worthy of this great Nation. We 
have proposed exactly that action in the Justice in Policing Act. We 
should be moving forward on it now, not on a bill that is truly 
unacceptably weak and inadequate and unworthy of this historic moment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.