[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 126 (Thursday, August 1, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5760-S5761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Police Accountability

  Madam President, I rise today with a lot of hurt and anguish. I start 
with these words:

       Please don't hurt me.

  ``Please don't hurt me.'' Those were the first words that Sonya 
Massey said to the officers who knocked on her door on July 6. She had 
called 9-1-1 for help. She dialed those digits out of distress. She 
thought there might have been a possible intruder at her home.
  Two officers responded. They were supposed to help. Less than 5 
minutes later, she was dead, with a bullet to the head. The officer who 
killed her stopped the other officer at the scene from rushing forward 
to render aid by saying these words: ``Nah, that's a head shot, dude,'' 
he chuckled, ``She's [dead].''
  Sonya Massey's words: ``Please don't hurt me.''
  Her words: ``Please don't hurt me.''
  Four words: ``Please don't hurt me.''
  Sonya Massey was a mother and a daughter. She was a friend and a 
neighbor. She was young; she was just 36 years old. This African-
American woman was in her home and needed help. She should be alive 
today.
  We all grow up being taught in school that when we need help, police 
will be there. We know and are taught that they are to protect and 
serve. All across America, there are extraordinary stories of officers 
who do just that. I know it intimately. Some of the bravest people I 
have ever encountered are men and women who serve as law enforcement 
officers. They do keep our communities safe. I believe overwhelmingly 
that the overwhelming majority of American officers are not just good 
people, but they are good people who do great things in times of 
extraordinary distress.
  I have had such incredible experiences and forged incredibly close 
bonds with many police officers. As mayor of New Jersey's largest city, 
I actually oversaw a police department. I sat with officers for 
countless hours--hundreds of them--in patrol cars. I went out with them 
in patrols in some of our more challenged neighborhoods in the late 
hours of the night. I watched them put themselves in harm's way. I 
watched them intervene in life-and-death situations.
  I know countless police officers who report to work day in and day 
out and carry out their oath to protect and serve faithfully and 
professionally, often going above and beyond the call of their duty. 
Yet I also know a small fraction of those officers, from some of the 
worst tragedies that this country has had to witness too often--I know 
there are people that should not be officers, that have not merited 
those badges, should be kept away from the profession. I have seen some 
of it in attitude, in conduct, and behavior of people that view it as 
an ``us versus them.'' They don't see themselves as guardians of the 
community; they often see themselves as warriors. They don't know the 
neighborhoods they are serving or respect them. There are some--a very 
narrow, small fraction of a percent--of our officers who don't do their 
job, who are quick to jump to conclusions, who often see people of 
color or poor people or homeless people or those suffering from 
addiction as threats.
  We are a nation that must do better. There are people that somehow 
get onto our police departments in America that are unfit to serve.
  The officer that killed Sonya Massey should never have had a badge 
and a gun. While we still do not know all the details, here is what we 
do know: We know that he had worked for six different police 
departments in less than 4 years. He was discharged from the Army for 
``serious misconduct.'' He had pleaded guilty to two charges of driving 
under the influence. He also failed to obey a command while working for 
another sheriff's office in Illinois and was told that he needed high-
stress decision-making classes.
  Unfortunately, this officer is not the only one who has managed to go 
from department to department, escaping scrutiny and accountability. 
This is because in the United States of America, we have no real system 
to keep bad officers from simply jumping over to the next town if they 
are fired.
  Think about this: So many of our local communities have police 
departments. They have people that apply for those jobs. And there is 
no national system or database that they can check to see if that 
officer came from a different State or a different city and was bounced 
out of their job for misconduct. In one of the most important roles in 
American society, this is often the difference between life and death.
  Where you have the power and the capacity to fire weapons, where you 
have to operate and act under high-stress situations, we have no 
national way, no database that departments can check to see if the 
officer they are hiring has shown, in other jurisdictions, behavior and 
conduct unbecoming of an officer.
  Sonya Massey should not be dead. This could have been prevented. We 
have known this is a problem in our country because of past tragedies.
  This November will be the 10-year anniversary of a little boy's 
death. His name was Tamir Rice. Tamir was 12 years old, doing something 
that I did in my childhood, that I imagine lots of kids have done in 
their childhoods--play with toy guns. A 12-year-old was

[[Page S5761]]

playing when an officer drove up to him, jumped out of the car, and 
shot him within 3 seconds of leaving his vehicle.
  I talked to other police officers 10 years ago when this happened, 
and they bemoaned the fact that that child died. They talked about how 
no well-trained officer should ever let that happen, that good police 
officers would have never made that fatal mistake. But this was not a 
good police officer. This officer had been fired from his previous 
police job. He had been deemed unfit for his duty in another 
jurisdiction and then left that jurisdiction and applied for a job. Was 
there a database in our Nation that that department could have checked 
to see if this officer was fired for just cause in another 
jurisdiction? No.
  This was a decade ago. This was a little boy. But here I am, talking 
about this problem and the death of another American, an unnecessary 
murder of another American, a preventable murder of another American by 
someone who should have never been hired by a police department.
  I appreciate that President Biden has taken steps to correct this 
issue. I appreciate that under his administration, in America, we 
established a police officer accountability database to try to track 
bad officers and make sure they are never hired again so that they 
never put people in danger again. But right now, departments aren't 
required to report these officers into that database. They are not 
required to check that database before hiring an officer. This is the 
change that is needed. It reflects best practices. It reflects what 
police leadership, police professionals, and others have said we should 
have in America.
  This is not some effort to federalize police departments. It is 
simply about keeping the public safe and officers safe. It is about 
doing things that deepen the trust and the faith in those who are sworn 
to protect us. We have rules and laws for doctors, rules and laws for 
lawyers, rules and laws for manufacturers, rules and laws for the 
energy sector, rules and laws even for the media sector. How is it that 
we can't demand that every police department has to check a database to 
make sure the person they are hiring or thinking of hiring doesn't have 
something in their background that puts the community they serve in 
danger? This is not too much to ask. This is common sense.
  Every police chief I have ever talked to does not want to hire an 
officer that has been fired for misconduct or conduct unbecoming an 
officer from another jurisdiction. It is just common sense.
  We should not resist the kinds of changes in this body that could 
make sure that deaths like Tamir Rice's or Sonya Massey's do not 
happen. It is change that is overdue.
  When George Floyd was murdered 4 years ago, our country had a 
reckoning. So many people from every end of the political and 
ideological spectrum acknowledged that we could improve police 
accountability. We heard this from every sector. People came out in 
every State demanding that we take commonsense measures to improve one 
of the most important jobs we have.
  I sat with police leaders who talked about steps we could take--
common sense--to improve the profession, to create higher standards 
that our officers could meet because they want to. But here we stand 
again on the Senate floor talking about another death that could have 
been prevented by a commonsense measure.
  I worry about this reality that we still live in a nation where 
parents teach their children--their often young, African-American 
children--survival techniques about police encounters; have a 
conversation with them that shouldn't necessarily have to be had, but 
when you have example after example, like with Sonya Massey, who 
herself evidenced fear when the police came to her house; a 12-year-old 
boy shot because of a toy gun; a woman afraid when she calls the 
police.
  I have been fighting for greater police accountability my entire time 
in the Senate, and I stand with others who have done the same. One of 
those people is Representative Sheila Jackson Lee. Today, we mourn her 
loss. She passed on July 19. With her passing, our country lost an 
extraordinary, fierce leader in Congress. In the nearly three decades 
she spent in Congress representing the people of District 18 of Texas, 
she fought not only for her constituents but for Americans across the 
country.
  She was the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Ms. Jackson Lee was born 
in Brooklyn, NY, in 1950. She went on to graduate with a degree in 
political science from Yale University and a law degree from the 
University of Virginia. This was not a thing that many Black women at 
the time did, but she broke down barriers of race and gender that kept 
so many like her from these elite institutions.
  She went on to become a municipal judge before she was elected to the 
U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. One of the very last bills Ms. 
Jackson Lee introduced was the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
  She had not stopped fighting for what she believed was right to raise 
standards of accountability, to increase transparency, to create higher 
standards of professional conduct.
  I received a voice message from Sheila Jackson Lee just days before 
her death. I could hear in her voice the illness that was taking over 
her body. I could hear her voice shaking but still just as strong and 
defiant. And one of the last things she said to me in that voice 
message days before she died was calling on me to not give up, to press 
forward with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
  I think about that. I played this message over and over on my phone, 
that the last thing she said to me was about the George Floyd Justice 
in Policing Act; that one of her last communications with her 
colleagues, one of her last calls to a U.S. Senator days before her 
death was about police accountability, about police transparency, about 
raising professional standards.
  I know she would have condemned the death of Sonya Massey. I know she 
would have stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and 
demanded change.
  She would have said that her death would not be in vain, and she 
would have said that we need to create a mandatory database that has to 
be checked before you hire officers in the United States of America. 
She would have demanded that the principles and pillars of the George 
Floyd Justice in Policing Act be put into place.
  So I will heed her call. In the coming days, I will reintroduce the 
George Floyd Justice in Policing Act here in the Senate with my 
colleagues, to bring about that accountability, to bring about that 
transparency, to raise those standards of professionalism.
  I will work to make sure there is not a day again in America where 
people unnecessarily die; where when people call the police, they can 
be confident that they will be protected, not shot dead; where the most 
important profession, perhaps, in our Nation, those who every day get 
up and go to bed with this firm commitment to protect us; where 
thousands of officers every single day do not have their professions 
besmirched by that narrow few who violate our values, who abuse their 
position, and commit crimes like the one that killed Ms. Massey.
  There is an old proverb from the Old Testament that says:

       Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it 
     is in your power to act.

  It is within our power to act. It is our duty to act, to do the 
commonsense things that could prevent the deaths of people like Tamir 
Rice and Sonya Massey. It is an oath we take in this body. It is the 
call of our country, first and foremost, to defend our citizens.
  These tragedies must stop. These unnecessary deaths must stop. We 
must rise in this moment to be instruments of justice, to make sure 
that the oath we swear is more true and more real that we are a nation 
of liberty and justice for all.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

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