A day after George Floyd’s burial, his brother Philonise Floyd pleaded with congressional lawmakers to take action to decrease police violence against minorities. Dressed in all white and wearing a black mask, Floyd at times brushed back tears as he said his brother’s calls for help were ignored.

“Please listen to the call I’m making to you now: Make the necessary changes that make law enforcement the solution, and not the problem,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. “Hold them accountable when they do something wrong.”

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Partisan gridlock and election-year jockeying make any legislating a difficult task. Throw in mixed signals from the White House, and the road to police reform appears hazardous. Still, the furor George Floyd’s death sparked has members of both parties scrambling to answer wide-ranging calls for action.

“When you clothe government officials, including particularly police officers, with the immense power that we do … it is extraordinarily important what kind of accountability comes with it,” said Clark Neily, vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute.

On Monday, Democrats introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020. It would ban chokeholds by police officers, create a national database of police misconduct, mandate the use of body cameras, ban no-knock warrants in drug cases, and make it easier for civilians to take officers to court for misconduct by lowering the burden of proof. The act would order the changes for federal law enforcement agencies and withhold funding from state and local police departments that continue allowing no-knock warrants and chokeholds. More than 200 Democrats, but no Republicans, currently co-sponsor it in the House and Senate.

House Republicans have complained that Democrats did not seek across-the-aisle input while drafting their proposal. But the Democratic bill has drawn noticeably little criticism from the GOP, and some Republicans have voiced support for reform efforts, including Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Tom McClintock of California.

It’s unclear how much support the measure will get from Senate Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked the lone African American in his conference, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, to take the lead on putting together a Republican version. Scott met with Trump administration officials on Tuesday but said he is proceeding on a “separate track” from the White House.

The Scott-led GOP effort includes putting more resources into additional training for police and collecting data on the use of force and no-knock warrants. Unlike the Democratic version, it does not take on a federal ban on chokeholds or qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil lawsuits brought by civilians. Currently, victims of excessive force have to prove that officers “willfully” deprived them of their civil rights. . .

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Donald Trump has not yet looked at House Democrats’ reform bill, but she called qualified immunity a “non-starter” and said if it were passed, police would start “pulling back” in dangerous situations.

Some Republicans hesitate to embrace reform on a federal level.

“The people who have the most direct control over what the police do or don’t do is the police chief, or the city council and the mayor,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “I don’t know why people look to Washington.”

Even if Republicans manage to unite behind a reform effort, the president’s sudden reversals have dashed attempts to address other crises such as immigration reform and efforts to change some gun laws following mass shootings. But Trump’s unexpected endorsement of the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill, proved crucial in getting the legislation across the finish line in 2018.

The president has signaled some openness to police reform but has not backed a specific proposal. On Monday, he held a roundtable discussion with law enforcement officers to hear their thoughts.

Reportedly, the White House also is drafting an executive order on the issue, though there is scant information about what it might include.

(Excerpt from World. Article by Harvest Prude.)