Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris strongly urged lawmakers to pass comprehensive policing reforms that go beyond President Trump’s executive action, which was unveiled Tuesday, and to address systemic racial inequality outside the justice system.
“This is not an overstatement and over-dramatization to say that the stakes right now are high,” Booker, of New Jersey, said during opening remarks in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on police use of force. “Will we meet this moment in history and actually do something real, or will we find ourselves back here again a year from now, three years from now, with mass protests in the streets by people of all different backgrounds, demanding change?”
“I worry at this moment — I really do — that we’re going to repeat history, that this is the movie Groundhog Day because here we are again in a nightmare, not a comedy,” said Booker, who along with Harris, are two of only three black lawmakers in the Senate.
Booker and Harris last week introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a comprehensive bill to reform the police and justice system. If passed, it would create a national standard of operation for police departments; mandate data collection on police encounters; invest in community-based policing programs; and change federal law to prosecute police who use excessive force.
“We’ve seen enough. We’ve had enough commissions. We have studied these issues. We have convened opinion leaders. We have talked about these in private conversations and in public conversations. Now is time to act,” said Harris of California.
Harris called for shifting funding from law enforcement to community initiatives that will improve health, education, and housing, rather than increasing police funding to deal with crime she said is a result of systemic problems affecting black communities.
“We must reimagine what public safety looks like. The status quo thinking that more police creates some more safety is wrong. It’s wrong,” Harris said. “And it has motivated too much of municipal budgets and the thinking of policymakers and has distracted them from what truly will be the smartest use of resources to achieve safety in communities, which is to invest in the health of those communities.”
Hours before the hearing, Trump issued an executive order that called for accreditation standards for police departments, the sharing of excessive force data, and funding to help police respond to calls involving homeless or mentally ill people.
“This is not enough. It does not meet this moment,” said Harris. “People are demanding action. They are not marching in the streets for watered-down proposals that won’t hold any officers accountable. There’s nothing about what the president announced today that would hold police officers who break the rules and break the law accountable.”
