{"id":325034,"date":"2021-09-24T22:14:01","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T22:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=371421"},"modified":"2021-09-24T22:14:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T22:14:01","slug":"how-moderate-democrats-derailed-police-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/24\/how-moderate-democrats-derailed-police-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"How Moderate Democrats Derailed Police Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bipartisan negotiations on<\/u> police reform fell apart once and for all this week, four months after Congress missed its symbolic deadline<\/a> to pass a package designed to raise standards for accountability and transparency in law enforcement. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., blamed<\/a> his counterpart in leading negotiations on the bill, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., for walking away<\/a> from talks this week after Republicans rejected Democrats\u2019 final offer.<\/p>\n

Booker told reporters that Republicans would not get on board with measures\u00a0that even the Fraternal Order of Police had agreed to compromise on or\u00a0standards for law enforcement accreditation that were in place under former President Donald Trump. One major sticking point had emerged over efforts to change some parts of qualified immunity<\/a>, a legal doctrine<\/a> that protects police officers from civil suits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe effort from the very beginning was to get police reform that would raise professional standards, police reform that would create a lot more transparency, and then police reform that would create more accountability,\u201d Booker told reporters on September 22 after leaving a meeting with Scott. \u201cWe were not able to come to agreements on those three big areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negotiators failed to agree on measures to collect data on use of force, police killing, or bias within police departments. Criminal justice reform advocates had long criticized the bill for taking a piecemeal approach that wouldn\u2019t fundamentally change policing because it did not drastically cut public investment in law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we could get the FOP, the Fraternal Order of Police, to agree to changing a national use of force standard, [and] we could get them to agree to changing, in effect, qualified immunity, we could not get there with our Republican negotiators,\u201d Booker said.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Despite Booker\u2019s comments, it\u2019s unclear what compromise, if any, the FOP had accepted. The union opposed<\/a> changes to qualified immunity and standards for prosecuting use of force. And Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., told Fox News on Wednesday that the Los Angeles police union \u201cactually was supporting the reform process, but some of the national organizations disagreed, and Senator Scott would never get to yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Booker doubled down on Democrats\u2019 attempts to compromise by using a Trump\u00a0executive order<\/a>,\u00a0which\u00a0conditioned<\/a>\u00a0Department of Justice grants to state and local law enforcement on proof of\u00a0certain training standards, as a starting point. \u201cWhen it comes to creating accreditation standards in alignment with what Donald Trump put in an executive order,\u201d Booker said, \u201cwe couldn\u2019t get that when it comes to raising professional standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to Booker\u2019s comments, a spokesperson for Scott said that he \u201cagreed with the language in the Trump executive order; however, the provision they attached that would diminish police resources was a bridge too far.\u201d The provision in question conditioned grants to law enforcement on having proper accreditation, as was the case in Trump\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

Moderate Democrats who were not directly part of negotiations also played a major role in derailing talks. Several centrists openly criticized the push from groups on the left to reallocate funding for law enforcement toward community infrastructure and social services, and they blamed<\/a> their slim margins in last year\u2019s midterm elections on calls to \u201cdefund the police.\u201d Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., one of the largest recipients<\/a> of police funding in Congress as of June 2020, said during an infamous caucus call about election results that he had been forced to \u201cwalk the plank\u201d on qualified immunity<\/a>. New Jersey\u2019s largest police union withdrew its endorsement of Pascrell last summer after he voted for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a House bill that Democrats tried to advance as a basis for the package and that reformed, but did not fully end, qualified immunity. Pascrell won reelection with 65.8 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

In late April, Scott had proposed a compromise<\/a> on qualified immunity that would shift liability from individual officers to their departments or municipalities. In a May 2 interview with CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation,\u201d Scott said he was finding Democratic support for his proposal and wanted to \u201cmake sure that the bad apples are punished.\u201d Scott praised the 2017 conviction of the officer who shot and killed Walter Scott in 2015 in his home state of South Carolina, as well as the April conviction of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd. Axios reported<\/a> that after Chauvin\u2019s conviction, congressional aides felt less pressure to pass a major police reform package. And Scott\u2019s tone would soon change.<\/p>\n

One comment from a moderate appears to have pushed the course of negotiations south. On May 9, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told<\/a> CNN that Democrats should be open to passing a bill that didn\u2019t touch qualified immunity. In an interview two days later, Scott\u2019s office declined to comment on the record but denied that Scott was against eliminating qualified immunity, and said he was still pushing his compromise proposal. The next day, in response to comments from Bass that the package needed to eliminate qualified immunity, Scott said<\/a> he was \u201con the exact opposite side.\u201d A June draft<\/a> of the legislation included a proposal similar to Scott\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween this and Haiti, Black people naturally are wondering what they are getting for their vote,\u201d one senior Democratic staffer told The Intercept. \u201cClyburn\u2019s comment hindered negotiations, and the fact that it came from the highest-ranking African American in Congress gives cover for the number of moderates that had no intention of honoring the commitment they made as they marched or tweeted Black Lives Matter last summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott denied<\/a> reports that talks started to break down<\/a> after Clyburn\u2019s remarks, and he expressed optimism<\/a> in the early months of summer that negotiators would reach a deal soon. But by August, Politico\u00a0reported<\/a> that proposed changes to qualified immunity were taken off the table.<\/p>\n

In a statement Wednesday, Bass said that Democrats\u2019 counterparts were \u201cunwilling to come to a compromise\u201d and that negotiators had \u201cno other option than to explore further avenues to stop police brutality in this country. I will not ask our community to wait another 200 days.\u201d She called on President Joe Biden and the White House to \u201duse the full extent of their constitutionally-mandated power to bring about meaningful police reform\u201d in the form of an executive order.<\/p>\n

Later that day, Bass told<\/a> Fox News that there was no single sticking point that led to the breakdown in negotiations. Things collapsed because Booker couldn\u2019t get Scott to agree on compromises, she added. \u201cIt was not over qualified immunity. It really wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post How Moderate Democrats Derailed Police Reform<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centrists demanded a police reform bill that didn\u2019t go too far. Now they don\u2019t get one at all.<\/p>\n

The post How Moderate Democrats Derailed Police Reform<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325098,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325034\/revisions\/325098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}