Senate Republicans unveil policing reform bill
At a press conference on Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott and Senate Republicans unveiled their proposal for policing reform.
Video Transcript
TIM SCOTT: Let me start by simply saying that too often we're having a discussion in this nation about are you supporting the law enforcement community or are you supporting communities of color? This is a false binary choice. The answer to the question of which side do you support, it's I support America. And if you support America, you support restoring the confidence that communities of color have in institutions of authority.
If you support America, that means you know that the overwhelming number of officers in this nation want to do their job, go home to their family. It is not a binary choice. This legislation encompasses that spirit. It speaks to the fact that we believe that the overwhelming number of officers in this nation are good people, working hard, trying to keep order in the communities.
Communities of color and people like myself-- I've sold my story several times, stopped seven times in one year. That has been said a lot. But I was stopped this year driving-while-black when I got a warning ticket for failing to use my turn signal earlier in my lane change. And so this issue continues, and that's why it's so important for us to say that we hear you. We're listening to your concerns.
The George Floyd incident certainly accelerated this conversation. And we find ourselves at a place with a package that, I think, speaks to the families that I spoke with yesterday, who lost loved ones. We hear you. I think this package speaks very clearly to the young person who's concerned when he's stopped by the law enforcement officers, we see you.
And so what does this package do? Three major areas. One is on the area-- we have to have the right information so that we can direct our resources as a federal government to making sure that the outcomes lead to safer officers and safer suspects and the instances of challenges. That data collection or the information is around making sure that when serious bodily injury occurs, or death, that all of that information is reported to the FBI. Today, only 40% of the departments report that information to the FBI.
We want all of that information because when we hear about the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, Kentucky, we don't have any information around no-knock warrants. So for us to start a conversation with banning no-knocks, it doesn't sound like a solid position based on any data because we don't have that data.
Once we have the information, we can then turn to the training that is necessary to de-escalate situations, the duty to intervene, not standing there, watching an officer with his knee on the neck, but intervening in those situations. We can train our officers better. We can find ways and mechanisms to de-escalate the situation. So we spent a lot of time in the training aspect, using the resources of our grants, to reduce the situations and violence in those situations.
And then finally, we look at officer misconduct and the necessity of transparency. We believe that the preservation of records on the local level, so that departments within the states have a chance to see, almost like a reference check, what the past history of complaints have been against that officer. We do not create a national database. The president's executive order creates, basically, a national database for that information to flow into.
We believe that our policy positions are one that brings the communities of color into a position of stronger understanding and confidence in the institutions of authority, and we believe that it brings our law enforcement community to a place where they have the resources necessary to de-escalate some of these situations. And frankly, through James Lankford's work on this package, we bring in the opportunity to hire more officers and have more training and have a better perspective on the history.
