A police reform bill proposed by Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) failed on a procedural vote due to opposition from Democrats, who said it does not go far enough.
Wednesday’s vote on the cloture motion was 55 in favor and 45 against, with 60 votes needed to move the bill forward.
Scott, who is African-American, pleaded with his colleagues to not think of this as a Republican or Democrat issue, but something that would start addressing the issues that have plagued the country for decades.
Democrats countered that Scott’s proposal didn’t ban chokeholds or no-knock warrants and failed to hold police accountable.
Fixed it: Senate Democrats blocked a GOP bill that kept the status quo in place, failed to hold police accountable and didn’t ban chokeholds or no-knock warrants https://t.co/yhT4lxrcI5
The Democrat-led House of Representatives is expected to vote on its own proposal, called the Justice in Policing Act, on Thursday.
A draft of Scott’s Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities (JUSTICE) Act was leaked to CNN earlier this month, and included things like having the police match the “racial and ethnic characteristics” of their community, mandating the use of body cameras and sharing complaints against officers between departments, as well as creating commissions on “Black Men and Boys” and “a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system.”
It would have also made lynching a federal hate crime.
Since then, President Donald Trump has mandated some of its provisions in an executive order, which also banned chokeholds in most situations and allocated more funding to social workers to support police in dealing with the homeless, drug addicts and mentally ill persons.
All of these were demanded by Democrats amid the protests over the death of George Floyd, an African-American from Minnesota who died as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Protests over Floyd’s death have since turned into riots and spread across the US. The demands have also increased, from reforming police practices to de-funding and abolishing police altogether, something Trump and the Republicans have ruled out.
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