Romney to offer alternative bill on police reform
The Utah senator criticized Democrats for sweeping
legislation that has yet to gain Republican support.
By ANDREW
DESIDERIO
06/08/2020
07:26 PM EDT
Updated:
06/08/2020 07:37 PM EDT
Sen. Mitt
Romney announced plans on Monday to introduce a bipartisan police reform bill
in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police
officers, slamming congressional Democrats for their sweeping legislation that
has yet to draw Republican support.
The Utah
Republican, who marched with Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington on
Sunday, is working with a handful of GOP senators on a bill aimed at garnering
broad support from members of both parties and both chambers.
“The fact
that it has no Republican sponsors, the fact that there was no effort to
contact any of us to have us weigh in on the legislation, suggests it’s
designed to be a message piece, as opposed to a real piece of legislation,”
Romney said of the Democrats’ proposal.
Romney —
who won praise from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike on Monday for
joining the nationwide demonstrations — said he had talked with Tim Scott of
South Carolina, the only African American Republican senator, among other GOP
lawmakers.
The plan is
in its early stages and has yet to be written into legislative text, but Romney
said he’s aiming to create “supervisory” boards to determine whether unnecessary
force or racial profiling was employed by a police officer, in addition to new
training programs aimed at combating racial bias.
The
Democratic proposal includes creating a “National Police Misconduct Registry,”
developing a national standard on the use of force, and limiting the transfer
of surplus military equipment to local police departments.
“We’ll try
and fashion something that has broader bipartisan appeal,” Romney said. “If
there’s injustice, we want to correct that. If there is prejudice, we want to
change that. If there’s bias, we hope to give people a different perspective
and that we can provide a sense of equality among our people.”
Romney also
spoke emotionally about his decision to march with a group of Christian church
leaders through the streets of Washington on Sunday, adding that one of his
sons and some of his grandchildren also participated in protests. He also said
he looked to his father, the late George Romney, whose tenure as governor of
Michigan in the 1960s included marching with African Americans who were
demanding racial equality.
“One of the
fundamental principles of Christianity is that we’re all sons and daughters of
the same God,” Romney said. “And a fundamental principle of this country is
that we’re entitled to equal rights under the law and that we’re all esteemed
as brothers and sisters. I stated the obvious, which is black lives matter.
“Our whole family is very animated about the bias and
the prejudice that too often still exists in a country, which is the land of
the free and which was founded upon the principle that all men are created in
the image of God, and are equal under the law,” he added.
Mitt Romney
Romney
declined to respond to President Donald Trump’s recent Twitter jabs, which were
aimed at mocking Romney for joining the protests. Romney has long criticized
Trump, and he was the only Republican who voted to remove the president from
office in the impeachment trial earlier this year. Trump has largely alienated
Romney as a result, and continues to go after him on Twitter.
“Tremendous
sincerity, what a guy,” Trump tweeted in response to a video of Romney speaking
with a reporter at the protests. “Hard to believe, with this kind of political
talent, his numbers would ‘tank’ so badly in Utah!”
Despite
Trump’s assertions, Romney’s approval rating has spiked in his home state in recent
months. He said he hoped his efforts could bring more African American voters
into the Republican Party.
“My party
obviously has an embarrassingly small share of African American votes,” Romney
said. “I certainly did in my election and we have since. And I’d like to see
that change. But that isn’t what motivated me to stand up and speak. I saw a
heinous murder carried out by a person with a badge. And I know that’s an
outlier. ... But when there’s a bad apple, it’s got to be pointed out and
addressed.”
Romney did
not vote for Trump in 2016, instead writing in his wife, Ann. On Monday, he
said he planned to “stay quiet” on his 2020 vote.
“I’m not
going to be describing who I’ll be voting for, I don’t imagine,” he said. “My
plan is to stay quiet on that.”
CONGRESS
The bill would make dramatic changes to police policy
across the country and undo decades-old laws.
Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill
By HEATHER
CAYGLE, JOHN BRESNAHAN and SARAH FERRIS
06/08/2020
09:46 AM EDT
Updated:
06/08/2020 05:24 PM EDT
Top
Democrats unveiled a major police reform bill Monday morning in an effort to
galvanize public pressure into legislative action as protesters nationwide
demand racial justice after the killing of George Floyd.
The bill
would make dramatic changes to police policy across the country and undo
decades-old laws that Democrats and activists say have led to the deaths of
African Americans at the hands of police officers, including 46-year-old Floyd
in Minneapolis two weeks ago.
“The world
is witnessing the birth of a new movement in our country," Congressional
Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said at a press conference introducing
the bill Monday. "A profession where you have the power to kill should be
a profession where you have highly trained officers accountable to the public.”
House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he plans to call the House back as
soon as the bill is ready for a vote, likely before the end of June. But, Hoyer
added, he's not as confident the Senate will pass the legislation given how the
chamber has struggled in recent days to pass a bipartisan bill making lynching
a federal crime.
Before
introducing the police reform bill, Bass, Hoyer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala
Harris of California and other top Democrats gathered in the Capitol in silence
for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time an officer held his knee on
Floyd's neck. The Democrats, all clad in kente stoles, knelt together on the
floor to honor Floyd and other black Americans killed by police.
Thousands
of mourners are expected to pay their respects to Floyd in a public memorial in
his hometown of Houston on Monday before he is buried Tuesday. Floyd’s brother,
Philonese Floyd, is scheduled to testify during the House Judiciary Committee’s
hearing on police brutality on Wednesday.
A wave of
protests swept the nation in the days after a video surfaced showing a white
Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinning Floyd to the ground with his
knee on Floyd’s neck . Floyd lost consciousness and was later pronounced dead.
Chauvin, who has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder
and manslaughter, will make his first court appearance Monday. Three other
officers are also facing charges in Floyd’s killing.
Those
protests, which continued throughout the weekend, have largely been peaceful
after early, and sometimes violent, clashes with police in New York, Los
Angeles and Washington, among other cities.
"We're
here because black Americans want to stop being killed," Harris said at
the press conference. Harris, a former prosecutor, is an early favorite to
become presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's running rate.
While the
legislation proposes a sweeping overhaul of current laws — including moving to
ban chokeholds and making it easier to sue police officers who unjustly injure
or kill citizens — it doesn’t answer liberals’ most aggressive demand to
“defund the police.” Police departments are largely funded at the state and
local level, although there is significant federal aid.
Democrats
want to lower the federal threshold for when police officers can be charged
with using excessive force and limit “qualified immunity,” which currently
shields officers from lawsuits over their misconduct, according to a draft
outline obtained by POLITICO.
Democrats
are also seeking to create a National Police Misconduct Registry, end racial
profiling, bar the use of “no-knock” arrest warrants in drug cases, develop a
national standard on using force, and limit the transfer of military equipment
to police departments, among other initiatives.
The
legislation would also make lynching a federal crime. A proposal to do that was
held up in the Senate last week by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who wants to narrow
the definition of lynching.
But it’s
unclear whether the Democratic police reform bill, which powerful police unions
will surely oppose, will receive bipartisan support — a necessary component in
the GOP-controlled Senate. And many Republicans have already started to draw
their political battle lines — trying to cast themselves as fighting off
"radical" Democrats who only want to defund police departments.
In a sign
of how contentious the fight over the legislation could be, House Minority
Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spent Monday morning retweeting President
Donald Trump's calls for "law and order" and tweeting his own message
of backing the police.
"Democrats
want to defund you, but Republicans will never turn our backs on you,"
McCarthy tweeted.
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And in
another sign that the GOP won’t be rallying around the Democrats’ bill, House
Republicans are aiming to release their own policing proposal by the end of the
week, according to three sources on a Monday conference call between GOP
leadership and ranking committee members. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top
Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, will be taking the lead on the
effort.
While there
are elements of the Democrats' police reform package that the GOP could get
behind, Republicans are crying foul that Democrats wrote the bill with very little
input from the GOP, even as McCarthy declared last week he was “ready to work”
on the issue.
Yet many
Republicans also feel like it’s not enough to just simply oppose the Democratic
package — they also want to show where they stand on the issue, especially as
public opinion around police brutality has been rapidly shifting.
Bass
dismissed the "law and order" messaging during Democrats' press
conference Monday.
"I
think for us, especially when it comes to this legislation, we feel that it is
transformative, that it will transform the relationships our communities have
with the police," Bass said. "And I think for the 'law and order'
message the president is spewing out of there, there's nothing new about that
message and I do not believe it will be successful."
House
Democrats plan to mark up the bill in the Judiciary Committee in two weeks, and
put it on the floor for final passage by the end of June. Schumer has called on
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring the legislation before the
Senate by July 4.
"In
the Senate, Democrats are going to fight like hell to make this a
reality," Schumer said Monday. "Leader McConnell, let’s have the
debate. Not just on TV and Twitter but on the floor of the United States
Senate. A divided nation cannot wait for healing, for solutions."
Melanie
Zanona contributed to this report.
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