An Act of Congress may Destroy Policing
The Greatest Threat to Local Law Enforcement Resides In Federal Legislation In The Hands Of Nervous Politicians.
Every time there is a national police story, President Biden promises to sign the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act into law as soon as the United States Congress forwards it to his desk. Also, as often as a family member mourns a life lost in a police encounter, they include passage of the act in their comments to the media.
It passed the House of Representatives in both the 116th and 117th Congress. For the time being, it has lost its champions including Karen Bass who returned to Los Angeles to serve as mayor while Sen. Cory Booker worked with Sen. Tim Scott to reconcile this into a passable bill without success.
The fact that it has had that level of support in the past, means that it likely would only take another high-profile racially charged incident involving suspect injury or death for this legislation to be resurrected. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act should concern every person in the country.
How Bad Is It?
An executive order was signed putting nearly all the 100,000 federal law enforcement officers under the conditions of the proposed act at the stroke of the president’s pen.
The impact on those federal officers were minimal for a couple of reasons. First, except for body cameras, these officers already signed up for training to federal standards. Also, these government agents don’t answer directly to the community they serve. Also, so far, the feds aren’t doing the day-to-day work of stopping speeders and drunk drivers, responding to domestic violence and rape crisis calls, or breaking up fights in bars and public schools.
Our Nation Spent More Than a Century Resisting the Creation of a Federal Police Force!
Depending on which origin story you favor, winning arguments in 1908 centered on the commerce clause, growth, and modernity. These points gained enough weight and inertia to make a limited federal force a logical and palatable choice. Scholars today still debate whether some current federal law enforcement agencies violate the Tenth Amendment.
If those arguments have any merit, the Justice in Policing Act all but destroys the Tenth Amendment. In function, it will have such a destructive influence by placing almost all local law enforcement under federal standards and liable in federal courts.
Why Is That Bad?
According to the New Democrat Coalition, as posted on the House of Representatives website, the intention of this legislation is clear:
“The Justice in Policing Act would: 1) establish a national standard for the operation of police departments; 2) mandate data collection on police encounters; 3) reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs; and 4) streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. The language of the bill is identical to the version passed in the 1 16th Congress with the support of the entire Democratic Caucus and three Republicans.”
To interpret their proposal, there would be complete command and control of agency policies and procedures especially including discipline.
Mandating uniform data collection, based on what we have seen so far, would be every time a firearm is unholstered on a call, it would constitute a use of force. A definition rarely shared with the public is that the service firearm is the only defensive weapon on an officer’s belt and it is most often unholstered on building searches and approaching suspicious vehicles.
Reprogram existing funds is defunding the police and providing the money to organizations with the Marxist principles to dismantle systems of oppression.
Finally, we are going to use federal law to go after the police. We are going to establish independent (federal) prosecutors to charge enough police officers federally (obviously in federal court) with excessive force. Excessive force is not currently a standalone crime. It is a description of a how they are going to try officers routinely with civil rights violations.
Within the actual bill, there is language of ‘eliminating school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement,’ mandatory training on racial bias, programs to eliminate racial bias, establishment of a National Police Misconduct Registry, and a host of other bans on procedures and techniques.
Why Will Bodies Pile Up?
By outlawing the non-lethal carotid holds and other less than lethal options nationwide, officers will be on the defensive compelled to depend on lethal options increasing violent resisting suspect mortality.
The police recruiting crisis will push past redline.
Due to self inflicted staffing issues, we can expect a decrease in police proactivity in the areas that describe themselves as underserved and overpoliced.
Why will there be more violent protests?
Enhanced restrictions on officers using necessary and reasonable force, incentivizes criminals to resist violently during arrest. Officers with federal civil rights violations hanging over their heads, combined with a reduction in options, places more officers in a life and death situation. The longer it lasts, without the tools to end it sooner, the risk of lethality for both the officer and suspect. There will be more deaths.
A suspect may be fighting, attacking, and resisting but an officer is there doing their job. The officer and the suspect are not in a fight. While it may resemble a bar fight on the news or a match seen on at an exhibition or on television, the transaction is quite different. There is one party offending, violating, and debasing society and the officer is practicing criminal process by the legal authorized seizure of a person to face their charges.
Other Provisions of the Act
Citizen review boards are inappropriately empowered. They would have subpoena power and policy making authority. The would be independent and funded apart from the law enforcement entity with the additional authority to conduct hearings, initiate investigations and studies on prevailing community needs.
Law enforcement grant funded community organizations, in the act, include the century old institutions such as the ACLU and NAACP, among others, who have never identified a positive police characteristic since the Nazi skinheads unsuccessfully tried to march in Skokie, Illinois. It wouldn’t be unfair to judge them, and the other enumerated funded community organizations as both adversarial and consistently anti-police.
The Solution
Sadly, this is not a strategy but a hope. We can only hope that there are courageous police leaders who will stand up for their cops. Not get on Zoom calls with all their chief and sheriff buddies about how to ‘diffuse the situation.’ I preserve no quarter for sworn law enforcement officers who betray their oath, and in doing so, betray their brothers and sisters. But be aware: if they are preceding a release of body camera with days of words of caution coupled with their own condemnation of their own officers, they have put their officers on the sacrificial alter of self-preservation.
Where will we find the true leaders who won’t follow the IACP and MCCC crowd and out of fear, ignorance, or misguided self-preservation, deny officers their statutory rights and their constitutional presumption of innocence?
Who will have the courage to say: “If you take a knee, I’ll take your badge?” Who will put their own reputation on the line and stand in front of their officer or deputy when the news comes with a racially charged accusation?
This George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is only one major hysterical reaction away from becoming law.
Pray for courageous leaders and all our officers on the street.
Resources
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1280
https://reimaginingjustice.com
Wow! “Who will have the courage to say: “If you take a knee, I’ll take your badge?” Who will put their own reputation on the line and stand in front of their officer or deputy when the news comes with a racially charged accusation?”
Thank you so much! This discussion was had over the last Super Bowl when people actually proposed a regional police force. My friend is a commander and told them a regional police force already existed - the Sheriffs Department.
My 15-year-old wants to be an officer. Hopefully, in seven years it will look different! Keep up the good work, sir!
In America, the US Constitution is the foundation on which both individual liberty and public safety rests. The Constitution was specifically designed to place the core police powers at the state and local level, under local control.