President Biden just acknowledged the mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, who are among the first lady’s guests at President Biden’s State of the Union address. They stood up during the State of the Union address and received a standing ovation.
Nichols’ death days after being beaten by police in Memphis last month has renewed calls for police reform and reignited a national conversation on justice in policing. Biden hosted members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House last week to discuss police reform, which has stalled in Congress multiple times and faces an uncertain path forward.
Nichols’ parents have been among those calling for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed to change policing on a federal level. But, Biden has a long way to go in term of police reform legislation, especially now with a divided Congress.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.
The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.
What the president can do: After the bill failed, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.
But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures in his order; the executive action lays out levers the federal government can use, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board.
Now, the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.
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Source: www.cnn.com