Tyre Nichols death sparks long-shot push for police reform
Samantha-Jo Roth Juliegrace Brufke
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Members of Congress have renewed a push for police reform after a video of Memphis, Tennessee, police officers beating Tyre Nichols to death was released last week.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle condemned the deadly encounter in which Nichols, 29, died after being beaten by a group of police officers in Memphis during a traffic stop earlier this month. The five officers were dismissed from the department and charged with murder, assault, kidnapping, and other charges last week.
SIXTH MEMPHIS OFFICER RELIEVED FROM DUTY AFTER TYRE NICHOLS FOOTAGE
“Let us honor his memory by bringing lasting, meaningful change to create a more just and a more fair America,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on the Senate floor Monday.
The Congressional Black Caucus requested a meeting with President Joe Biden to discuss a path forward on reforms to the justice system and urged lawmakers to take action.
“We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), chairman of the CBC, said in a statement on Sunday.
Police reform negotiations in the Senate broke down in 2021 when Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC) were unable to come to an agreement on provisions in Democrats’ George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill spurred by Floyd’s death in 2020 after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck.
The legislation, which passed in the Democratic-controlled House, focused on limiting qualified-immunity policies that protect officers accused of misconduct and would have banned chokeholds and limited no-knock warrants. The bill would have also created a national registry of disciplinary actions against officers.
The legislation faced opposition in the Senate from Republicans, and though Scott offered a narrower version of the bill in the evenly divided Senate, it did not have the support to pass either.
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Ben Crump, the attorney who represents the Nichols family, called on Congress to revive the police reform bill on Sunday.
“Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’s] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Crump said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) recalled the negotiations between Booker and Scott, saying they were “close to making progress toward our goals.”
He echoed Crump’s call for action on the Senate floor Monday. “Prosecutions and peaceful protests cannot be the only response to this tragedy,” Durbin said. “I’m committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to finally confront these problems with meaningful legislation.”
“These efforts must continue now anew — we owe it to all of the families that have lost loved ones in these horrible acts of brutality and to the families that fear their loved ones could be next — to pass a law that will help ensure justice and accountability in our policing system,” he added.
In a statement released Friday, Scott said Nichols’s death should be a “call to action for every lawmaker.” Booker said in a separate statement he will be renewing “legislative efforts to advance” reform. The New Jersey Democrat is expected to launch a new push in the coming weeks that has been in the works since prior to Nichols’s death, according to staff familiar with his plans.
Yet despite the bipartisan calls for action, the odds of passing meaningful police reform are low in the newly divided Congress. House Republicans don’t appear to be making the issue a major priority, while Democrats’ slim majority in the upper chamber means nine Republicans would have to sign on board a compromise bill.
“Congress, at the moment, is hopeless. So, looking for Congress to be the solution to a difficult challenge is likely not the solution,” said Phillip Howard, a lawyer and national policy expert and chairman of the nonpartisan, nonprofit reform group Common Good.
Though House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has called the death of Nichols tragic, he dismissed the need for police reforms at the federal level.
“What kind of law is going to change that evil behavior? What kind of training is going to change what we saw that was so wrong in that video?” Jordan told the Washington Examiner on Monday. “I don’t know that there is any law you can write, any training you can do that’s going to stop something that terrible, that wrong that those guys did to Mr. Nichols.”
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Howard said a federal approach to policing is likely not the answer.
“It’s really hard to change the culture of a police department with some sort of top-down law. The people running a police department have to be able to manage it,” he said. “Ultimately, the solution is in letting the people in charge be in charge and giving them a chance to rebuild these cultures.”