Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my fellow Senator from Nebraska and the other Members of the small team that was really blessed to be asked to join Senator Scott as he led us to where we are today, which is introducing the JUSTICE Act.

I am thinking about where the great talents lie in the Senate. One of the things we all know all of us do well is talk. We know how to talk. Sometimes we talk too much. Senator Scott doesn't talk that much. He even said that about himself. I can tell you the skill that he has that a lot of us need more of. Always, when I am asked by school children ``What is the best skill to have?'' I say it is the ability to listen. He has listened for years and years. He has not just lived this; he has listened. He said, just yesterday, he was with the family of one of the victims, and it was a very moving day for him.

I am here today to rise with my colleagues in support of the JUSTICE Act. I join the overwhelming majority of Americans and West Virginians who, in sadness and frustration and sorrow, witnessed the horrifying video of the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. It was absolutely unacceptable.

The vast majority of our law enforcement officers here and around the country are just like us. They want to have a great and peaceful nation. They want to have great and peaceful communities. They want their families to feel safe in their homes and out in the streets of their communities just as we do. A lot of them take their oath seriously and do their best to protect our communities.

It is not enough to say that the death of George Floyd was a terrible, isolated tragedy because we know many of these have preceded this date. I have said it is almost like popping a balloon and revealing all of this unrest underneath, all the questions and sorrow that have been festering.

Here we are today. I think the great majority of us want to put all this energy and frustration into action. We want to have something substantive so we can tell the American people: We listened. We heard. We feel this. And we want to find solutions.

We have to recognize that every time force is used inappropriately by law enforcement, our justice system has eroded. We have to understand our history, wherein Black Americans have been too frequently denied their basic rights. It is our job to make sure that Americans, regardless of race, can feel that law enforcement is there to protect them and their families and that they trust that. The trust factor is where the erosion has been most remarkably in view of all of us--the lack of trust.

It is our job to hear these voices and to act. In my opinion, it doesn't mean defunding the police; it means improving the police and improving equal protections so that everybody has basic protections and we are all equal in the eyes of justice and the law.

We have seen the looting. We have seen officers who have lost their lives. We have seen an underbelly to our country that has been difficult to watch. Yet what we have seen, too, is an outcry of the American citizens peacefully protesting what they see as inequities in their lives. When I look in the crowd--I was right there in Washington last week when a crowd of about 150 protesters walked by me very peacefully with signs and chanting in solidarity. Most of the people in that group were probably under 30 years old. There were a lot of Black faces, a lot of White faces, men and women, young people who felt that lack of trust. We look at how people have exercised their First Amendment rights. It is a beautiful thing to see. Unfortunately, it has been eroded by some of the destructive things that have come along with it, but at the base of it, we are hearing the same things in our States every day.

While we want to know that our Declaration of Independence has lived up to--and that the 14th amendment, which guarantees that no government, including State and local governments, can deny basic constitutional rights, we haven't quite lived up to all of that.

A century passed before we passed major civil rights legislation in 1964. One of the sources of great pride for me is that my father was one of the leading Republicans in the House of Representatives representing West Virginia in 1964 who helped make sure that passed. In my office, I actually have a pen that was used in signing that and a picture of my dad at the White House when it was signed.

Our job is not done. When I hear the voices of mothers who say that they are fearful their son might not survive a simple traffic stop or they must have certain behaviors--as Senator Sasse said, it is so different from what he learned growing up as a young man about how to interact with police officers in that situation. We can't have those anguished cries and that double system anymore. That is what this bill is about.

I am proud to be with Senator Scott introducing the JUSTICE Act. It has been interesting to watch him and all of us listen to the different segments of our society who have talked to us--friends, neighbors, police, members of communities of color, our religious communities, our news commentators. I did six interviews today on the TV about this. Every single one of them asked me one fundamental question, and I wish some of my friends on the other side of the aisle would be here. They asked: You don't have a very good history in this body of having Republicans and Democrats joining together to get something done. How do you think you can do this now? I said: Well, today we did. We did the Great American Outdoors Act. Several months ago we did the CARES Act. We can do it. Where there is a will, we can do it.

If we don't do it, we are failing so many people. We are failing ourselves. We are failing our country, our communities, failing our law enforcement communities. I would say that we need to begin this job of a difficult conversation and make sure that we get this bill onto the Senate floor and debate it in front of the general public.

When we start debating things on the Senate floor in front of the general public, do you know what happens? The same thing that happened during the impeachment trial. I know all of us were getting all kinds of input from people all around. People are watching it. They are seeing what is actually going on. That is what we need. If we want to have discussions on qualified immunity, if we want to ban choke holds, which I want to do and our bill does, essentially, but if you want something more definitively, yes, I am all for that. Let's have the discussion and talk about it in front of the American people.

I believe that law enforcement has a lot of great people who work in and around law enforcement. They need the equipment. They need the cameras. They need to have the realtime evidence--the realtime evidence of wrongdoing and evidence of doing it right. It is a protective device. Everybody should have the availability of that in law enforcement.

We also require that law enforcement agencies retain disciplinary records on officers and make sure that they check an officer's record from other agencies before making a hiring decision. I kind of thought that was going on anyway. I sort of did. We need to make sure and make clear that is what we absolutely want to do.

The bill incentivizes State and local police agencies to ban choke holds. As I mentioned earlier, I am for even more definitive language on that.

It also provides training in all kinds of areas--deescalation or if an officer is in a situation where another officer is using overwhelming force improperly, that officer is trained on how to interdict that situation. We saw that happen in Minneapolis. Sadly, the officers did not, but maybe they didn't know how to do it, when to do it, what form it should take. Let's explore that.

To keep our communities safe, we need our police officers. We need trust in our law enforcement. There should be no conflict between a pro-civil rights bill and a pro-law enforcement bill. They should be able to be joined together. This supports our police officers while bringing about positive change that will guarantee equal protection to all of our citizens. The police reform bill will make a real difference in advancing our constitutional ideals and in making our communities safer.

I am proud to stand with Senator Scott, but I want to stand with the entire body to talk about the ways to make this bill even better, to take the 70 percent of this bill that we have shared ideals on and shared ideas and put those into action and to not dither here, to not score political points, and to say to the American people: These are tough decisions, and we are going to make them. We are going to have this where you can see it, right here on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

So thank you very much. I am proud to be with my colleagues.

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