The JUSTICE Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we just finished up a vote on the Senate floor where we fell four votes short of opening debate on a bill to deal with police reform--four votes short. We were four votes short of opening debate to discuss it.

Every single Republican voted for this--and a handful of Democrats. But the vast majority of Democrats actually said: No, we don't want to debate this bill. We will only debate the Pelosi bill when it comes out of the House.

Well, that is absurd. That didn't happen, I can assure you, when Speaker Boehner was the leader of the House, that the Senate said ``I will tell you what, we are going to wait and see whatever Speaker Boehner sends over to Harry Reid'' and Harry Reid would say ``Oh, yes, please. We will take up whatever the Boehner bill is.'' That was never done, and they know that.

This is such an odd, peculiar season in our country politically and a painful season in our country culturally and practically.

Our hope was to have a real debate on a real bill. I was part of the team in writing this bill. This bill was a genuine push to reform how we do police work and to increase accountability and transparency across the country.

The bill that we just needed four Democrats to join--just four Democrats to join--to be able to open it up for debate would have banned choke holds across the country.

It would have required the reporting of all serious bodily injury or death in police custody from everywhere in the country, to start tracking all of this.

It would have gathered information on no-knock warrants all around the country to start tracking this information to see if they are being abused.

It would have put more body cameras on the street. This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join us on--just four--would have put $150 million more in body-worn cameras on the street. It wouldn't have just put those body cameras on the street; it would have also put in new requirements to make sure they stay on, which has been an issue.

This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join us on, just so we could debate it and discuss it and amend it, would have had a whole new system tracking complaints and discipline actions. It would have pulled together records for law enforcement officers to make sure that they would have had those records--their commendations and their discipline--travel to the next department with them. So before an officer leaves one department and goes to the next, all the records are made available to the next department so that we don't have a bad apple moving from department to department.

This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join on with us--any four--just so we could open it up and debate it and amend it would have changed the system on a duty to intervene, putting new obligations, new training, and new requirements on an officer who is watching another officer do something they know is wrong to intervene in that process and to stop it.

It would have a national commission to pull folks together to get the best ideas from around the country, to gather the best practices that have happened.

There is also a new piece that is in this--it is not in the Pelosi bill; it is only in this bill--that deals with giving a false report if you are a police officer, because at times we will have a police officer where--when there is serious bodily injury or death, their written record doesn't match the reality of what really happened, and it is not just that they misremembered; they intentionally turned in a false report. This bill that we wanted to just debate today would have allowed us to be able to add additional penalties onto that, to make sure someone receives the due penalty if they try to lie on forms.

This bill would have dealt with mental health.

This bill would have dealt with deescalation training. This bill was designed to help get additional training.

This bill has a section on it using the Museum of African American History to design a curriculum that we could put out to every department around the country on the history of race and law enforcement. It is modeled after what was done with the Holocaust Museum to deal with anti-Semitism. That is what this bill was designed to do. We just needed four Democrats to join us. Instead, they dug in, did press releases, and said: That bill is terrible. It is awful. It has no teeth in it. That bill is unsalvageable.

I would ask any American listening to me and anyone in this room: Is there one of those ideas you don't like?

Then the conversation was, well, we are not going to have an open enough process.

Senator Scott, who is our point negotiator in this, sat down with Democratic leadership and said: How about 20 amendments on this bill? If you want to bring something up to amend it, change, it, great.

They said no. Their desire is only Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing. I think that is exceptionally sad.

We have been through this journey so many times where we will see a Black man be killed, we will all watch the footage, the whole country rises up, and Congress starts debating, and then it stops. It stops because of silly stuff like this where people dig in and say: If you don't do it entirely our way, then we are not going to do it at all. It is not about solving the problem; it is just about prolonging a problem so you can make it a political issue when families out there want this solved.

All of those things I listed are all out there.

There are two things I have heard. We are not going to take up your bill. We are not going to debate it. We are not going to discuss it. We are going to block it from coming to the floor--which is what happened today. The two issues I heard are, you know what, I really want us to go to committee. I want a committee to look at this, take some time, go through this.

That is a fascinating argument, and I wish it was true. Two weeks ago, the discussion was ``We need to get on this as quickly as possible''--until we actually put out a legitimate bill, and then my Democratic colleagues said, ``Well, there is a problem with how you are putting it out. We are going to debate it on the floor. I would rather debate it in committee and then have the floor bring it but not debate it on the floor. I don't want to debate it out here. Let's debate it over there.''

No one is buying that argument. No one is buying that. If you can put 20 amendments on this, that is what would happen in a committee. Let's bring it. Let's talk about it. Everyone sees what that is. Shuffling bills off to committee is about delaying and stalling and ``Let's delay this,'' because they know we won't get it this week, and they will delay it, and then it will be after the Fourth of July. When we come back from the Fourth of July, we have the coronavirus bills, as they know, and we have the appropriations bills, as they know. So it is like, OK, so it will not happen there. So then there is the August gap, and then it will move to September. What they are trying to do is get it closer and closer to the election and then make it a big election issue, saying: Those crazy Republicans will not resolve this. Get it close to the election and make it an election issue.

Hello--why don't we just solve this instead of dragging the country through something we all know key ways to be able to solve?

Two issues we know of--one is a purely political issue: stall, delay, try to get this closer to the election, and then divide the country. The second one deals with an issue on whether police officers should face not only criminal liability, they should face civil liability as well.

You hear this get kicked around all the time with all different kinds of terms. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: Not only put that police officer in prison, which they deserve--if they murder someone, commit a crime, a police officer is as liable for the law as everyone else is, and if they are not, they should be, and we should fix that. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: Not only put them in prison but also civilly take their home and their car and their pension away from their family. Make sure we leave them destitute and their family destitute, as well as put them in prison. That is what their bill is all about.

It is the reason why so many police officers are so frustrated and furious with the bill they adamantly want to put on the floor, because they are saying that if they did something wrong, they should face the consequences for it, but don't punish their family.

Speaker Pelosi's bill says: No, the police officers should be in prison, and their families should have their home taken away from them and their police pension taken away from them and everything else.

Do you know what we have talked about? We talked about a police officer facing criminal penalties, as they do now, as they should. If there is a civil case, why don't we bring it against the department that didn't train their officer, that didn't supervise that officer? Instead of attacking an officer's family, why don't we hold people accountable to actually supervise people better and push the city and the department to do the right thing: to train and to equip people. If someone is a problem, don't leave them out there on the street with 18 discipline records; take them off the street. If you don't, the whole city is going to be held to account for it. That is trying to end this. That is trying to push toward more supervision, not just trying to be punitive.

Those are the two differences that I can pick up: political and civil. Otherwise, a lot of what I mentioned that is in our bill is in their bill as well.

Tim Scott made a very simple statement: Why don't we put this on the floor? Why don't we actually debate the differences that we have? Why don't we have a vote, and then why don't we finish this?

Leader McConnell dedicated this week and next week to this bill on police reform to give 2 weeks to do all kinds of amendments, all kinds of debate, but instead, the conversation was ``No, don't want to do that; it is Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing'' or ``Let's just slow the whole thing down and send it to committee and delay, delay, delay this.''

Why don't we deal with this right now? There are 2 weeks that have been set aside to do it. There is plenty of time for amendments. Why not do that instead of just blocking the bill?

I don't know a lot of folks who say to me: I really don't want there to be more body cameras on the street. I don't want any more oversight on law enforcement when they turn in a false report or when they turn off their body camera.

I don't run into a lot of people who say: I want to just go ahead and leave the system the way it is.

We really don't know what is happening in a police department when there is bodily injury and harm.

I meet a lot of people who say: Those things make sense to me. Why don't we do it?

Unfortunately, that is my same question today standing on the floor of the Senate: Why don't we do it?

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