Elizabeth Warren Unveils Bill To Hold Police Accountable | EUROtoday

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) launched a invoice Wednesday that would give federal and state officers extra energy to carry police departments accused of dangerous conduct to account.

The Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act, led by Warren and within the House by Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), would strengthen the ability of state attorneys common to launch investigations into police departments concerned in civil rights violations if the Justice Department fails to behave on them.

The invoice would additionally process the Justice Department with trying past “traditional law enforcement mechanisms” when offering reforms to selective police departments reminiscent of psychological well being help, civilian oversight our bodies, and community-based restorative justice packages, based on Warren’s workplace.

Warren had launched a model of the invoice in 2020. This latest model of the measure would additionally revitalize the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, granting a rise in funding to pursue civil rights investigations into police departments and different authorities workplaces accused of discriminatory practices.

It would enhance funding for the civil rights division to $445 million per yr over a 10-year interval. (For scale, the 2023 finances for the division was $189.9 million.)

Warren first launched her invoice following the loss of life of George Floyd in 2020. That earlier draft additionally known as for Attorney General Merrick Garland to rescind a 2017 memorandum from his predecessor, Trump-era Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that restricted the DOJ’s potential to provoke consent decrees on police departments — a key manner of stopping dangerous conduct. (Garland rescinded that memorandum in April of 2021.)

Several civil rights organizations are backing Warren’s new invoice, together with the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and others.

Allies of presidential candidate Donald Trump have mentioned overhauling the Justice Department if he’s elected in 2024. That may embody diminishing how aggressively the division pursues investigations into native and state police for potential civil rights violations.

President Joe Biden has tried to pursue extra oversight of police departments accused of discrimination. He appointed Kristen Clarke because the assistant legal professional common accountable for the Civil Rights Division, the primary Black lady to get the job. And on the finish of 2023, Biden introduced a nationwide regulation enforcement accountability database to doc federal regulation enforcement officers discovered to have engaged in misconduct.

His strikes come as there have been a number of high-profile police killings and incidents of brutality over the past a number of years.

In April, six Mississippi law enforcement officials had been sentenced to jail for federal civil rights violations after officers terrorized and sexually assaulted Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, two Black males, due to their race.

The officers had been members of the “Goon Squad”, a rogue unit inside a Mississippi sheriff’s division that had a tradition of racist and violent police practices.

The Justice Department additionally launched an investigation into allegedly anti-Black policing practices by a police division in Lexington, a rural, predominantly Black Mississippi city.

Other departments had been investigated after releasing physique digicam footage depicting officers beating or killing civilians.

On April 4, 2022, Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese refugee, was fatally shot throughout a visitors cease in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The officer, Christopher Schurr, was fired from the Grand Rapids Police Department and charged with second-degree homicide.

And on Jan. 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols, a Black man from Memphis, Tennessee, was allegedly overwhelmed to loss of life by law enforcement officials after he fled a visitors cease. Nichols was pronounced useless in a hospital three days after the incident.

“Police departments shouldn’t get away with chokeholds, unconstitutional searches, or killing unarmed teenagers. Our criminal justice system is broken — fixing it starts with holding police officers and departments accountable for discriminatory practices and ensuring thorough civil rights investigations are happening, free of conflicts of interest,” Warren mentioned in an announcement.