Republicans and Democrats in Washington in their legislative efforts to stop police abuse are avoiding the critical issue that needs to be fixed which is getting police officers that don't have the character or make-up to be police officers off the police force; consequently, the problem will continue to be with us with these regular blow-up of large public outcries the nation sees this issue will be like the issue of mass shooting incidents which plague our nation with its accompanying large public dissatisfaction with government result. Republicans don't want to address this issue because they think it is a state's rights issue and Democrats don't want to address it because it requires disempowering police unions and Democrats don't want conflict with their union base. Republicans are wrong here this is a Constitutional rights, specifically civil rights, issue just like the Second Amendment that needs Federal Government protection and Democrats are wrong here they need to decide who do they serve Unions or the American people. On so many of these police brutality cases, the recent Minneapolis and the Philly cases are big standouts, the offending officer has a history of violence and abuse that the system never acted on, never removed the officer from the job for character reasons based on what his record called for. What needs to happen is states, and a state could approve it for big cities or regions, need to establish law enforcement licensing panels, the panels are comprised of three or five law trained or people with at least ten years of law enforcement experience, bi-partisan appointments, where the said panel members have six or ten year terms so as to shield them from political and public pressure. For all incidents where a person receives serious bodily injury from or was killed by a police officer or there was a substantiated discrimination or multiple unsubstantiated discriminatory allegations the matters have to go before these police licensing panels and the panel has to rule whether the officer is suitable or unsuitable for police work; if the panel finds the officer unsuitable and the Police Commissioner still believes the officer is suitable in that case the officer gets one appeal to a higher panel and if the higher panel rules unsuitable the officer loses his or her license to work as a police officer and is then off the force. The federal government should force into existence a system like this, where the reviews are taken out of the police department with its overwhelming bias to find no police wrongdoing and where union "shield all cops even bad one's" tentacles pervade, it should force it on the states through holding back grant money like it frequently does and if a state obstinately persists in not cooperating after a few years the federal government can just impose it through law under the guise of protecting citizens of that states civil rights this protection necessitates this type of police oversight system. The Democrats and Republicans are also failing to create the tools in the system needed to fix the Police abuse problem they need to give the Federal Courts the power to impose the needed policies and procedures to stop Police violations of people's civil rights and other needed things like seeing that the demographics of the police force is at least relatively similar to the demographics of the community. Congress needs to give the DOJ and State Attorney Generals the power to bring lawsuits in Federal Courts to fix these troubled police departments and District Attorney Offices even going so far as giving Federal Judges the power to remove uncooperative leadership! There is a lot of good in both the Democrat and Republican bills (HR 7120 and S3985) the numerous police training provisions, the record keeping provisions on local police departments - the car stops, the pedestrian stops, the police pat downs what are the demographics involved in such interactions what are the basis of these actions (is discrimination going on?), the ban on police choke holds to subdue and arrest accused people, the requirement for at least police to announce their police when entering a premises when their executing a no-knock warrant so occupants of the premises don't think the intruders are criminals and understandably try to defend themselves, etc. On the other hand there is a lot of bad policy in the Democrat's and Republican's bills. For the Republican bill they are utterly foolish creating all these additional crimes; America is broke our budget deficit is on an out-of-control trajectory that will definitely cause an economic catastrophe we don't need to be spending more money incarcerating people when there is other means to deter the behavior. The Republicans want to change the misdemeanor grade of racial discrimination involving housing where threats of violence are involved and where no bodily injury results a felony this is unnecessary just enforce the current misdemeanor law on the books. Republicans want to make falsifying police reports a felony (talk about opening the flood gates); how about just mandating the offending police officer be fired like what would happen to people throughout our society if they falsified important reports. Republicans want to create this new "felony" crime for police officers that have "consensual" sex with a person they arrest; how about doing what any good police commissioner would do and fire the offending police officer for unprofessional behavior. The Republicans want to create a "Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys" in the United States Commission on Civil Rights Office; why limit it to African American Men and Boys why not include the entire community and not require yearly reports which will be dismissed as yearly reports but let the commission decide the time frame so they can include actionable productive policy changes with their report and why not give it a charter of ten years with a renewable charter for an additional ten years which Congress is mandated to vote on having such a commission in perpetuity seems rather troubling like it is understood we are going to have this problem in perpetuity! The Republicans should scrap their idea of setting up a National Criminal Justice Commission to produce a report involving a comprehensive review of America's Criminal Justice System as a weak effort that misses the immediate needs of our country; the Republicans are planning to give this commission a budget of $14 million dollars over two years - probably doctoral thesis on the subject will produce a better report than this weak effort; moreover, the country now needs a focus on how do we make the criminal justice system less discriminatory against the African American community in its impact -maybe just let the new commission in the Commission On Civil Rights Office produce needed policy changes in this area! The Democrats in their bill make a titanic size policy mistake in their effort to take police officer's "qualified immunity" (QI) away from them. What Qualified Immunity is about is that it prevents police officers from being sued for civil rights violations as long as they did not "clearly violate" a law. What that means if Congress yanks that away from police officers is that courts get to "second guess" police officers and officers' supervisors whether the officers behavior on the street was okay with the consequences for officers and their supervisors that get it wrong devastating civil judgments against them and its worse that that because even if the officers win the case most will be dramatically hurt because they have to incur the legal cost to defend themselves which for the average person will deplete a huge portion of their life savings. The effect of Congress withdrawing "qualified immunity" is that police officers and their supervisors will naturally become defensive their understandable approach to their job will be don't make arrests and don't even get involved in conflicts that unduly put you at risk of a civil rights lawsuit thus public safety will be lessened. The Democrat provisions in this area are really malicious toward police not only do they take QI away from police but they remove the fairness standard that courts generally apply in these cases their Sec. 102 says that even if a police officer believed that what he was doing was lawful and it was reasonable for the officer to believe that those factors are no defense to a civil rights violation lawsuit. Just some of the effects of what the Democrats are doing here is that police won't be arresting drunk drivers unless they take a breathalyzer test and fail it or they are in an automobile accident and won't be arresting perpetrators of domestic violence unless they see the accused strike or actually threaten the victim, let everyone be on notice Democrats will be significantly diminishing public safety with this policy initiative. The Democrats with their effort here to take away QI will be dramatically weakening the apprehension of criminals and prosecution of serious crime in America. Many bright and talented people that have an inclination to go into law enforcement because they care about victims rights and public safety will see the litigation exposure that Congress has subjected law enforcement officials to with the withdraw of QI and say it isn't worth it to work in law enforcement there is just too much risk to devastating financial harm in one's life from civil right violation lawsuits and not pursue such careers. The top police department management and detectives ultimately come from the pool of these new law enforcement employees and when the caliber of this incoming pool goes down so will the caliber of staff up the chain of command and keep very much in mind that prosecuting criminals is very complicated and challenging work lower caliber law enforcement professionals will definitely hurt the effectiveness of prosecutions for violations of laws in our society. Everyone also needs to keep in mind that today this very day victims of police abuse can get financially compensated they just sue the police department of the officer who committed the civil rights violation and/or the counties or the cities in which the departments was in. On the ABC News website there was a 6/14/2020 article that reported in fiscal year 2019 major cities in America with large police forces paid out over $300 million for civil lawsuits over police abuse; no one should kid themselves this change is not about seeing victims of police justice civil right violations being justly financially compensated because that is already taking place. At the end of the day, this effort to cast aside QI is largely about pandering to public opinion about the public's anger over police wrongdoing; good elected officials address the public's anger by addressing the legitimate concerns behind the anger they don't just feed the public anger because if they do they will often be feeding that anger with what they are poised to do currently which is feed it with the well-being of our nation and the American people will be the big losers for it. Another catastrophic mistake the Democrats are making with their bill is the creation of this "National Police Misconduct Registry" where all allegations of wrongdoing against a police officer made throughout his or her career whether the department found misconduct or not would be kept in this national record system and made available to the public. This is so short sighted police officers often find their names in the newspaper and in the media and journalists with their bent to be provocative and their access to this national registry are going to write and report in the media so and so officer involved in this incident that in the past was found to engage in racist behavior or excessive force behavior or sexually inappropriate behavior had such and such involvement with the incident. Police Officers reputations will be unfairly ruined from this registry that reality will deter good people from entering the profession, a lot of law enforcement officers go into the profession because fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles have and those loved one's experience in the profession was a good one with this change the experience will not be a good one and this spigot for good law enforcement professionals entering the profession will be shut off! Plus, this national registry will be used by criminal defense attorneys to impeach law enforcement officer witnesses the Democrats here are weakening America's law enforcement system. What Congress's focus should be in this area is to stop bad cops from being able to jump to other law enforcement agencies and it could achieve this by mandating that law enforcement agencies comply to request in writing by a potential "law enforcement or security" employer who has a job application from a past employee of that law enforcement agency where the request is for that past employee's performance record in so far as was there any misconduct problem related to violence, discrimination or sexual impropriety and provide the cooperating law enforcement agency with immunity from any civil lawsuits from the past employee over the disclosures! The Democrats provisions they call the "Peace" Act should more aptly be called the "War on Cops" Act they should scrap these provisions because if enacted into law will lead to a lot of police officers being convicted of Murder or manslaughter that the vast majority of Americans legitimately think were "just" shootings by police officers. The Democrats want to require before a police officer can use deadly force, that is, fire their weapon, that the firing of the weapon is not only necessary but also the "the use of the form of deadly force creates no substantial risk of injury to a third person" and thirdly that "reasonable alternatives to the use of the form of deadly force have been exhausted". Based on the Democrats standard here if a police officer is being shot at that police officer cannot immediately shoot back to defend themselves if there is an innocent civilian in the vicinity of the direction the police needs to fire and for the third standard how is all reasonable alternatives to the use of the form of deadly force determined let us say if a pair of police officers arrive at a home where a perpetrator has shot someone and has essentially other hostages whose lives are in danger from the perpetrator do the police officers seize the initiative one go toward the back of the house and the other the front and see if they can see the perpetrator and if they do and have a clear shot don't they take it and protect innocent life or do the police have to wait for a police negotiator to be called in and negotiation efforts exhausted before acting to put down the deadly threat; the Democrats are unduly tying police officer's hands to protect people with their impractical altruistic standards.
