Rice said the government “strongly” supports the police reform bill, named after Floyd, who was assassinated last May after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for seven minutes and 46 seconds. Chauvin’s murder trial for Floyd’s death is currently ongoing.
The White House “is working with Congress to quickly implement meaningful police reform that will bring about profound, much-needed change,” Rice said.
The decision to move the commission highlights the ways in which the campaign promises could clash with the reality of the government and possibly raise a president’s agenda. Biden first promised to set up a supervisory commission in June, about a week after Floyd’s murder. As numerous cities staged mass protests against the killing of black people, Biden called for police reform, including a national database of police misconduct and a ban on the use of stitching. But he refrained from the biggest policy demands of the Black Lives Matter movement on issues such as police liability, and refused to accept their call to ‘disregard the police’ and the allocation of money to social programs and community priorities.
“We need every police department in the country to undergo a comprehensive review of their appointment, their training and their de-escalation practices,” Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia about the protests across the country this summer. “And the federal government must give the cities and states the tools and resources to carry out reforms.”
When it was announced, members of the Black Lives Matter movement and civil rights leaders expressed skepticism about the value of another commission, asking what impact it could have. And after Biden took office, civil rights organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the administration that another commission was not needed, given decades of research that already drawn up on the practices of policing.
“As the ongoing trial on the death of George Floyd makes clear, the transformation of policing in America is one of the most pressing crises facing the country today,” Wade Henderson, president of the Leaders Conference, said in a statement to POLITICO . “We also agree with the White House’s decision to abandon the establishment of a commission to study the issue.”
“This matter is far too urgent for delay, and Congress is by far the more appropriate place to consider legislative changes regarding police liability,” Henderson added.
Civil rights advocates were particularly concerned that a commission would be used as an excuse by lawmakers in the Senate – both Republicans and skeptical Democrats – to block action on the police reform bill. The fear was that legislators would cite the need to consider the completed work of the commission as a reason to support the legislation on police reform.
There was a clear “commission fatigue” during all the meetings the White House held with civil rights groups and police unions, a source familiar with the government’s efforts said.
Representatives of the police union themselves were indifferent to another panel, although they made it clear to the White House that if they were to establish one, they would want to sit at the table.
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he and the organization’s president virtually met with Rice shortly after Biden took office. During the meeting, the White House was still planning to establish the commission, but Pasco said he shares with Rice that the FOP does not believe another panel is necessary.
‘We did not worry that they would have one or not. “Our concern was that we would have a voice and we were assured that we would do so,” Pasco said.
Pasco noted that former President Barack Obama had set up his own police commission, which came up with a plethora of recommendations, the majority of which we agreed with and virtually nothing happened to it. ‘
“So,” he added, “it would be a good starting point to take the recommendations of the latest previous commission and try to implement them.”
The Obama-era task force, which issued a 120-page report in 2015, did not address two major activist demands at the time: requiring body cameras for all police and obtaining federal funds from local police departments that depend on training in racial prejudice.
Former President Donald Trump has also launched a commission, although it consists entirely of law enforcement. The commission’s report defends qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that protects the police from lawsuits for violations of civil rights brought by victims of police violence or their families. A federal judge in Washington also found that the Trump Commission violated federal law on advisory committees by not having a balanced advisory board.
Those commissions “did not result in any policy change,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson said in an interview.
“Without full authority to hold police officers and agencies accountable,” Johnson said, “a commission is more window-dressing, unless the commission’s purpose was to increase public support for the execution of George Floyd in the Senate.” build.’