While President Trump signed an executive order to address the complaints and grievances that were recently voiced about certain police practices, Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, proposed a comprehensive bill to change several aspects of policing.
Both have potential to curb the kinds of power abuses we occasionally see from individual officers or departments and which have seriously damaged trust in the police. At the same time, they don’t plunge us into crime, looting and violence without help to be expected, as defunding the police would.
With the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Scott on Wednesday unveiled the Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities Everywhere or JUSTICE Act. It would promote de-escalation in use-of-force training, use federal funds to discourage police chokeholds, increase record-keeping to prevent “bad apple” cops of moving to different departments, promote the proper use of body cameras, require federal reporting when police officers discharge their weapons, fund research into the use of no-knock warrants and make lynching a federal crime.
Rather than using racially charged Terms to attack Scott (who happens to be black), as several congressional Democrats, as well as media pundits did, or blocking Senator Scott’s proposal to keep their base infuriated, Democrats in Congress should support Scott’s bill, if they actually want to solve the problem.
This, however, could actually lead to healing the nation.