Opinion| Carmine Sabia| After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got up off her knees she took to her day job and announced a bill to demilitarize the police.
As George Floyd, the man who was killed in an altercation with police, was not shot this bill would have not done anything to help him.
But Democrats are in pandering mode in an election year and are prepared to dismantle everything to defeat President Donald Trump in November.
“Today with the Justice in Policing Act, the Congress is standing with those fighting for justice and taking action,” she said.
“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative, structural change, which is why the Justice in Policing Act will remove barriers in prosecuting police misconduct in covering damages by addressing the quality immunity doctrine, it will demilitarize the police by limiting the transfer of military weaponry to state and local police departments, it will combat police brutality by requiring body and dashboard cameras, banning chokeholds, no-knock warrants in drug cases, and ending racial profiling. [It] will finally make lynching a federal hate crime, she said.
And this is just the beginning for Pelosi and her crew as she vowed that “there’s more to come” in terms of weakening the police.
Then Speaker knows that none of this is going to pass the Republican led Senate. And she knows that if it did President trump would veto it.
But much the same as when she knelt with other Democrats, who all wore African garb though Floyd was an American, it is not about actually getting anything done.
The Democrats are all about symbolism and platitudes and this fits right in with their normal election year scams.
The measures would end qualified immunity for police, create a national registry to track police misconduct and more, Vox reported.
The bill’s biggest provision seeks to end qualified immunity, a thorny legal issue that gives police officers and other public officials broad immunity from civil lawsuits. The US Supreme Court, which has upheld the qualified-immunity doctrine in past rulings, is currently deciding whether to hear arguments next term in a case challenging qualified immunity.
The legislation also incorporates a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker that would create a new national registry to track misconduct as a way to prevent repeat offenders from being rehired at other police departments.
In addition, the bill seeks to ban the use of chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants at the federal level, as well as to incentivize state and local governments to do the same. Both tactics have been factors in police killings of unarmed black people: A no-knock warrant used by police in Kentucky in March ended in the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT who died after officers broke down her door without warning and fatally shot her.
“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change,” Pelosi said on Monday.
“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave the American experience a moment of national anguish. … True justice can only be achieved with full comprehensive action. That’s what we are doing today,” she said.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker spoke on the matter and Spartacus was his usual pandering self when he did.
“Empathy and sympathy and words of caring for those who have died and suffered is necessary, but it’s not enough,” he said.
“We must change laws and systems of accountability. We must pass legislation that makes our common values and our common ideals real in the law of our land,” he said.
