Senate Republican News Conference Transcript on Police Reform

Senator Tim Scott: (00:28)
What does this package do? Three major areas. One is on the area we have to have the right information so that we can direct our resources as a federal government to making sure that the outcomes lead to safer officers and safer suspects in the instances of challenges. That data collection or the information is around making sure that when serious bodily injury occurs or death, that all that information is reported to the FBI. Today only 40% of the departments report that information to the FBI. We want all that information because when we hear about the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, Kentucky, we don’t have any information around no-knock warrants. So for us to start a conversation with banning no-knocks, doesn’t sound like a solid position based on any data because we don’t have that data.

Once we have the information and we can then turn to the training that is necessary to deescalate situations, the duty to intervene, not standing there watching an officer with his knee on the neck, but intervening in those situations, we can train our officers better. We can find ways and mechanisms to deescalate the situation. So we spend a lot of time in the training aspect, using the resources of our grants to reduce the situations and violence in those situations. And then finally, we look at officer misconduct and the necessity of transparency. We believe that the preservation of records on the local level so that departments within the states have a chance to see, almost like a reference check, what the past history of complaints have been against that officer.

We do not create a national database. The president’s executive order creates basically a national database for that information to flow into. We believe that our policy positions are one that brings the communities of color into a position of stronger understanding and confidence in the institutions of authority and we believe that it brings our law enforcement community to a place where they have the resources necessary to deescalate some of these situations. And frankly, through James Lankford’s work on this package, we bring in the opportunity to hire more officers and have more training and have a better perspective on the history. So with that, there’s a lot that could be said, but instead of saying more, I’m going to give it over to Senator McConnell.

Senator McConnell: (03:07)
Well, thank you, Tim. Even before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Senator Scott has made it possible for those of us in the Senate Republican Conference who are not African-American to understand that this problem still exists. We learned about his being stopped on numerous occasions well before the events of this year. But the witnessing of the murder of George Floyd and the experience in my hometown of Breonna Taylor certainly brings to the forefront, this issue for all Americans, including Senate Republicans. My role as a leader, as you know is to decide what we’re going to do. Floor time is the coin of the realm in the Senate, because it does take a while to do almost anything. So what I’m announcing today is after we do two circuit judges who are queued up either this week or early next week, we’re going to turn to the Scott bill.

Senator McConnell: (04:09)
I’m going to file closure on the motion to proceed. And our Democratic friends, if they want to make a law and not just try to make a point, I hope they’ll join us in getting on the bill and trying to move forward in the way the Senate does move forward when it’s trying to actually get an outcome, rather than just sparring back and forth, which you all have seen on frequent occasions by both sides. I also want to thank the whole team behind us. Everybody has contributed significantly to this product, but without Tim’s leadership, it would not have been possible and without his leadership, I wouldn’t be putting this on the floor. But I want you to know that we’re serious about making a law here. This is not about trying to create partisan differences, this is about coming together and getting an outcome. We showed we could do that on the Cares Act, we’ve shown it on the Great American Outdoors Act and we need to show it on the Scott bill.

Senator Lankford: (05:15)
This is about making a law, not just making a point. This is not messaging. This is trying to be able to work in the most bipartisan way we can work. Get it on the floor, let’s have amendments, let’s talk through the process. Equal justice under the law shouldn’t be a partisan issue. A friend of mine and I were talking a couple of weeks ago, his comment was, it’s not that our founding principles are off, our founding principles are right. We’re still working on trying to be a more perfect union. And we have a ways to go on that and where we find areas where we don’t have a more perfect union, we should engage in those. So let me just give you a couple of examples. Senator Scott’s gone through multiple different areas that are in the bill.

There’s a section in the bill that actually a black police officer in Oklahoma city first raised with me to be able to say, what’s the possibility of putting grants out there to be able to help more departments hire black recruiters and then to be able to help individuals that are coming through the training and the Police Academy to have that ability? Where communities and the law enforcement don’t match as far as ethnicity, could the federal government engage and help incentivize that. That’s one of the aspects of this bill to say, how are we encouraging more people of color to be able to engage in the community where that’s been a challenge at times to say, let’s break through that, let’s find a way to be able to solve that.

We have great assets here. Even in Washington, DC, the Museum of African American History is here is under utilized to be able to explain the story of what’s the relationship between race and law enforcement. It’s utilized by some, but not by most. This is a way to be able to incentivize, how can we use that great resource to be able to tell the story nationwide as well? So this is about transparency, this is about trying to provide information to law enforcement and to individuals. This is about accountability, but it’s also about trying to build that more perfect union that we can have. If we’re going to have equal justice under the law, then let’s work towards actually having equal justice under the law for all people. And as Senator Scott had mentioned before, not to be pro-law enforcement or to be pro-communities of color, but to be pro-American in the process.

Senator Graham: (07:22)
One, I want to thank Tim for taking on this task for all of us. He’s the right person at the right time and God has a plan for you and you’re fulfilling that plan. You’re trying to bring us together as a country. I spent five hours with John and Ben and others on the Judiciary Committee listening yesterday and it was a fascinating hearing. There’s a process in the Air Force called listen, learn and lead. To my colleagues on the other side who said, we talk too much. We don’t need to listen to anymore. Where were you for the eight years of the Obama administration? I’m getting a little tired of being lectured to by my democratic colleagues, that all this is Trump’s fault. You had eight years under President Obama, the Justice and Policing Act, none of it was taken up virtually. So let’s knock that off.

You’re making no points with me trying to suggest that that were bad and you all are not when it comes to this issue. You had eight years, no attempts to ban chokeholds, no attempts to do any of the things that we all agree we need to do now. So if you want to fight about that, let’s fight. If you want to admit that the country needs to move on together, let’s do it. So as to President Trump’s executive order, a good start, I appreciate him starting the conversation. He brought families into the White House. They appreciated being listened to by their president. To my Democratic colleagues, I appreciate putting together your list. I’d like to work with you, but we’re not going to get there if we keep playing this game that we’re exclusively to blame here.

Now, their shopping list, for lack of a better term, of what to do compared to Tim’s, there’s a lot overlap, but there are some real differences. And how do you hammer out those real differences? You talk to each other. After the hearing, I had multiple Democratic colleagues come up to me and say, let’s try to reconcile our differences. To the American people, after the hearing, I am more hopeful than I was before the hearing that there’s going to be a genuine effort to bring reform to a problem that’s been going on well before President Obama and if we don’t do something about it, it’s going to go on well past President Trump. Thank you for your leadership, Tim.

Senator Cornyn: (09:59)
For me, this conversation is about trust, justice and reconciliation as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said. It’s evident that there are communities in our country who have lost trust in law enforcement based on their experience. And that’s where we’ve had an opportunity to learn from Tim and others who feel like they’ve been disproportionately focused on by law enforcement for sometime, for pretextual reasons. But I had an opportunity to talk to George Floyd’s family. They’re from Houston, Texas, and Rodney, his brother, told me, he said, “Senator, we are from Texas and we want some Texas size justice.” And I said, “Well, Mr. Floyd, to the best of my ability, that’s exactly what we will deliver.”

And so thanks to Tim Scott, Senator Scott’s leadership and the contribution of everybody here. We’re all going to have a chance to try to attempt this reconciliation, to restore trust in some of our most important institutions like our police. One of the things that is included in this piece of legislation is a bill that may look familiar, which is one, to create a national criminal justice commission. This was a bipartisan bill that I introduced with Chairman Graham and Gary Peters, Democrat from Michigan in 2015. It actually has cleared the Senate previously, which means all 100 senators have had a chance to pass that bill. It died in the House through, basically we ran out of time.

But in my view, we need to do something in the immediate timeframe then we need to look at what do we need to do in the longterm to reform our criminal justice system. And that’s exactly what this commission, bipartisan commission would do. Report back to Congress in 18 months with specific recommendations. And I think not like the 9/11 commission, that would be extraordinarily helpful. It’s really hard for Congress given the day to day things that we deal with to take the broad view and this would allow us to garner the recommendations of experts all across the country, and then take up their recommendations and pass them as Congress sees fit. But Tim, thank you for your great leadership and thanks for letting me be part of the team.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito: (12:36)
I want to thank all of you for being here today. And I think our main message today is that the Justice Act is working towards a solution and it’s not a political exercise. I said the other day on an interview I had, and I was just sitting there thinking about it, that if this is a pivotal moment in our country’s history, and if we as Congress, as Republicans and Democrats joining together failed to-

… Congress as Republicans and Democrats joining together fail to act because of the crying voices that we hear every day about this, then we’re going to be deemed a failure in the eyes of so many. Not just our communities of color, but our young people are losing faith and trust in our law enforcement and in our ability to react to situations where we can be helpful and where we should be helpful. Racial discrimination has no place in this country. I think of a mother who is telling her young black son how to react when you get pulled over in a car, a much different conversation than many other people in this country are having with their young sons talking about how to react. That young man doesn’t know how he’s going to be received by the officer. The fear really that you would feel in that situation is very, very real.

Many of us are overwhelmed by what we’ve seen with the George Floyd situation and what we saw happening in Minneapolis, but we do know that the vast majority of the police officers in this country are good people. These are hard jobs. These are jobs that people have in their hearts and communities to want to keep their community safe, to want to have places to raise their families that are safe and that are dedicated to the rule of law. I think this is a moment to spur us to action so that every American citizen will know that equal protection means that. It means equal protection. We go back, as James said, to the Constitution and the rights that are provided, but it doesn’t mean defunding the police. It means improving the police, improving and restoring the faith in our law enforcement. That’s what the Justice Act does.

One of the conversations that Tim and I had just recently was about the chokehold situation. I said after watching the George Floyd tape more than a few times, we’ve got to get rid of these. Many states, many communities, many law enforcement communities had already abandoned that as a technique and a tactic. I’m pleased that we’ve gone in that direction and we think the result would be an elimination of the chokehold as a strategy of restraint. I think that there’s absolutely no conflict between being pro-civil rights and pro-law enforcement. I think that’s what you see reflected in this bill.

To my colleagues on the other side, we need to have this conversation in front of the American people on the floor of the US Senate where we can debate different ideas, debate different strategies, compromise like we do when we need to and we should and not be a failure to the people and the voices who are crying out daily for us to help. Thank you, Tim, for your leadership and thank all of you on the team. This isn’t the whole team. Many, many people have weighed in on this not just within the Senate, but also throughout the country. I thank them for that. Thank you.

Senator Ben Sasse: (16:22)
Thanks, Shelley. Thanks to all of you for making time for us. I want to applaud Senator Scott and his leadership in this. As leader McConnell said at the beginning, this is a topic a number of us have had in the conference repeatedly way too many times the last handful of years. I’m glad that the leader has put this on the schedule to put it on the floor. I want to underscore three things Tim said.

First of all, it is a false binary to try to set this up as a debate between people of color and law enforcement, communities of color and folks who are trying to maintain the public trust. We need to restore and build more public trust. That starts by trying to narrow the differences and figure out what can we get done to move forward together. The fact that this is actually on the floor next week is a big deal. Senator Scott and his team, and all of our teams, but especially a lot of people on Tim’s team, have been working around the clock the last two weekends to get this to a place where the leader could decide to change floor schedule and put this forward next week. This should be a chance for us to be moving forward.

Point number two, as Tim said, the vast majority of law enforcement want to support the idea of America. They want to support stable local justice that is reliable and believable and predictable and improving. This union is, as James said, is the right creedal aspiration for America. We fail in lots of ways to live up to our belief and to our foundational documents. We want to get better and better at doing that. The vast majority of police, many of us have spent a lot of time with law enforcement, both in our own states, but across the country over the last few weeks, you see police that are agonizing about these mistakes. They want better hiring. They want better training. They want improvement. They want accountability.

Well, here’s the truth. The vast majority of cops are really great, but of those bad cops that exist, the single most important thing that’s happened to hold bad cops accountable in the last decade is this thing. The reality of much more pervasive cameras has been the best thing to improve accountability and to expose bad cops. That’s good news, but it’s a reactive tool. The point of this exercise is to figure out how we can get proactive. This thing has held more bad cops accountable, but not because government has been getting better, but because there’s more pervasive technology. We need to use the opportunity of all that we’ve seen that’s wrong to improve upon it by going from to proactive.

The third thing is, this bill next week ought to get 100 votes to begin the debate. I think it ought to get 100 votes to end the debate as well. But if you believe this is a time to make a law, not just make a point, if this is a time to improve an issue as opposed to just hold onto it as a political issue, then I think all people of good will and good faith will see that the Justice Act, the legislation that Tim has authored and that all of us have been contributing to, but the Justice Act is a starting point of a whole bunch of consensus issues. Once you’re on a bill, we can debate how to make it even better. There are a bunch of things that a lot of us think need to be done to hold local police unions more accountable and make them on the side of trying to improve local law enforcement, not spend a big chunk of their time as many unions have done historically, many police unions have done protecting bad apples and sort of moving around folks and hiding their records of folks who got into trouble. There are a lot more debates we could have that are more controversial.

There are important debates to be had about qualified immunity. Let’s have those debates as debates and let’s have votes on some of that stuff. But we ought to be voting 100 to zero to get on this bill next week and try to make it better. Thank you for all of your interest in this. Thank you, Senator Scott, for your leadership.

Thank you, Ben. We also have with us Congressman Pete Stauber who is going to lead the efforts in the House. Let me just say a few words about Pete. Pete and I have had a few conversations about the importance of police reform, the importance of accountability and the importance of transparency. Pete comes to us with a unique skill set and 25 years of service as a police officer. I believe you became a commander before you left. Pete also unfortunately had the gruesome experience of being shot in the head in 1993.

Congressman Pete Stauber: (20:52)
’95.

’95, 1995 as an officer. He understands this issue from multiple perspectives, from a real world, on the streets perspective, which I think adds tremendous value in the conversation as Ben said, not a binary choice. We have a law enforcement officer who has been working a long time on this issue. I am thankful that you’ve joined the team and you’re going to help lead us to victory. Thank you.

Thanks for those kind words, Senator Scott. My name is Congressman Pete Stauber. I proudly served as a law enforcement officer in my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. As someone who swore an oath to serve and protect my community, I was devastated watching the video of George Floyd dying at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who swore that same oath. What I saw on that video goes against everything I stood for as a police officer. George Floyd’s life mattered and the best way to honor his memory is by enacting meaningful and lasting change within policing.

Over the past few weeks, my colleagues and I have had healthy discussions about the most effective ways to enact this much needed change. As one of just a few members of Congress who has worn the local uniform, I am proud and eager to take part in these discussions. I believe that lasting change begins by implementing community policing standards at police departments across this nation. When community policing practices are properly implemented, you end up policing with your community rather than policing your community. It is a method that builds trust. In order to make real progress on public safety, we will need to restore trust between law enforcement and the community they serve. This legislation will do just that.

I believe with every fiber of my being that law enforcement is necessary and that the overwhelming majority of men and women who serve in law enforcement are good and moral people. The police officers who I have had the privilege of working with over the years, they head to work every day and make great personal sacrifices to keep their communities safe from harm. Rather than defunding the police which will only make our communities less safe, we must work to increase transparency and accountability within policing with helping our heroic police officers safely perform their jobs.

The communities around this country are not wrong in their calls for justice. However, there is a way forward that brings our law enforcement officers and their surrounding communities together for the betterment of our society. Yesterday, President Trump took decisive action to foster closer ties between law enforcement and the communities they serve. I applaud the President for working to restore trust and unite our nation. The President has taken action and it is now our turn to act. I am incredibly grateful to be working with Senator Tim Scott and so many great leaders in Congress on these much needed reforms. Our nation is calling for change and I am confident that we will rise to the occasion. Thank you very much.

We’ll be happy to take a few questions. Yes, ma’am.

Speaker 5: (24:36)
I was going to ask two things. What have your discussions been with Senator Booker and Senator Harris? If you don’t get this through the Senate by July 4th, do you lose this momentum?

I don’t think the nation is going to allow us to lose the momentum. That’s good news. I’ve had multiple conversations with Senator Booker, no conversations with Senator Harris. I look forward to finding a middle ground where the motion to proceed we’ll have, as has been articulated here already, 100 votes to move forward so that we can actually have a robust debate about how to make the legislation better and serve the American people. I hope that he is willing to cooperate on getting us there, but certainly without any Democrat support, that means that this is only a symbolic moment and not a moment for us to make it law.

Audience: (25:21)
Senator Scott.

Speaker 6: (25:23)
Are you open to any national mandates at all whether it’s mandating the use of body cameras, requiring banning no-knock warrants in drug cases or banning chokeholds? Are you open at all to any of those national mandates that Democrats are proposing?

Certainly I think we achieved some of the same ends by our approach. Frankly, if you think about the inability to have any grants if your department has chokeholds, that frankly is by default a ban on chokeholds. The conversation will move forward and the only way we get to a place where we have a law is to work with our friends on the other side. We’re willing …

… where we have a law is to work with our friends on the other side. We’re willing to have that conversation. I think that there are things that I believe the conference will not support, but they will all support a conversation. I think we’ll all support having meaningful dialogue, but whatever comes out of that dialogue will have to be in the best interest of the nation.

Speaker 7: (26:16)
One of the things that Democrats are talking about is qualified immunity, and they say that that’s a sticking point. But yet we talked to a number of police officers who say, “Hey, you’re not going to get qualified people. Why should I put myself on the line if I’m going to be able to have something taken away from me in a civil suit?” Your reaction. Is this off the table, qualified immunity?

Well, I think different members of the conference have different opinions on qualified immunity. My position has been that when the Democrats start talking about qualified immunity and the ability to aggressively pursue the officers at a higher threshold, that that is hard, that’s a poison pill from my perspective. Is there a conversation that could be had around something different? Perhaps. I haven’t heard it yet, but we’re open to hearing it. I think Lindsey alluded to the fact that there has been a conversation happening on the judiciary committee that may bring more light to this issue, but I have not had that conversation so far.

Speaker 8: (27:11)
A couple of questions. First, do you expect to have the endorsement of president Trump for this legislation? And also when you met with the victim’s families yesterday at the White House, did you talk to them about this bill? And if you did, what was their reaction to your approach?

Well, I hope the president will join forces and jump on board. I have had several conversations over several days with the president and his team who crafted the executive order. We were part, at least a part of the process of understanding and appreciating the direction of the executive order. Tried to take the information that I had about the executive order, hardwire the bill from mental health aspects of it, as you see the co-responders in the president’s executive order. And then sitting down with a family members yesterday twice, one at the White House and the second time in my office, we went through the bill and what it does, what it doesn’t do. They were, frankly, I think you heard in some of the media reports, they believe the bill is helpful. Does it take it to the level that every family member wants it to? I think the answer is probably not. Does it get us much closer? According to the words that I heard from the family members in both meetings, the answer is yes.

Speaker 9: (28:19)
You said at the top that this is not a binary issue between supporting the police and pushing for the Black Lives Matter. But that said, a lot of the rhetoric we hear from the president. He’ll Tweet law and order, those types of things. Do you think that he can give a little bit, because obviously he’s going to have to give if Democrat… You say Senator Graham said he had good conversations with Democrats after the hearing yesterday. He is going to have to give a little bit. Do you think that he is willing to bend?

I’ll say this. The president was the most presidential I’ve seen him talking to the families yesterday. It was not about anything other than finding justice for the victims and their families. If you want to see the president’s willingness to bend so to speak, it’s not so much about bending and all about finding justice and the path forward. His instructions to the AG yesterday during that meeting with the families was get it done. Don’t tell me you’re going to do it. Go do it. Start getting closer involved in the cases that are yet, the outcome is still undetermined. The president’s willingness to meet us on this issue, it’s clear. His executive order statements about justice for the families, about having this conversation. Frankly, his executive order went a lot further. When you have Van Jones talking about this is a real executive order. Van Jones and President Trump on the same page, that’s almost walking on water in America. So there’s a lot for us to actually celebrate about every lever of government wants change. And most of us want about 70% of the same change.

Speaker 10: (30:05)
Is this meant to be not your bill, [inaudible 00:30:08] bill that precedes this to be a full Democratic bill or something the House Democrats are putting together today in the [inaudible 00:30:14].

Well, I can’t speak to what the Democrats are doing. I would say that what we’ve done is a bipartisan piece of legislation taking the priorities in the House bill, the words of the president in the executive order and the fantastic minds behind me, and crafted it into a piece of legislation. The legislation’s already bipartisan. The question is can we get bipartisan support? Yes, ma’am.

Speaker 11: (30:37)
Can I just clarify, are there active, ongoing negotiations with Democrats right now on changes to this bill that would get them onboard before the motion to proceed?

Not with me. They’re active conversations going on about Democrats. Let me say it this way. If we don’t have the votes on a motion to proceed, that means that politics is more important than restoring confidence in communities of color in the institutions of authority.

Speaker 12: (31:06)
[inaudible 00:31:06] any more questions.

Speaker 13: (31:07)
On that point, we’ve seen bipartisan groups of lawmakers get together on big issues, whether it be immigration, or gun violence, or deficit reduction only to have it fall apart. Why is this issue different?

Well, I think we’ve gone through a lot this year as a country. We started with impeachment. We find ourselves in a global pandemic. And in the global pandemic, I remember sitting and talking to Ben Sasse about some of the challenges that we were facing and working on some of the, and Lindsey, on the unemployment issues. And I thought to myself, there’s just no way that we’re going to all come together and do something meaningful. Well, 96 votes later to zero, this Congress, the Senate acted not in a bipartisan fashion, but just as good old fashioned Americans making something happen for their neighbors, for their friends, and for people they’ve never met. I believe that if we take that same consciousness into this process and we don’t make it about bipartisan or partisan politics, we make it about families who’ve lost loved ones, about restoring trust, about respecting officers. If we can put that on the table and not your shirt versus skins game, we’ll get to the finish line. I think this is the last question.

Speaker 14: (32:21)
Senator, all throughout yesterday’s hearing and throughout the debate after George Floyd’s death, we’ve heard a number of viewpoints. It seems like Democrats and a number of activists are talking about systemic racism in policing. I don’t hear any of you saying that. How does that… I could be wrong. I just didn’t hear that yesterday other than Chairman Graham talked a bit about that potential. But I wonder how does that difference really effect the outcome of this bill? How does it affect your chances to get to a solution if you don’t agree on the problem?

Well, I would say that if you look at the legislation and you look at the House legislation, you would have to come to the conclusion from a training perspective, the importance of deescalation, the duty to intervene, choke holds is a place where you have common ground. I think if you look at the importance of data collection, you would say without any question, the Senate wants more information on serious bodily injury and on the use of force that leads to death. The House bill says they want information on all uses of force. Here’s what we’re saying. On the issue of data collection, we’re on the same page. On training, and on grants, and on using the resources of the federal government to compel and to encourage behavior in local departments, we’re on the same page. On misconduct of officers, we want a department by department database, locally.

They want a state database. The president in his executive order speaks about a national database. We’re on the same page. So the fact that some people enjoy talking about systemic racism, the fact that some people want to define everything from a racism, racist perspective, and we don’t spend time on the definition of a word, but we spend time on the definition of the problem and the definition of the solution. When there’s a overlap of 70, 75% when you start, you’re in the right place. So I don’t know how to tell people that the nation is not racist. I’ll try again. We’re not a racist country. We deal with racism because there’s racism in the country. Both are mutually true. They’re both true, not mutually exclusive. So I don’t worry about the definitions that people want to use. It’s good for headlines, but it’s really bad for policy. We’re going to focus on getting something done. Thank you.

Senate Republican News Conference Transcript on Police Reform

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