US democrats have proposed a police reform bill amid nation wide protest against police brutality.
The move comes after nearly two weeks of protests against police brutality and racism in the US that have spread around the world, and a day after the city of Minneapolis voted to dismantle and rebuild its police department.
Before presenting the bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats knelt in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds which is the amount of time a police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s before he gave up the ghost.
Before reading the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, Nancy Pelosi read the names of black men and women who have died at the hands of police in recent years.
The bill forces federal police to use body and dashboard cameras, ban chokeholds, eliminate unannounced police raids known as “no-knock warrants”, make it easier to hold police liable for civil rights violations and calls for federal funds to be withheld from local police forces who do not make similar reforms. It will also ban military-style weapons for police and create a national database disclosing the names of officers with patterns of abuse.
Democratic leaders described the reform as a crucial and long-overdue remedy to racial injustice in law enforcement, which they described as a systemic plague rooted in hundreds of years of slavery, bigotry and cultural bias.
Pelosi said: “When George Floyd called out for his mother, when he was subjected to that knee in the neck, it was just a continuation of some horror that has existed in our country for a very long time,
“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave the American experience a moment of national anguish, as we grieve for the black Americans killed by police brutality,
“Today, this movement of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action.”
However, it is unclear whether Republicans, who control the US Senate, will support the proposed Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
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Trump reacting to the bill in a tweet said: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”