House Democrats passed an awful policing bill backed by the Biden administration. It’s proof that Democrats still want to hamstring police departments across the country and that they side with anti-police activists over the communities that count on law enforcement to keep them safe.
To try and stave off criticism, Democrats decided to call the bill the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. But the bill states that law enforcement activities that “have had a disparate impact on individuals with a particular characteristic” are “prima facie evidence” of racial profiling.
That means that traffic and pedestrian stops, police interviews, body searches, and data collection must perfectly reflect the racial makeup of the area, or law enforcement already faces enough evidence to be found guilty of profiling. What’s more is that the bill includes religion, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation as protected categories. Stop too many young men, who commit a disproportionate amount of crime? That is profiling, according to Democrats.
Combined with Biden’s soft rebuke of last summer’s violent riots and the party’s general embrace of the “defund the police” mantra, it’s clear they haven’t learned from the past year. Sixty-four percent of people, including a majority of Hispanics, oppose defunding the police. Roughly 10% of Hispanics who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 backed Donald Trump in 2020, in part because Democrats failed to distance themselves from anti-police activists nationwide.
While Biden was disinterested in distancing himself from those activists, his running mate was helping bail rioters out of jail. Biden still entertains the falsehood that Michael Brown was a victim of systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri, despite the fact that he was the vice president when the Department of Justice concluded that police officer Darren Wilson acted in self-defense.
Much like the city councils in Minneapolis and Seattle, Biden has joined congressional Democrats in siding with anti-police activists over police and the people who want police in their communities. And they do want police in their communities: Large majorities of people, regardless of their race, want police to spend the same amount of time or more in their communities.
Democrats went so far as to block the GOP’s police reform bill last year because it did not match what anti-police activists demanded. This bill is a massive swing from what should have been a bipartisan reform bill. Democrats overplayed their hand, counting on their position to maintain its popularity after months of violent riots, and they remain out of step with the rest of the country.
