Police shootings in recent weeks have started new proposals by a number of Democrats meant to hamstring how law enforcement responds to lawbreakers.
Following the death of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old who was shot and killed by a police officer during a foot pursuit, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city would consider a new policy restricting when officers can pursue a suspect on foot.
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“Incidents like these are a reminder that we need to work that much harder to prevent tragedy,” she said. “An adult put a gun in a child’s hand … a weapon that irreparably changed the course of his life.”
Lightfoot added that her office “will not push off the foot pursuit reform for another day.” Such a change in policy would require police officers to get permission from a supervisor before giving chase to a suspect.
Proposals such as foot pursuit reform drew critics from members of the Chicago city government, including Chicago Alderman Brian Hopkins, who said that officers already need to get permission to chase a suspect by vehicle.
“Of course, that raises obvious problems,” Hopkins said. “In the time it would take to do that, the person you’re supposed to be chasing is actually long gone. The point would be moot then.”
Deon Johnson, a 25-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who recently wrote a letter to LeBron James criticizing the NBA superstar over his attacks on police, said knee-jerk policies such as the ones under consideration in Chicago only make communities less safe.
“Policies like these, to satisfy parts of the public, are just decisions by politicians to please an irrational sect of society,” he told the Washington Examiner. “What that’s going to do is embolden criminals. I’m not worried about people sitting on their computer watching ‘cop hate’ videos all day. I’m worried about changes to law enforcement.”
The guilty verdict of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kick-started conversations in Congress between Republicans and Democrats over a federal police reform bill.
“Now would be a good time to do it,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said last week.
But whether a bill makes it to President Joe Biden’s desk hinges on a provision stripping law enforcement of qualified immunity, allowing the public to sue police officers more easily.
“The main point is that we have to figure out a way to prevent these shootings from continuing to happen,” Rep. Karen Bass, an Ohio Democrat who is leading discussions on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, said. “And until officers are held accountable, there’s no reason to think they won’t happen. Holding officers accountable is really the bottom line.”
Leading Republicans in the Senate say any changes to qualified immunity are a deal breaker, whereas some Democrats have been on the record pledging to vote against any major changes to their bill.
“You’ve got to remember police officers take risk, and most of those risks benefit the community,” Johnson said. “And if you take away protections, they’re going to be a little hesitant to act. Doctors have the same protections. They have insurance. Teachers have it. The military has it. Qualified immunity didn’t mean Derek Chauvin couldn’t be prosecuted.”
The death of Ma’Khia Bryant, who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ohio after trying to stab a woman with a knife, had some on the Left questioning the appropriateness of an armed response from police.
Black Lives Matter called Bryant’s death “senseless” and “with no regard.”
A former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, asked the public to “fight for justice.”
“A Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Bryant was killed because a police officer immediately decided to shoot her multiple times in order to break up a knife fight. Demand accountability. Fight for justice. #BlackLivesMatter,” she tweeted.
The White House offered a more muted response, saying that systemic racism contributes to deadly interactions with police.
“We know that police violence disproportionately impacts black and Latino people in communities and that black women and girls, like black men and boys, experience higher rates of police violence,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Days after Psaki made her comments, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the Louisville Police Department’s practices.
Coming just a week after a similar investigation was announced in Minneapolis, the DOJ said its Civil Rights Division will look into the city’s law enforcement practices.
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Prompted by the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police during a raid last year in Louisville, the DOJ said its investigation will look into “whether LMPD engages in discriminatory policing, and also whether it conducts unreasonable stops, searches, seizures, and arrests, both during patrol activities and in obtaining and executing search warrants for private homes.”
