It’s difficult to read about the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and watch the various responses in that city’s streets and in NBA locker rooms, without being forced to reckon with how badly police reform efforts failed earlier in the summer.
George Floyd’s death was all but universally condemned. Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress were both clear that things should change.
“In no world whatsoever should arresting a man for an alleged minor infraction involve a police officer putting his knee on a man’s neck for nine minutes while he cries out ‘I can’t breathe’ and then goes silent,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used stronger words. “The American people saw an execution, a murder, right before our very eyes,” she said in an interview. “It wasn’t self-defense. There has to be justice in that case.”
Speaking about the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Floyd, McConnell also said, “These disturbing events do not look like isolated incidents. They look more like the latest chapter in our national struggle to make equal justice and equal protection of the law into facts of life for all Americans, rather than contingencies that sometimes depend on the color of one’s skin.”
The diagnoses, though they differed greatly in tone and on the extent of issues within law enforcement, drove both chambers to draft bills. Sen. Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, led the GOP effort. The House ultimately passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. There was as much political will to accomplish police reform as there ever has been. Nothing happened.
The conversations about race and policing have continued all the same, during the conventions and in the press, though the fervency among legislators to pass a reform bill has waned dramatically since June’s initial failures. The shooting of Blake has not really changed that.
In a Thursday press conference, Pelosi said about Blake, “The fact is, there are public policies that could have made a difference in all of this.” It was Pelosi’s only mention of police reform during the press conference, and she didn’t suggest that the shooting of Blake would launch Congress back into action on the issue. Republicans have not demonstrated much of an effort to resurrect negotiations, either, following the defeat of Scott’s bill.
In contrast. Sen. Kamala Harris spoke forcefully about police reform in light of the Blake incident. “We will only achieve [equal justice] when we finally come together to pass meaningful police reform and broader criminal justice reform,” Harris said in a Thursday speech.
In any case, the coronavirus and the looming election have become stronger drivers of news cycles and legislative activities. Faltering police reform efforts may well be a consequence of that. The initial legislative fires set by Floyd’s death have mostly been put out. It doesn’t appear, at this juncture, that the shooting of Blake is rekindling them.
