Better Cops? Or Fewer Cops?

Sweeping proposed reforms of American policing vie with calls to defund it

- By Amanda Kolson Hurley

“We need to stand up and say that black lives matter,” Mitt Romney, one of Utah’s Republican senators, declared on June 7 as he marched in Washington with a crowd of thousands protesting police brutality against black people. Days earlier, in a photo with community leaders in Wilmington, Del., presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden took a knee—a symbolic gesture of support for protesters’ demand to end police abuses.

Gestures are one thing; actions are another. After the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25 spawned nationwide protests, politicians are scrambling to respond with proposals to curb the power of the police. But the means by which they would do so differ starkly.

At the federal and state levels, measures focus on reform: strengthening rules around misconduct and bringing more accountability and transparency to police departments.

On June 8, Democrats on Capitol Hill introduced a sweeping bill that could make it easier to prosecute and sue law enforcement officers. The Justice in Policing Act would tighten the definition of criminal misconduct for police, establish a national misconduct registry, and require state and local law enforcement agencies to report disaggregated use-of-force data, among other measures. The bill would also curtail qualified immunity, a legal defense that helps police officers evade lawsuits for civil rights violations. (Four days earlier, Michigan Representative Justin Amash, a Libertarian, and Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat, had introduced their own bill to end qualified immunity.)