Congressman Joe Neguse Helps Pass Major Police Reform Legislation Out of the U.S. House

Click here to view his remarks on the House floor.

Washington D.C.—Today, Congressman Joe Neguse, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and House Judiciary Committee, helped pass major police reform legislation out of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed a multicultural multiracial movement sweep across our nation, we’ve seen Coloradans of all backgrounds coming together to demand justice and an end to the discrimination and bias that has permeated our policing system for far too long,” said Congressman Joe Neguse. “The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which passed the House today is a direct response to these calls for change. When we see injustice, we must meet it with action. This legislation will reform police training practices, ban chokeholds like the one used to restrain Elijah McClain and Eric Garner, both young black men killed unnecessarily at the hands of police. This bill will bring transparency into policing by standing up the first-ever national database of civilian police encounters, and provide additional tools to the Department of Justice and State Attorneys General to root out police misconduct through the use of “pattern or practice” investigations. While there is no single policy prescription that will erase decades of systemic racism – it’s time we create structural change with meaningful reforms like those outlined in this bill.”

The Justice Policing Act of 2020 will:

• Hold police accountable in our courts by:

• Amending the mens rea requirement in 18 U.S.C. Section 242, the federal criminal statute to prosecute police misconduct, from “willfully” to a “knowingly or recklessly” standard;

• Reform qualified immunity so that individuals are not entirely barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights;

• Improve the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and incentivizing state attorneys general to conduct pattern and practice investigations;

• Incentivize states to create independent investigative structures for police involved deaths through grants; and

• Create best practices recommendations based on the Obama 21st Century Policing Task force.

• Improve transparency into policing by collecting better and more accurate data of police misconduct and use-of-force by:

• Creating a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problem-officers from changing jurisdictions to avoid accountability; and

• Mandate state and local law enforcement agencies report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.

• Improve police training and practices by:

• Ending racial and religious profiling;

• Mandating training on racial bias and the duty to intervene;

• Banning no-knock warrants in drug cases;

• Banning chokeholds and carotid holds;

• Changing the standard to evaluate whether law enforcement use of force was justified from whether the force was reasonable to whether the force was necessary;

• Limiting the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement;

• Requiring federal uniformed police officers to wear body cameras; and

• Requiring state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.

• Closes the Law Enforcement Consent Loophole

• Making it unlawful for a federal law enforcement officer to engage in a sexual act while acting under color of law or with an individual who is under arrest, in detention, or in custody.

• Incentivizing state and local law enforcement to enact a similar law that prohibits officers from engaging in sexual conduct with an arrestee.