Blumenthal on the Senate Floor: Republican Justice Act Fails to Meet the Moment

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Yesterday, ahead of a procedural vote on Republican JUSTICE Act, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke on the Senate Floor to call for meaningful reform to address police brutality against Black Americans and communities of color.

Blumenthal spoke out against the JUSTICE Act, noting that “Americans are not marching in the streets so we might ‘study these phenomena.’ They are not begging us to design programs ‘disincentivizing,’ to quote again, practices that are literally killing Americans, Black Americans, Americans who deserve justice. The notion that we could respond to this moment with a commission or several commissions and incentives to do better is insulting to all of us.”

Blumenthal is an original co-sponsor of the Justice in Policing Act, comprehensive legislation to hold police accountable, change the culture of law enforcement and build trust between law enforcement and our communities.

“I’ve been doing a lot of listening over these past months. Like Americans across this country, I’ve been doing a lot of listening to the dedicated and passionate people, our fellow Americans, who have marched in the streets in our communities with passion, but peacefully, in their cries for justice,” Blumenthal said on the Senate Floor. “And in fact, I have marched with them in fifteen or more demonstrations in Connecticut. Big cities: Hartford, Stamford, New Haven. Smaller cities: Lyme, Marlborough, Trumbull, Windsor, Glastonbury. And then places like Torrington, East Hartford, Danbury, all across the state.”

“They are demanding more than just our listening and more than just our speaking. They're demanding action, real action, real reform, real change with real teeth and new laws.”

“And the time has come for us in this Congress to heed those calls. We need legislation that honors the memories and the lives of those who have lost their futures. Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland and countless others added to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks. Some are in the headlines. Some of their deaths have been caught on video. But so many thousands never on video, never publicized and never known to the public. In their memory, but also for the sake of our future, we should move forward with action.”

“And we’re here today because simply and starkly, the Republican JUSTICE Act fails to meet this moment. It fails that test.”

The full transcript of Blumenthal’s remarks is copied below.

Mr. President, I've been doing a lot of listening over these past months. Like Americans across this country, I've been doing a lot of listening to the dedicated and passionate people, our fellow Americans, who have marched in the streets in our communities with passion, but peacefully, in their cries for justice.

And in fact, I have marched with them in fifteen or more demonstrations in Connecticut. Big cities: Hartford, Stamford, New Haven. Smaller cities: Lyme, Marlborough, Trumbull, Windsor, Glastonbury. And then places like Torrington, East Hartford, Danbury, all across the state.

I’m proud to be with people from Connecticut, led by our young people, as are many great social movements and revolutions of our time led by young people who have the audacity and hope to cast aside the normal and say: there's no going back. There's no rolling back to the old normal. What we need is action. And that has been the common theme in these cries for justice. The demands for accountability, the pleas for an end to racism.

Generations of racial justice, and racism with historic roots in so many of our institutions, including some of our law enforcement. But they are demanding more than just our listening and more than just our speaking. They're demanding action, real action, real reform, real change with real teeth and new laws.

And the time has come for us in this Congress to heed those calls. We need legislation that honors the memories and the lives of those who have lost their futures. Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland and countless others added to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks. Some are in the headlines. Some of their deaths have been caught on video. But so many thousands never on video, never publicized and never known to the public. In their memory, but also for the sake of our future, we should move forward with action.

And we're here today because simply and starkly, the Republican JUSTICE Act fails to meet this moment. It fails that test. I've been listening not only to the folks in the streets and our communities, but also to my great colleague, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. And clearly from what we have heard from them and the work they have done along with many of us to fashion the Justice in Policing Act, the Republican proposal is a shadow of what it should be, unacceptably weak, nibbling around the edges of this problem without any guarantee that Black Americans will not again ask us whether their lives are worth $20.

The JUSTICE Act fails completely to address the harmful policing practices that we know have cost lives. The deaths of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner are not anomalies. Chokeholds and no-knock warrants are known to be costly. They have cost Black lives. And the JUSTICE Act ignores this truth.

Americans are not marching in the streets so we might “study these phenomena.” They are not begging us to design programs “disincentivizing,” to quote again, practices that are literally killing Americans, Black Americans, Americans who deserve justice. The notion that we could respond to this moment with a commission or several commissions and incentives to do better is insulting to all of us. We need legislation that explicitly bans the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants in drug cases so we can credibly tell the American people we hear you and we will act.

Communities of color must be able to trust that law enforcement will be held accountable if they commit criminal acts.

The Republican JUSTICE Act completely lacks any mechanism to hold law enforcement officers accountable in court for their misconduct. It makes no change to Section 242 of Title 18, which makes it a federal crime to willfully deprive a person of Constitutional rights. This criminal statute can be used to hold officers accountable for the use of excessive force, something we all know led to the deaths of far too many Black and Brown people in this country.

I believe that criminal liability is a critical tool in the law enforcement accountability toolbox, but only if it is used. Right now civil liability is available, albeit an inadequate remedy so long as qualified immunity is not reformed. But very often, in 99% of the cases, any civil remedy involves indemnification by the municipal government. Indemnification means that the individual officer feels no financial penalty, and very often little other penalty. Criminal liability involving potentially prison concentrates the mind. It is a strong deterrent. And as I sat in a hearing that we conducted in the Judiciary Committee, we need change to make it a real remedy and a real deterrent.

When Officer Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, he looked straight into those cameras with impunity, because he assumed he would never be prosecuted criminally. He never imagined that justice would find him, and justice still must find him in a criminal court. He ignored the pleas of bystanders telling him to stop. He ignored George Floyd as he begged for his life. These kinds of actions by an individual in a system that has shielded people like them simply encourage more of it. And Section 242's change in the standard of criminal intent will provide real culpability for police who deserve it.

The Republican JUSTICE Act relies mainly on data collection, which may be used to inform policy proposals at some later time. It pushes down the road any real action. We already have statistics. Since be 2015 there have been 5,000 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers. In the past year over 1,000 people have been shot and killed by police. Black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the country's population, but they are killed at more than twice the rate of white Americans.

Now data is important. In fact, I was the lead sponsor of the Death in Custody Act passed about six years ago. Regrettably and inexcusably, that measure has never been enforced so that it has never really been effective. We must make it so, but it shows the limitations of any data collection system. And the fact is systemic racism in law enforcement has gone unchecked for too long. The time for accountability is now. It is long overdue.

Let me say finally for most of my professional career I have helped to enforce the laws. I've been a trial lawyer, yes, but I also served as the chief federal prosecutor the United States attorney for Connecticut for four and a half years and then as Attorney General of my state for twenty. And I have seen some of the best in law enforcement and some of the worst. We need a higher standard, not just in words or paper, but in fact. We need a standard that is worthy of the people who have marched and cried for justice throughout American history who have tried to dream of a better system and a fairer country.

There is so much work for us to do, but at this moment we must seize the opportunity, a point of consensus to come together and act in a way that is worthy of this great nation. We have proposed exactly that action in the Justice in Policing Act. We should be moving forward on it now, not on a bill that is truly unacceptably weak and inadequate and unworthy of this historic moment.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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