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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Beyond Disappointing – The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

Beyond Disappointing – The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

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Ugly Truths, Good People and Hope for a Better Future

It’s beyond disappointing.  The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has been declared dead in the Senate.  Apparently as dead and George Floyd himself.

I hesitate to say anything in this climate where we are outraged all the time, but it would be wrong to let this happen quietly, going by without notice.

I am appalled and enraged.  I know the democrats can’t do this stuff by themselves, or by “Democrats – 2”, but geez, when Republicans cannot even agree that it’s not okay to murder black men, I don’t even know where to start.

I am of the opinion that the Democrats aren’t pushing in a few areas because they want to get the current 2 bills passed before they take on the third rails of policing.

What can we do to help get the Justice In Policing Act passed?  There must be something we can do.  There’s always something we can do, right?

Update:  News that came in after writing the original post:

Texas board recommends posthumous pardon for George Floyd in 2004 arrest  (Washington Post)

A Texas board on Monday recommended a full posthumous pardon for George Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest made by a former Houston police officer now charged with murder in a botched 2019 drug raid. The officer’s case history has come under scrutiny amid allegations that he falsified evidence in previous arrests.

…years before his death, Floyd was arrested in his hometown of Houston for selling $10 worth of crack cocaine in a police sting. Gerald Goines, an undercover narcotics officer who made the arrest, claimed Floyd had given the drugs to an unnamed informant. Floyd initially battled the charge, but facing a 25-year sentence if the case went to trial, he later pleaded guilty and served 10 months in state prison.

..But his family has said the 2004 arrest is what began the unraveling of his life.

Sorry for shouting, but in what world does it make sense that someone charged with $10 worth of crack cocaine in a police sting can face a 25-year sentence if the case goes to trial???

So this first (likely bogus) arrest not only sent a man to jail for 10 months, but may well have triggered the unraveling of the life of  George Floyd.  It’s no wonder that he had an anxiety attack when the police were shoving him into the back of their vehicle on the day George Floyd lost his life.

It’s not just policing that needs to change.  It’s also prosecuting.  I may not remember his name, but I am still gutted at the thought of the remarkable young man who took his own life several years ago after being threatened with a ridiculous sentence by prosecutors.

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Drug laws are draconian, but also long sentences often are tied to the equally draconian “three strikes.”

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Last I heard, they reached some type of compromise, but both the civil rights groups and be police groups felt it gave up too much.

  4. 4.

    dr. bloor

    I am of the opinion that the Democrats aren’t pushing in a few areas because they want to get the current 2 bills passed before they take on the third rails of policing.

    Doesn’t matter where/when during the session the Democrats start pushing for police reform. While there are almost certainly many Republican legislators who would secretly welcome the passage of the current bipartisan and reconciliation funding bills, the number of R’s willing to buck the Pro Cop Law and Order in their DNA is probably much, much smaller. Passing legislation that will have a meaningful impact on policing will make the reconciliation bill look like a walk in the park.

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    It’s a terrible thing, and I’ll continue to feel fear when I see police.  But …. as for the GrOPers, why are we surprised?  This is who they are.  This is *all* they are.  They are defined by the necks, the faces, upon which they stomp their boots.

    Like CassandraLeo says over at LG&M: ceterum censeo factio republicana esse delendam

  6. 6.

    Ohio Mom

    “the remarkable young man who took his own life several years ago after being threatened with a ridiculous sentence by prosecutors.”

    Are you referring to Aaron Swartz?
    That is a sad and infuriating story.

  8. 8.

    Betty Cracker

    The thing that struck me when the group announced the impasse was GOP Senator Scott’s bald-faced, self-serving lie about what tanked the deal. From NBC News:

    Scott in his statement suggested that Democrats wanted to defund the police. The bill would have added millions of dollars to police departments to help with data collection and mental health resources. But a spokeswoman for Sen. Scott says that “disqualifying departments from grants cuts off a crucial funding stream.”

    What bullshit. The bottom line is that congress is made up of a political party and a cult. We won’t get any worthwhile legislation that requires the cooperation of the cultists. We are further limited in what we can do by the 4% of the Democratic caucus that’s more interested in protecting institutions and arcane rules than the country. It really is depressing.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    Some progress would be better than no progress.

    If my memory is correct, the civil rights groups didn’t think so with respect to this compromise.

  11. 11.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: We really need a fundamental review of our criminal sentencing standards.    I worry though that if we try to do it now, we will find ourselves just cranking up the penalties for everything rather than reducing them to a rational level.

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    It’s not just policing that needs to change. It’s also prosecuting.

    It’s even more. It’s the whole damn culture.

    At base, I tend to be a pretty incremental soul, but there sure are times when I’m in total alignment with the blow-everything-up-and-let-god-sort-it-out contingent.

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    @Chetan Murthy: There are continuing examples.

    After years of no, or few suicides, five people on Rikers Island have taken their lives over the last nine months, the highest total in at least a decade.

    Those are people in pre-trial detention – they haven’t been convicted of anything.

    There are too many unchecked opportunities for abuse in our legal system. And as OO reminded us recently, even being out on parole is no picknick. Cops and prosecutors and jails and prisons and bail-bondsmen and all the rest can ruin the lives of the innocent with little or no oversight and no consequences. Even in cases where it isn’t malice, the system is damaging and killing people.

    It’s infuriating. Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @Another Scott:

    I wonder if that’s something to do with pandemic related changes.  I don’t know why there would be such an uptick otherwise.  Has anything else chabged there?

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: The pandemic was a major factor, sure.

    While some of the service cuts associated with the pandemic have been restored, such as visits, and commissary, the self-harm numbers have continued to rise.

    The situation, DOC officials and staff members agree, has been exacerbated by another problem: mass absenteeism.

    On most days over the past few months, some 1,500 correction officers out of a citywide workforce of 8,500, were out on sick leave across the jail system, according to DOC records. Another 1,400 were on restricted duty, away from direct work with detainees.

    “If we don’t have enough staff who are working… they are not properly seeing to issues that affect sucide,” Schiraldi said, noting that officers have been unable to get refresher training on suicide prevention.

    “We’ve fallen behind on that because we are so thinly staffed,” he said. The lack of staff has also limited recreation, religious services, and programs, he added.

    “All sorts of things start to fall by the wayside when there is not enough staff to make those things happen,” he said.

    I don’t see vaccination cited, but…

    There are systemic problems.

    (The story has much more.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    oatler

    I got caught with a small amount in the 70s. The small-town sheriff mislabelled it as “hash”,then let me off the hook. Oh yeah, I was white at the time.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I’ll just note that this topic isn’t getting a lot of interest from commenters.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Maybe the civil rights groups didn’t want to give cover to the people who don’t really want to solve the problem but want to be able to say they did something to solve it.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: And what you conclude from that?  That no one cares?

    edit: Have we gotten to the point that all we can talk about or think about is today’s stories about the sausage-making, most of which are speculation about nothing?

    edit: That I picked a bad topic to write about?

  32. 32.

    oatler

    @Baud:Central AZ, a long way from northern IL where it happened. I can’t afford to look at the real estate ads without going bankrupt.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    Ifill comments at the NAACP-LDF (from 9/22):

    […] The decision by negotiators like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) that addressing the issue of qualified immunity – a key demand of those seeking to ensure a chance to obtain accountability for unconstitutional policing – was a “red line” he would not cross, doomed the effort to craft a bill that would be responsive to the demand and meet the moment. Dates set for completion of the negotiations were moved repeatedly. After a year of negotiations, this effort has now ended in failure.

    “Fortunately, despite the refusal of too many members of Congress to confront the truths of our current system of policing, a number of states and localities have recognized the urgency of this moment and have taken steps to address police violence and egregious misconduct through landmark accountability legislation, and bold, creative interventions to transform public safety, such as in Maryland, Colorado, and San Francisco. We will be leaning into those efforts at the state and local level, even as we renew our demand for federal legislation.

    “We are also gratified that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Garland has agreed to open pattern-and-practice investigations of police departments in multiple jurisdictions. The Associate Attorney General has also announced a review of grant funding of police departments to ensure that the DOJ’s grant programs are in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits federal funding to programs engaged in racial discrimination. We will continue our advocacy and demand for legislation that will end the regime of impunity that protects law enforcement officers from accountability for unconstitutional policing.”

    ###

    Incremental progress is infuriating at times, but it’s how change happens. We have to keep pushing to elect greater numbers of sensible people.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    UncleEbeneezer

    While this is definitely a bummer, alot of the most substantial police reform happens at the State and Local levels, no Federal. I would encourage people to get involved, connect with the various groups that are pushing for meaningful changes at those level, especially if you are in a Blue/Purple State/City/County.

  38. 38.

    Ruckus

    I believe that prosecutors ask for long terms as a means of gaining political capital for being tough on crime and know that often the courts are going to give much less in sentencing. Occasionally this seems to backfire. Also we have had a war on drugs for how long and are drugs any less of an issue now? My understanding is that the cost of the war on drugs is about equal to the street cost of the drugs, and we have made about zero progress. Well other than our police departments seem to be a war with the citizens, all be it for more reasons than the drugs.

  39. 39.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Another Scott: And things like CA’s duty-to-intervene and decertification bills that Newsom just signed are pretty huge.  Passing stuff like that in very Blue States with large populations, might be an even bigger net change than what we are likely to get through Federal legislation (which effects way fewer septs and has to get votes of Republicans in Congress- watered down).

  40. 40.

    Betty

    @Omnes Omnibus: For me it’s that feeling of hopelessness.  Similar to Betty Cracker’s comment. No progress on anything without getting rid of the filibuster. And that does not seem likely.

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: ​
    I don’t think people really care about it unless they see a sentence that they think is too long or too short (and honestly it seems to me that it is usually when they think it is too short). Then they are angry for a little while and forget about it again.

    ETA: I think Americans, left and right, tend to be a very punitive people.

  42. 42.

    Betty

    A major problem that is for Congress to deal with is qualified immunity for law enforcement. Republicans will not budge on that. Holding police officers liable for mistreating people could help change behavior.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Fear is their only resource.

    They won’t spend money to fix problems, only to make more problems for those they don’t like. Or who don’t agree with them. Which is the same group.

    Conservatives haven’t had a new idea since, no one actually knows but quite likely the revolutionary war. Everything they they think and want is in one short phrase, “Shut up, work longer, and give us all the money.” They don’t know anything else, they have no good ideas, they have no good policies for the country, they hate people that don’t look like them and don’t have those external dangly things and aren’t will to give them every thing, which of course they think they deserve. They don’t look to the future, that would take an actual concept that they didn’t deserve everything right now. They don’t ever look to better government because that would make them no better than everyone else – which of course would be a massive improvement. For them.

    What have conservatives ever done for this country? NOTHING. OK there was that Wall Street thing about 90 yrs ago, which they screwed up the recovery of. Pretty much every recession of my 72 yrs is on their back. The Covid pandemic has been made much worse in every country run by conservative governments, including this one. (And trying to recover from that – they’ve made that much worse for their constituents.) We’ve paid for and sent vaccines, 1.1 billion doses, over 3 times the population of this country to other nations – thanks Joe. Would any conservative government have done that? This is my no fucking way face.

    I’ll stop here…..

  44. 44.

    Laura Too

    Minneapolis has a ballot measure to remake policing: Question 2 would replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety (DPS). The DPS would be responsible for “a comprehensive public health approach to safety,” including the employment of licensed police officers if needed to fulfill the department’s responsibilities. A Commissioner of Public Safety would lead the DPS and be nominated by the mayor and approved by the city council. The ballot initiative would also provide for the fire police to be housed with the DPS. Question 2 would remove the minimum funding requirement for police (0.0017 per resident) from the Minneapolis Charter. I am putting in time registering voters and 16 hours as an election judge. I think I can have greater impact focusing on local for this.

  46. 46.

    japa21

    @Betty:

      The qualified immunity issue probably made some sense when it first came into use. There was probably fear of so many frivolous lawsuits, etc. and police leaving the ranks.
    I am sure there must be some way of removing qualified immunity while still safeguarding some of the concerns. Included would be severe punishment for filing frivolous suits, allowing counter suing by police under certain circumstances, and allowing for malpractice insurance to be available and affordable for police officers.

  50. 50.

    laura

    The carcereal state deserves examination. It is grindingly cruel and inefficient. It leaves little room for redemption. It is costly as fuck/ it is profitable as fuck. It doesn’t advance justice as a goal. It will continue to divide and conquer us until we dont have a dollar or a rational way to separate the anti-civil from the civil.

  51. 51.

    Lyrebird

    @Chetan Murthy: Indeed.  I was thinking of Kalief Browder and his death, different story but also a great wrong.

     

    Probably this thread is done with, but I will post anyway in honor of them and of George Floyd.  Have to keep pushing.

  52. 52.

    John Revolta

    but in what world does it make sense that someone charged with $10 worth of crack cocaine in a police sting can face a 25-year sentence if the case goes to trial???

    You may recall the incredibly stupid, harsh (and racist) law passed in 1986 which, among other things, imposed the same penalties for the possession of an amount of crack cocaine as for 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine.

  54. 54.

    oatler

    I lost a tooth last week and now there’s a new one growing in. It’s getting to be the last chapter of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

  55. 55.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @SiubhanDuinne: 

    Whenever I see the word “Ring” capitalised, I always think of Wagner.

    That’s probably just me, though.

    Maybe not. Whenever I see the word “Ring” capitalized, I always think of Tolkien.

  57. 57.

    Procopius

    One of the first things they teach in law  classes is that the law has nothing to do with justice, and yet psychological studies have shown that people’s instinctive desire is for justice, or at least fairness. Actually, the current situation is no more unjust or unfair than it’s always been, but (some) people are more aware of it than usual.

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