“The gentle lady just said there is no defunding of the police, but I would just point out in Democratic-controlled cities around the country: Austin, Texas, $150 million, Baltimore, Maryland, $22 million, Boston, $12 million, Columbus, $23 million, Eureka, California, $1.2 million, Hartford, $2 million,” Jordan said.
Continuing, Jordan said “Madison, Wisconsin, $2 million, Minneapolis, $8 million, New York, $1 billion, Norman [Okla.], $865,000, Oklahoma City, $1.5 million, Philadelphia, $33 million, Portland, Oregon, $3 million, San Francisco, $120 million, Seattle, $69 million, Washington, D.C., $15 million. That’s what Democrats have done over the last year.”
The exchange between the Texas Democrat and Ohio Republican was indicative of one of the most heated debates to date in the 117th Congress.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), one of two principal co-sponsors of the measure this year and when an identical version of it was approved by the Democratic House in 2020, said during last week’s debate that “a profession where you have the power to kill should be a profession that requires highly trained officers who are accountable. That is what this bill accomplishes.”
The current proposal required a mere 10 days to go from introduction on Feb. 21 by Bass and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to passage in the lower chamber on March 3.
Approval in the Senate is far from certain as the upper chamber is evenly split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. It’s not likely that 10 Republican senators will vote with Democrats to reach the required 60 votes to break a filibuster against the proposal. President Joe Biden will sign the measure if it makes it to his desk.
“It seems as if this is a political move to check off a box rather than an honest attempt to develop polices to change policing practices for the better in this country.”
“These provisions are incredibly concerning taken together as they remove any legal protections for officers, while making it easier to prosecute them for mistakes on the job, not just criminal acts.”
The unfunded mandates “when you combine that with the other things that it does, like restricting the transfer of military equipment to police that a lot of departments rely on for things like their SWAT teams, I can certainly envision a strain on a lot of departments’ budgets.”
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), whose father and brother are in law enforcement, told The Epoch Times Monday he is especially concerned that nobody will want to enter the profession if qualified immunity is removed.
“You’re not going to find a law enforcement officer, even people who are in now, that are going to be willing to say ‘okay, I want to protect the country, given everything that’s going on, and then put my family, my property, my livelihood at risk if I make a decision that’s within my training protocol, and somebody gets hurt and they sue me personally.”
Steube also noted that Members of Congress who voted to remove qualified immunity protection from law enforcement will continue to have it for themselves in their work.