Protests sparked calls to reallocate police funds. Is Congress slow to advance legislation?
- Elements of the BREATHE Act have evolved into new bills like the Justice in Policing Act and others.
- Written by activists, the bill proposes redirecting funding for police into community-based measures.
- The legislation is designed to prevent Black youth from encountering the criminal justice system.
At the dinner table, in Congress, and on the force, police reform is a major discussion today. This is the second part of a series on Reimagining Public Safety. Click here to read the first part, the story of a cop-turned activist.
The Black Lives Matter movement gained incredible support following the murder of unarmed Minneapolis man George Floyd in May last year.Data and polls show that anywhere between 15 and 26 million participants took part in Black Lives Matter protests in just that month, making it one of the largest movements in US history.
Accordingly, calls to defund the police grew louder, as Black people - Jacob Blake, Helen Jones, Daunte Wright, and others - continued to be victimized by violent, and oftentimes fatal, police-inflicted shootings. Those calls eventually evolved into legislation that centers reform measures meant to elevate Black communities.
Last year, for example, Movement for Black Lives organizers drafted the BREATHE Act, recognized widely as the most comprehensive public safety reform bill to date.
Backed by progressives Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, the BREATHE Act addresses a sweeping array of systemic problems, like the racial wealth gap, education inequities, and unaffordable housing. The proposal also calls for hefty police funds - normally going toward defense and drug enforcement, for example - to be stripped down.
The money would instead get redistributed toward community-based measures designed to disrupt and ideally prevent Black youth from interfacing with the criminal justice system. That means structures like hospitals, schools, parks, and violence interruption programs would receive significant funding boosts.
"We know that community-based organizations - churches, houses of worship, your local underfunded community center - play huge roles in the maintenance of safe communities," Gina Clayton-Johnson, the proposal's main brain, told Insider. "They need support and dollars and this bill would provide that."
But the bill is unlikely to pass through Congress. Even with a Democratic stronghold in Congress and the White House, the party remains divided on the extent of reform measures. Moderates have stopped short of endorsing sweeping bills and instead have come to solutions that are far more pared down.
The House, for example, passed the Justice in Policing Act, a bill that also came on the heels of Floyd's murder. The act addresses misconduct, excessive force, and racial bias by officers and rolls back qualified immunity.
House Democrats voted to pass it unanimously, along with three Republicans.
But the legislation does little to address community-based reform or police funds - and critics regard it as significantly less thorough than the BREATHE Act.
The bill now awaits a vote in the Senate. But even with a singular focus and less dramatic reform measures, the Justice for Policing Act is unlikely to pass in the upper chamber. Republicans have already blocked the bill.
"The hurdle is the Senate," Rep. Karen Bass, who sponsored the bill, said recently on NPR. "It's the hurdle with every piece of legislation because of the filibuster."
Lawmakers lack no motivation to pass police reform bills
Data shows there's significant voter support for both the Justice in Policing Act and the BREATHE Act. A Vox poll conducted last month found that 51% of respondents said they support the BREATHE Act.
The Justice in Policing Act - with 66% in support - is even more popular.
Though not yet formally introduced in Congress, the BREATHE Act is already beginning to reimagine and reshape public safety.
In June, for example, Rep. Cori Bush proposed The People's Response Act. Clayton-Johnson calls Bush's bill "an incredibly exciting articulation of BREATHE."
"It represents almost the entirety of section 2," she said, referring to mandates that state that the federal government dole out grants to state and local governments to advance police reform on more micro levels.
The support would incentivize state and local agencies to reroute funds from traditional public safety systems like police departments to "alternative public safety infrastructures" that bolster community-building, Clayton-Johnson said.
Bush believes The People's Response Act would significantly transform the response to calls for help. A trained health professional, for example, would respond to a call from a person with mental health disorders, "rather than an officer with a gun," Bush told Insider.
The legislation "builds a world where people won't have to be afraid of what could happen if they call for help," the representative from Missouri added.
Even President Joe Biden has promised to enact a slew of reforms featured in the BREATHE Act, including ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes.
Ending institutional violence and inequity toward people of color
Ideally, community-based support measures will, partly, break the cycle of mass incarceration that plunges millions of Black people into a lifetime of poverty and stigma.
"You give someone a job, you give someone access to healthcare, you give someone access to mental health care and being able to access healing in the wake of trauma, and violence is prevented and interrupted," Clayton-Johnson said.
"We know this," she added. "And yet our approaches have always seemed to be to address something with a cell or with a set of handcuffs and that just hasn't worked."
Under the BREATHE Act, that all changes. Ultimately and hopefully, Clayton-Johnson said, it ends the dismantling of the system of police in the US as we know it.
"Am I out for anyone's job? No, absolutely not," she added, saying she envisions a world in which people pursuing a career in criminal justice have expanded options like becoming a social worker or a violence interrupter.
"What this is, is an examination of how we do safety in this country," she said.
But the BREATHE Act is much more than the elimination of the police system.
It lays out a holistic plan to achieve community-based structures that offer mental health services and lift up individuals. Advocates say it's an effort to eliminate racial inequity that stems heavily from traditional public safety procedures.