Justice in Policing Act

dallas pd

The Justice in Policing Act is the first-ever, bold, comprehensive approach to hold police accountable, end racial profiling, change the culture of law enforcement, empower our communities, and build trust between law enforcement and our communities by addressing systemic racism and bias to help save lives. This bill reinvests in our communities by supporting critical community-based programs to change the culture of law enforcement and empower our communities to reimagine public safety in an equitable and just way. The bill is led by the Congressional Black Caucus and Allred is a cosponsor.

The Justice in Policing Act would establish a national standard for the operation of police departments; mandate data collection on police encounters; reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs; and streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 will:

Work to End Racial & Religious Profiling

  • Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling.
  • Mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.

Save Lives by Banning Chokeholds & No-Knock Warrants

  • Bans chokeholds and carotid holds.
  • Bans no-knock warrants in drug cases.
  • Requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ de-escalation techniques first.

Limit Military Equipment on American Streets & Requires Body Cameras

  • Limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
  • Requires federal uniformed police officers to wear body cameras and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.
  • Requires marked federal police vehicles to have dashboard cameras. Makes it easier to prosecute offending officers and enables individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.

Investigate Police Misconduct

  • Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.

Empower Our Communities to Reimagine Public Safety in an Equitable and Just Way

  • This bill establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just and equitable public safety approaches. These local commissions would operate similar to President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Change the Culture of Law Enforcement with Training to Build Integrity and Trust

  • Requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
  • Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices.
  • Enhances funding for pattern and practice discrimination investigations.
  • Requires the Attorney General to collect data on investigatory actions and detentions by federal law enforcement agencies; the racial distribution of drug charges; the use of deadly force by and against law enforcement officers; as well as traffic and pedestrian stops and detentions.
  • Establishes a DOJ task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.

Improve Transparency by Collecting Data on Police Misconduct and Use-of-Force

  • Creates a nationwide police misconduct registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave one agency, from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.
  • Mandates state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.

Make Lynching a Federal Crime

  • Makes it a federal crime to conspire to violate existing federal hate crimes laws.