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A day after Memphis police moved to disband the unit responsible for bringing the five officers charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tire Nichols, the attorney for Nichols’ family called on Congress to pass legislation deadlock aimed at combating police misconduct.
The George Floyd Police Justice Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but failed in the Senate, would limit qualified immunity policies that protect officers accused of misconduct; create a national register of sustained disciplinary actions against officers; and ban chokes and limit no-detonation orders, among other measures.
“Shame on us if we don’t use it [Nichols’s] tragic death to finally pass the George Floyd Police Justice Act,” Ben Crump, the attorney for the Nichols family, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
Videos released Friday evening show Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, being repeatedly kicked, pepper-sprayed, punched and kicked by Memphis police. Nichols died on Jan. 10, three days after the beating, prompting a Justice Department investigation and local charges of second-degree murder for the five officers, all of whom are black.
It took 22 minutes for the ambulance to arrive after Tire Nichols was beaten by police
Crump said the family hoped Nichols’ death would be a key moment to force changes in regulations and laws. Paraphrasing a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he said, “I can’t stop a man from hating me, but the law can stop a man from killing a man.”
The 2021 measure was named after George Floyd, who died in 2020 after then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 1/2 minutes, as seen in a video captured by a spectator. The legislation was sponsored by Democrats, including Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), but faced opposition from Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Tim Scott (RS.C.) offered a more limited version of the bill, but that didn’t happen either.
Excerpt from the book “His name is George Floyd”
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that police review efforts needed to go beyond the stalled bill, but that approving it would be a good start. He called on Booker and Scott to redouble their efforts to work on the legislation.
“It had a lot of important elements,” Durbin said. “It is necessary that we do all these things, but it is not enough. It’s the right starting point. We need a national conversation about policing in an accountable, constitutional and humane way.”
But even if a new version passes the Senate, it would have to be taken up by the House, now controlled by Republicans.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he didn’t think a federal law would have made a difference in Nichols’ death.
“I don’t know that there is any law that can stop the evil that we saw,” Jordan said. He said those regulations would be better left to state and local governments.
“Democrats always think it’s a new law that’s going to fix something so terrible,” Jordan said. “These five people had no respect for life.”
He also warned that the conversation around policing in the wake of high-profile police killings is having a chilling effect on police recruitment at a time when police agencies across the country are facing staff shortages.
“There has been an attack on law enforcement,” Jordan said. “And you’re not getting the best of the best.”
Crump, however, called for more accountability after Nichols’ death.
Communities of color “often have different types of police than many of our white brothers and sisters in their community,” Crump said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And this video illustrates that it’s this culture that says it doesn’t matter if police officers are black, Hispanic or white, that somehow it’s allowed to trample on the constitutional rights of certain citizens of certain ethnicities in certain communities . “
Azi Paybarah and Laurie McGinley contributed to this report.