‘Just need agree on the actual language’: Tim Scott says Congress is close to deal on policing

Sen. Tim Scott said Wednesday that a bipartisan group of lawmakers has worked out their main differences over a bill that will propose changes in policing and could reach a deal as soon as Thursday.

“We’re going to have to now check the definitions and the language that we’re putting on paper to make sure that we’re all saying the exact same thing,” Mr. Scott of South Carolina, the top Republican in the talks, told reporters. “But I don’t think there are outstanding issues that need to be worked out. We just need to agree on the actual language we’re using.”

Mr. Scott and Democrats Sen. Cory Booker of  New Jersey and Rep. Karen Bass of California have been trying to reach a deal before Friday, when the Senate is scheduled to go on a two-week July Fourth break, They previously missed President Biden’s challenge for an agreement by the anniversary of George Floyd’s death May 25, and pressure has been growing to reach a bipartisan agreement that can pass the evenly divided Senate.

However, Ms. Bass was less optimistic Wednesday morning, putting the chances of working out a deal by the end of the week at “about 50/50” in an interview.

It was not clear how the sides are proposing to handle the most contentious issue in the discussions: demands by civil rights groups that Congress eliminate a legal doctrine called qualified immunity that makes it difficult to file civil suits against police officers.

Under qualified immunity, plaintiffs have to show that officers knew that their conduct would violate a person’s constitutional rights.

In 2019, for instance, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took up a qualified immunity case from Caldwell, Idaho. Even after a woman gave police there the keys to her home so they could look inside for her ex-boyfriend, a SWAT team bombarded her house with tear gas, causing extensive damage, and didn’t find him there.

The court ruled that because there had been no previous court rulings saying specifically that bombarding a home with tear gas was a constitutional violation, the officer had qualified immunity.

Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, had previously proposed a compromise that would make it easier for people to sue an officer’s police department or city but would continue to shield individual officers.

However, Democrats involved in the negotiations, such as Ms. Bass, have insisted that individual officers be held more accountable than they are now should they violate a citizen’s civil rights.

Police unions influential with Republicans, including the Fraternal Order of Police, have steadfastly opposed any changes to qualified immunity.

“The FOP will not yield in our effort to preserve the existing qualified immunity doctrine,” the union said in a statement two weeks ago.

William Johnson, the executive officer and general counsel of the National Association of Police Organizations, a coalition of police unions, said Wednesday that he hadn’t heard that the sides were as close as Mr. Scott indicated.

A draft that circulated two weeks ago of a proposal by Mr. Booker was called “horrible” by the group. 

“The reasons for our opposition are too many to completely list,” NAPO said in a statement two weeks ago about Mr. Booker’s proposal.

Among other measures, the proposal would make “excessive force” a federal crime, punishable by a sentence of up to 10 years in jail. Officers who do not intervene to stop excessive force also could be jailed for up to 10 years. Mr. Booker’s proposal also would bar federal funding from going to police departments that do not ban the use of chokeholds. It also instructs the attorney general to create a national standard for police departments to be accredited. The standards would set a national policy for use and force and on handling traffic stops. NAPO opposed the creation of national policing standards.

“Sen. Booker’s proposal in effect sets up a situation where the Department of Justice will be managing the hiring, training, deployment and policy, including use of force and equipment, for every state and local agency. It would make law enforcement more dangerous and difficult for officers and it would exacerbate the already dire recruitment and retention issues facing state and local agencies,” the group said.