The NPR Politics Podcast - "Is that what a black man's worth? Twenty dollars?"

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

Philonise Floyd, whose brother was killed by Minneapolis police, testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The hearing, tied to House Democrats' police reform proposal, took place as Republican reform efforts in the Senate began to take shape.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and National Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's 2.07 p.m. on Wednesday, June 10th. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Keri, it's been ages since we've seen you. I know you were on a fellowship, a wonderful journalism fellowship for the last year. Yeah, you know, one of the things that really struck me a year ago as I was preparing to study was this quote by a civil rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson. And he said, we have to acknowledge the 400 years of injustice that haunts us and haunts our system. And he said, basically, we're at a moment where we're either going to double down on romanticizing our past, or accept that there's something better waiting for us.

And lo and behold, coming back to work this week, I realized we're right in the middle of a conversation about that very topic. Well, today on The Hill, George Floyd's brother, Philonise Floyd, testified at a House Judiciary Committee, and he spoke about his brother's death at the hands of Minneapolis police. George wasn't hurting anyone that day. He didn't deserve to die over $20. I'm asking you, is that what a black man is worth?

$20? This is 2020. Enough is enough. The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough. By the leaders, that is our country, the world needs the right thing. Floyd was speaking directly to lawmakers. There was this hearing that was part of a police reform proposal that Democrats have put forward. I'm here to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain.

Stop us from being tired. George called for help and he was ignored. Please listen to the call I'm making to you now. To the calls of our family and the calls ringing out the streets across the world. People of all backgrounds, genders, and races have come together to demand change. Honor them. Honor George and make the necessary changes that make law enforcement the solution and not the problem. Claudia, Floyd was not the only person who testified today. Sue, who else spoke and what's the message they were trying to get across? Yes, so it was a very large panel today. As we heard, Philonise Floyd spoke in person. He was there. It was a very dramatic moment. Others testified virtually, and some were there on the

panel as well. We had the police chief from Houston. We heard from pastors. We heard from folks for Republicans who were speaking on issues such as defunding the police and activists who are worried about where things are headed when it comes to policing and the need for reform. You know, Claudia, you mentioned that there were some witnesses brought by Republicans, and one of them was Pastor Daryl Scott, who's an advisor for President Trump. He spoke against this idea of dismantling police forces in the country. Law-abiding citizens, and I've spoken to a great deal of them, overwhelmingly think that defunding or disbanding police departments is a horrible idea. So it's interesting, we heard about this theme from Republican witnesses, but at the same time, this is an issue that Democrats happen to agree

with a lot of them. There are some that are concerned about this issue and say that police should be defunded or disbanded. But for the most part, what we're hearing from Democrats is they're not interested in including this in their proposal or moving forward with it. They think that Republicans are using it against Democrats. And for the most part, they're saying we're not on board with it either. So it's an interesting moment in terms of overlap that they mostly seem to agree that they don't want to see defunding of police. And Carrie, some of the witnesses were proposing specific solutions. Can you give us a sense of what some of those ideas were? Yeah, there were a bunch of things from altering law enforcement's ability to get a warrant where they don't have to knock on your front door in drug cases, which has led to a lot of violence in the past and has been very concerning to civil rights advocates, to ending or limiting programs that allow the military to provide tanks and other munitions to local police forces. We saw a lot of tanks on Washington, D.C. streets here in the last week or so alone.

And then other measures that would increase the Justice Department's ability to prosecute bad cops and changes to something called qualified immunity that would expose some police officers who engage in wrongdoing to more liability to be sued in the courts. And Carrie, you've been speaking with civil rights advocates about how they're reading this moment. What reform do they think is possible right now? You know, I talked yesterday with Chirag Baines, who co-authored the Justice Department's Ferguson report many years ago in the Obama Justice Department. And he said he was surprised that not much changed after that. But now does appear to be a real moment where the eyes of the country and the world are really upon the U.S., the U.S. Congress and U.S. police. And so the challenge for people who want to see change is if now is the moment, they want the Congress to go big, not just to think about creating like a national registry of police wrongdoers or making a national standard for the use of deadly force by police, but also to try to reduce the footprint of law enforcement in the lives of black and brown people around the country, as Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Civil Rights

Division under President Obama testified today. But you know, Carrie, I think when a lot of us think about law enforcement, we often think of our local city's police department, we think of it at a very local level. So is there a role that Congress and the federal government have to play here that people see that there is something they can do? This is a big challenge. In fact, police is, most policing is done on the state and local level, but there is a role for the federal government. There has been, at least since the brutal attack on Rodney King in Los Angeles, where Congress amended the law to allow for big investigations of entire police forces. Activists say that often in these cases, it's not just individual bad actors, but entire systems.

And the Justice Department does have the authority to investigate systems of policing. The issue is that President Obama's administration did that 25 times and President Trump's administration has only done it once. So in addition to doing more pattern and practice investigations of local police forces and culture, use of excessive force and the like, these advocates want to make sure that state and local governments that get money for policing are actually doing it in an unbiased way. All right, well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about police reform efforts that are coming together on the Republican side. Support for NPR and the following message come from DuckDuckGo.

Are you fed up with companies selling your data? DuckDuckGo can help. They help millions of people like you take back their privacy online. With one download, you can search and browse privately, avoiding trackers. DuckDuckGo. Privacy simplified. You may have noticed something at all these protests over police violence. There are a lot more white people there than you'd expect. But how long will that last? This awokening among white American voters.

How far are they really willing to go beyond dethroning Trump? Adam Serwer on race and lessons from history. Listen and subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back. And, you know, historically, there has been this assumption that Republicans are staunchly pro-law enforcement and in some ways kind of skeptical of reform. But polling has begun to show that a growing majority of Americans are questioning the disproportionate use of police force. So, Claudia, I'm curious to hear more about what we're beginning to hear from some congressional Republicans that they have some of their own plans about some type of police reform.

Yes, this is really interesting. Just 48 hours ago, I was very skeptical. I didn't see them aligning in terms of putting anything together. But just in the last couple days, we've seen a lot of momentum. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed Tim Scott, who is the lone black GOP Republican in the Senate. And he is going to be heading up this effort to put together legislation. Just today, he was saying that he's hopeful that they can put together a bill by this Friday. So in just a matter of days. Yeah. So this is really a quick turnaround. He also thinks there may be overlap with House Republicans. There may even be overlap with the White House. That is one of the wild cards.

But it's really interesting seeing this traction take off so quickly. And perhaps there could be a middle ground for everyone to meet on. Do you have any idea of what kind of proposals the Republicans might be considering? So Scott detailed some of the provisions so far in his plan. They are steering away from some of the provisions in the Democratic proposal. That includes a ban on chokeholds and a ban on no-knock warrants in drug-related cases. Scott says he sees issues like that being addressed more in training and working on spreading de-escalation tactics throughout police departments across the country,

and that's the way to address it. He also wants to develop a national commission to study potential police reforms, changes that could be made. And he also wants to get everyone, all these police departments, under the same umbrella when it comes to federal reporting requirements. Today, he says only 40 percent of police departments report to the FBI and the Justice Department. And so he wants to see that number escalated. He also wants to see body cameras, and he wants to see the funding for that go up. If not, he wants to see penalties when it's not used. I hate to be a party pooper here, but the notion that there's calls for yet another commission to study policing is going to very

severely disappoint people in a lot of communities around the country. President Obama had a commission on policing in the 21st century. President Trump and the Justice Department currently have another commission on law enforcement. And so the notion that the most that could come out of a Republican bill would be yet another commission and more money for police, I think would really anger people out there in the streets who are fearful of how police efforts on the Senate side, but they're skeptical. They think so far this doesn't go far enough. They think so far this doesn't go far enough. And so we're hearing those concerns, another study, no real bans here. And so that's part of the issues that they're dealing with in terms of can we meet on some middle ground here. And I want to say to your question earlier, Asma,

that there is a role for the federal government to play here. But a lot of the problems that police, good police officers are being called to solve every day on American streets are not really law enforcement problems. There are other kinds of problems, which leads to this conversation that some people are calling defund or disband police. What they're really talking about in a lot of cases is providing money for social services, mental health services, education, and other programs that would not lead people to have run-ins with cops on the streets that could leave them either incarcerated or horribly, in some cases, dead. You know, do we have any sense of what type of reform, if any, President Trump might

actually be willing to sign into law? You know, I see two data points here with respect to the administration. One is that Attorney General Bill Barr and the acting head of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, have both said publicly that they don't really see systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States. And the second is that during the Trump campaign in 2016, one of the major moments for me was when the country's largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, threw its weight behind candidate Donald Trump. It would be a surprise to me if Donald Trump broke with the FOP. And in a lot of cases here, what state and local officials are trying to do is renegotiate union contracts with police. So this is a complicated set of factors for the

White House to consider. Claudia, to that point, do we have a sense if congressional Republicans will only put into legislation things that they absolutely know the Trump administration will sign on to? Or could we be in a situation, given that there's so much public pressure, that they feel an urgency to do something? And I'm just kind of curious if we know, will they actually just kind of acquiesce to what the Trump administration wants? Or are they facing public pressure to put a more sort of forward thinking piece of legislation forward? I think we're seeing the latter. Tim Scott was just asked about this today, will you roll out a proposal

without President Trump on board? And he said, we're just going to move forward. They are working on a plan. We're working on a plan. House Republicans are working on a plan. And there is common ground. He's trying to remain optimistic they can meet on this common ground. But he didn't seem interested in the idea at all of holding off legislation until getting President Trump's sign off. So it's really interesting. They're ready to move forward, it seems without his support. Ladies, I am so dubious, like, give me a break, that they would actually challenge the president, you're saying congressional Republicans 100%. I would have thought that I would actually challenge the president, you're saying, congressional Republicans? 100%. I would have thought that. I would have thought that just a few weeks ago.

But just the energy there when I was there yesterday and seeing what Republicans are saying today, it seems like they are barreling full speed ahead. I am surprised at this shift. But I understand what you're saying. But the energy was different on Capitol Hill yesterday. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow in your feeds.

Until then, you can head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a weekly roundup of our best online analysis. It'll show up in your inbox every Saturday to let you know what happened that week and what it all means. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Claudia Rizales. I cover Congress. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

And as always, thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.