Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I rise today to continue to lift up the voices of millions of Americans who are demanding policing reform as a necessary step on the path towards racial justice in this country. The challenges in defeating systemic racism can seem insurmountable, but there are clear next steps.

We need to start by transforming our policing system to root out the systemic racism and the culture of violence that is killing Black and Brown and indigenous people and people of color.

I want to talk today about four areas of this work that need our urgent attention.

First, we need to bring justice, accountability, and change to police departments by passing the Justice in Policing Act.

Second, we need to invest in new models of public safety by supporting community-led reform and innovation. I am asking the Senate to take up and pass my new bill to do just that.

Third, we need to end the criminalization of poverty, which happens when other social systems fail.

Finally, we need to root out racism in our systems of education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunity so that everyone in this country can have the freedom and the opportunity to build the lives they choose.

In order to bring justice, accountability, and change to policing departments around the country, we need to start by passing the Justice in Policing Act. Led by Senator Booker and Senator Harris, this bill is a comprehensive set of needed Federal-level reforms to a system that is designed to shield police officers from accountability and consequences and denies justice to victims of police violence.

These reforms--like ending qualified immunity, establishing a national use-of-force standard, creating a registry of police misconduct, and banning dangerous practices like choke holds and no- knock warrants--are long overdue.

Indeed, communities and activists have pushed for many of the reforms in this bill for decades. A few weeks ago, I spoke on this floor about the urgent need to pass this bill. Unfortunately, this critical legislation is still sitting on Leader McConnell's desk. But I promise that I will keep fighting until the Justice in Policing Act is signed into law.

Policing needs other changes, too, like banning so-called warrior training, which encourages law enforcement officials to see the public as hostile enemies. We need to empower the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to independently investigate police departments that systematically violate the constitutional rights of our communities

We need to reform Federal sentencing to repeal 1994 crime bill provisions, like mandatory minimums and draconian sentencing enhancements, and we need to prohibit police union contracts that create unfair barriers to effective investigations, civilian oversight, and holding police departments accountable to the communities they are sworn to serve.

In our work to transform policing, the second step we need to take at the Federal level is to support local community-led innovation in public safety.

Although Congress has the responsibility to establish national standards for justice and accountability, Federal-level change can only go so far. State, local, and Tribal governments are responsible for overseeing policing in their communities. I believe that these communities know best what will work in their own cities and towns. The Federal Government, though, can play a catalytic role by supporting and funding innovative, anti-racist policing reform.

With this in mind, today I am introducing a bill, the Supporting Innovation and Public Safety Act, which would help State, local, and Tribal governments reimagine policing in their communities by funding innovative projects and best practices that will transform how we deliver public safety and other social services.

My bill would empower local governments to develop and implement projects to improve public safety through systemic change, not just by growing police department budgets.

There are great examples of innovation already happening. Local jurisdictions are experimenting with new ways to provide mental health crisis response. They are addressing ways of dealing with gun violence as a public health issue and even how to enforce low-level traffic safety violations without involving an armed police officer.

I have long believed that those who are closest to the work know best how to get the work done. Through these grants from the Federal level, we will be able to help local communities adopt new approaches to public safety, tailoring their needs and unique circumstances to what they need to do. Then we can develop robust evaluation of these community-led projects, which will generate new data and new models of public safety in policing and also sow the seeds of progress and broad transformation.

The third thing we need to do at all levels of government is to work together to stop criminalizing poverty and using the criminal justice system as the solution for every social ill.

For decades, we have dramatically underfunded efforts to support housing, mental health, and substance abuse. And then we criminalize the results of this lack of support. We ask police departments to control behavior like loitering or trespassing, public intoxication, and public nuisances--all offenses that largely don't threaten public safety. Then we put people in jail because they have a mental illness or lack a safe place to live. Poverty becomes the reason why people, especially people of color, get caught up in the criminal justice system.

It is time that we stop criminalizing poverty and start investing in solutions to get to the root causes of social problems. We need to refocus policing on violence prevention and crisis response, which connects people to the services that they need.

A good place to start is by dramatically reforming cash bail so that those who haven't been convicted of a crime don't remain in jail just because they can't afford bail. Almost 60 percent of the nearly 750,000 people currently in jail have not been convicted of any crime. They are in jail just because they cannot afford bail, and the data tells us that this is yet another burden that falls disproportionately on communities of color.

Indeed, when we criminalize poverty, we facilitate the systemic racist harassment, surveillance, and control of Black and Brown, and indigenous communities. That is why we need to ban the use of quotas for law enforcement officers to enforce so-called broken windows offenses. These offenses do not threaten public safety, and they are disproportionately enforced on communities of color.

A recent New York Times investigation found that in many large police departments, serious violent crimes make up only about 1 percent of all calls for service--1 percent. Many of those same departments are solving less than 30 percent of those serious crimes. We could actually improve public safety by devoting resources to combating violent crime rather than overenforcing low-level offenses in communities of color.

Let's think about what this means for marijuana offenses. The Federal marijuana prohibition is a failed policy that contributes to mass incarceration and overpolicing of communities of color. White and Black people use marijuana at roughly the same rate, but a Black person is almost four times as likely to be arrested for a marijuana offense.

The Federal Government is behind both State law and public opinion. Forty-two States and the District of Columbia already allow some type of marijuana use, despite the long-time Federal prohibition.

It is time to legalize marijuana, and we should do it in a practical and commonsense way that protects the health and safety and the civil rights of our communities.

We need to take up and pass Senator Harris's Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, the MORE Act, which I am proud to cosponsor. The MORE Act would address the devastating impact on communities of color on the War on Drugs by expunging marijuana-related convictions and reinvesting in community.

Also, I recently introduced a bill, the Substance Resolution and Safety Act, which would ensure that marijuana is regulated to protect the health and the safety of youth, of consumers, and of drivers. We do this without replicating the racist enforcement patterns of our current drug policy.

Finally, we need to recognize that racial justice is not only about policing and criminal justice reform. We need to root out racist policies that are built into our systems of housing, healthcare, education, and economic opportunity.

The legacy of slavery, of oppression, and of discrimination is pervasive in these areas and our communities bear the scars of these past crimes even as new injuries accumulate. This is why a Black or a Brown child living in the neighborhood where George Floyd was murdered has fewer opportunities than a White child living just a few miles away.

The impact of generations of stolen labor, of systemic violence, and exclusion from opportunity is revealed today in legal disparities, achievement gaps, housing instability, and the dramatic difference in wealth and wages between White people and people of color.

Addressing these challenges are crucial to the unfinished work of racial justice in our country. This means that we need to implement anti-racist practices and policies, like ending the use of armed police officers in schools, eliminating discipline disparities, and shutting off the school-to-prison pipeline. It means addressing the systemic exclusion of Black and Brown and indigenous people from the wealth- building opportunities of homeownership. It means tackling the root causes of racial health disparities, including environmental injustices and discrimination in healthcare. It means supporting economic opportunity for all by removing racist barriers to employment, entrepreneurship, credit, and capital.

The scale of the injustice that we see in our country can sometimes feel overwhelming, and the path can seem very long. These are some concrete steps that we can take on that path, and they are necessary steps, to fulfill our country's promise of freedom and equity for all of us. Community leaders and activists are showing us the path forward, and following this path requires us to be courageous, requires us to be humble, and, at times, requires us to be uncomfortable. But it is a path rooted in love and trust and hope.

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