George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. CAMMACK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in strong opposition to the efforts by you and your colleagues to defund our police.

This week we will be voting on H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. This bill is named after a man who was murdered by a police officer. The officer responsible should have never been allowed to don a badge and act on behalf of the agency sworn to protect its citizens. He should and is being held accountable.

Now, as a member of a first responder family, I can say definitively on behalf of our officers that there is absolutely nothing, nothing that a good cop hates more than a bad cop. And as the wife of a first responder, this issue could not be more personal to me.

Mr. Speaker, my husband serves our local community as a firefighter and a SWAT medic for our local sheriff's department. And next to me here today, you see one of his SWAT vests.

This is the same vest that he wore for 14 hours while on a massive manhunt for a man who had just been released from prison, who promptly raped and killed his girlfriend.

It is the same vest that he wore while responding to a man who had barricaded himself with weapons, threatening to kill his own children.

These are just some of the scenes that this vest and my husband have seen, like so many of our LEOs. But the real threat here is not the dangerous situations that my husband has seen in protecting his community, it is the fact that this bill--and by extension, you, Mr. Speaker--want to take this vest off my husband's back because, yes, what this bill does is take this kind of equipment off the backs of our men and women in uniform.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you and my colleagues who are considering voting for this bill:

Are you waking up at 2 a.m. to respond to a gruesome murder?

Are you missing your children's birthday parties to respond to gang shootings?

There is absolutely room for us to improve. There is absolutely room and a necessity for us to do better. But the answer is not to defund the police. It is not the answer. What this bill ultimately does is defund the police.

You want a better trained, more responsive police force in your hometown? Fully fund the police. You say this is a reform bill, and I say that is BS.

Mr. Speaker, your own conference members have been advocating for the defunding of our local police officers, calling them names that I cannot and will not repeat here today. In fact, many of your members have made it a top priority of their platforms.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source