Improving Law Enforcement Officer Safety and Wellness Through Data Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the aisle just mischaracterized the Democratic amendment that was offered during committee, and I think if he went back and looked at the record, he would see that.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation purports to improve law enforcement officer safety and wellness. It seeks to do this by requiring the Attorney General and other Federal officials to issue reports about attacks on officers, aggression against officers, and officer mental health.

While this legislation may seem on the surface to be meaningful, let us be really clear: It is just more cheap talk from Republicans.

Absolutely nothing in this bill makes a single police officer safer or invests a single dollar in officer wellness.

While the collection of accurate data, including data on officer attacks and mental health is important, this bill is unlikely to provide any new or meaningful data.

By necessity, data about incidents of violence against law enforcement officers must already be initially collected and reported, if at all, by Tribal, State, and local authorities who are in the best position to know about these incidents, not the Attorney General.

The Federal Government collects this data through participation by these authorities in voluntary data reporting programs like the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted data collection.

Nothing in this bill provides any resources for more agencies to participate in these data collection programs, nor does it mandate any kind of reporting.

Given that there is nothing in this bill to improve the underlying data that is available to the Attorney General and others, it is unlikely that the reporting required by the bill would be able to deliver any new insights that might actually improve officer safety.

Democrats sought to solve this basic problem of inadequate data collection through the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Under that bill, States would be required to report shootings, deaths, and other uses of force involving law enforcement officers, and States would receive grants to facilitate that reporting.

By both mandating and supporting data collection and reporting, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would significantly improve the data available to the Congress, Federal agencies, and the public.

Critically, unlike this legislation, that bill would require reporting of uses of force both by and against law enforcement, enabling us to have a full understanding of the dangers faced by officers, as well as the injuries and deaths of civilians that are caused by police.

In focusing only on attacks against officers, this bill turns a blind eye to uses of force by law enforcement against civilians, whether it is justified or not.

The mental health reporting provisions of the bill are also unlikely to improve officer wellness because they fail to build on the work of past Congresses and the Biden administration.

In the 115th Congress, we passed the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act, a bipartisan bill signed into law by President Obama, which directed the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to report on mental health practices and services that could be adopted by law enforcement and the programs already available to them.

It also expanded the availability of grant funds for law enforcement mental health and developed new educational resources.

Building on this work, President Biden issued a 2022 executive order on advancing effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices to enhance public trust and public safety.

The executive order required the Attorney General to develop and publish a report on best practices to address law enforcement officer wellness and to make recommendations regarding the prevention of death by suicide of law enforcement officers.

The Attorney General has already complied with this executive order, so we already know much more about the mental health resources and the needs of law enforcement.

Rather than retread our steps, we should be moving forward to help our law enforcement officers implement this important work so that more officers can access the support that they need.

Last Congress, under Democratic control, the House passed numerous bipartisan bills that improved law enforcement officer safety and wellness like Protecting America's First Responders Act, the Public Safety Officer Support Act, the Confidentiality Opportunities for Peer Support, or COPS Counseling Act, and the Law Enforcement De-Escalation Training Act.

At least seven bipartisan law enforcement bills, many led by Republicans, have been passed by the Democrat-led Senate.

These are bills that would help law enforcement and are priorities for the police groups, but, so far, House Republicans have only advanced one of them.

This legislation represents another wasted opportunity to work together on substantive proposals that will make our communities and the law enforcement officers that protect them safer.

I urge Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, as the comments to the gentlewoman from Washington developed, it became clear.

She said at first I mischaracterized what occurred in the Judiciary Committee, and then it became clear that I didn't mischaracterize anything.

What they offered to do was to, again, take this bill, which provides for additional data collection about attacks on law enforcement officers, to take the entire text of the bill and to gut it and replace it with, yes, indeed, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is the name, and that is the bill that I described as having attempted to impair officer qualified immunity, to require training on implicit bias, and to establish a database to impugn officers nationwide.

That is the bill that was a very top priority of Democrats when they were in the majority. It passed on the floor under their majority rule, and it went on to the Senate where it didn't advance, for good reason, because the last thing America needs--again, as demonstrated by the events in Washington, D.C., the last thing America needs is police officers to be brushed back from their jobs and to be intimidated from doing the very tough work of criminal law enforcement by legislation that antagonizes, demeans, and delegitimizes them. That is the last thing they need.

Here we are. It is remarkable. Is this the only reporting bill that has ever come up that Democrats find objectionable because of their interest in good and efficient government?

Is it that they are concerned about the possibility that the bill might not have excellent impacts or be efficient or advance the game or break new ground? What is the harm, after all?

Here is what the harm is: Democrats cannot abide by even the simplest of legislation that recognizes the burdens that are borne every day by police officers across this country on our behalf; that they are being subjected to greater and greater incidents and risk of attacks on their persons and of their deaths in the line of duty by people who intend to do them harm, and that there may be gaps in terms of the resources that are available to them to deal with the difficulties they confront.

The response that you need to do the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in lieu of this reporting bill is absurd. It is gaslighting in the highest degree.

This little reporting bill, there is just nothing to it, and, yet, for some reason, it sticks in the craw of the minority just to say to police officers: We are going to extend further efforts, further minimal efforts to learn the information that we need to find out, to see just how big this problem is and whether you are being afforded the opportunity to deal with it in your personal lives as it wreaks havoc on you.

Joshua Eyer, Sam Poloche, Alden Elliott, Thomas Weeks, Jr.: One of the worst attacks on law enforcement ever.

Shouldn't we go and find out what we need to know for their benefit? Is that not an appropriate way, that little bill? Would that not be an appropriate way to honor their memory?

Is the concern with efficiency and breaking new ground so profound that you have to replace the bill to find out information about the assaults on them with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that was rejected last Congress? It is simply astonishing, and Americans aren't going to tolerate it.

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