'End Police Brutality, Improve Transparency': Rep. Schneider

DEERFIELD, IL. — Citing a need to "hold police officers accountable" and "end police brutality," U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Deerfield) is backing major police reform legislation introduced Monday, following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Backed by the Congressional Black Caucus and Judiciary Committee, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 is meant to improve law enforcement accountability, transparency, and training to address decades of systemic racism and excessive policing, according to a press release from Schneider's office.

"In communities across the country, Americans have marched demanding justice for the victims of police brutality and racial profiling," Schneider said in the release. "George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others should be alive today, and their deaths expose a system of law enforcement in dire need of reform."

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According to Schneider's office, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020:

• Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.

• Bans chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants at the federal level and limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.

• Mandate the use of dashboard cameras and body cameras for federal offices and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.

• Establishes a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave on agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.

• Amends federal criminal statute from "willfulness" to a "recklessness" standard to successfully identify and prosecute police misconduct.

• Reforms qualified immunity so that individuals are not barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights.

• Establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just and equitable public safety approaches.

• Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices and requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Task force on 21st Century policing.

• Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.

• Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.

• Establishes a Department of Justice task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.

Schneider represents the 10th Congressional District of Illinois, which includes all or parts of: Beach Park, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, Fox Lake, Glencoe, Grayslake, Highland Park, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Lake Villa, Lindenhurst, Libertyville, Morton Grove, Mundelein, North Chicago, Northbrook, Prospect Heights, Round Lake, Round Lake Beach, Vernon Hills, Waukegan, Wheeling and Zion.

"I am proud to join my colleagues today in support of the Justice in Policing Act to hold officers accountable, end police brutality, and improve transparency," Schneider said. "Led by the Congressional Black Caucus, this package of reforms is long overdue to address the systemic racism and excessive policing targeting Black Americans and other communities of color, and I am proud to add my voice and my vote to this effort.”

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