Senate Democrats and Republicans clash over police reform bill vote
Senate Democrats have signaled they will block a Republican police reform bill that critics say offers a “woefully inadequate response” to racial disparities in American policing practices. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and fellow Democratic senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, sent a letter to the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday urging him not to hold a key procedural vote this week on the Republican senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill.“This is a serious challenge requiring serious solutions,” the three senators’ letter says. “Bringing the Justice Act to the floor of the Senate is a woefully inadequate response, and we urge you to bring meaningful legislation to the floor for a vote.“This bill is not salvageable and we need bipartisan talks to get to a constructive starting point,” they added.“We don’t need to study the problem of police misconduct and violence, we need to solve it,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. The Democratic opposition is being backed by the country’s leading civil rights organizations and the lawyer, Benjamin Crump, representing the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, two African Americans whose deaths in police interactions have sparked worldwide protests over racial bias in policing.“The Black community is tired of the lip service,” Crump said in a statement. Republicans need seven of their Democratic colleagues to support opening debate on the Scott bill, so the Democrats have the ability to block the legislation if they are unified in opposition to it.