June 18, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 113 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S3094-S3095]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative 
session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Missouri.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, over the weekend we celebrated Flag Day, 
when we honor our country's flag as a symbol of unity. It is also a 
symbol of all of the struggles we have gone through as a nation and the 
struggles ahead of us.
  Harry Truman, whose desk--one of his desks used on the Senate floor--
is right here in front of me, once said that Flag Day is also a chance 
for us to consider what we want the flag to stand for. So I think it is 
appropriate that we are considering the best way to make sure that the 
flag stands for all we want it to stand for--and for all of us.
  Senator Tim Scott has introduced the JUSTICE Act, which would bring 
us closer to that idea. I was glad to be a cosponsor of the bill. I 
think this bill has the potential to make a real difference in how we 
deal with the important and difficult issue of police reform and making 
sure that our communities are both safe and secure.
  You know, you can be safe in the sense that you are not in danger, 
but people also need to feel secure, meaning they have confidence that 
they will remain safe and that they will be treated fairly while they 
are safe.
  We need to be sure that all of the people of our country believe that 
justice can be blind and that it can be dispensed without fear or 
favor.
  Policing, by its very nature, is mostly a local function. There are 
around 18,000 police departments across the country. Most of the 
reforms can be made at the local level or the State level.
  There are different ways that police systems are structured around 
the country. There are different levels of law enforcement and how they 
relate to each other, and I don't think we are going to do anything 
effectively in the Congress to impact that, but I think there are some 
things we can do both in Congress and the administration. I think 
Senator Scott has done a really good job finding what many of those 
things are and how to make them happen with bipartisan support.
  There is a lot in this bill that simply increases transparency and 
accountability: more reporting so that the Justice Department has an 
idea of areas where problems seem to arise more frequently and maybe 
shouldn't; an area of reporting so that a troublesome officer has all 
of those troubles reported if they have had problems with issues of 
fairness or constitutional protection; and if that officer is applying 
at another law enforcement agency, that information should be readily 
available.
  There are two important ways to give people a sense of security. We 
do that by recognizing that the majority of police in this country are 
only not a problem, but they do an incredibly hard job, and they do it 
in an incredible way. It is a job that we have to have. It has to be 
conscientiously, professionally, and courageously done, and law 
enforcement officers all over America do it. They get up and do a hard 
job every day. They run to danger when others run away. It is a hard 
job.
  Frankly, I think the hardest job in America might be the spouse of a 
law enforcement officer. Law enforcement officers generally have a 
sense--there are occasions when this isn't the case--but generally have 
a sense of whether they are in imminent danger or not. The person who 
cares about them, the person who loves them, wonders all day: What, at 
this exact moment, is that individual facing, and are they safe?
  The problem in policing is there are very few officers and maybe even 
fewer numbers of police departments where there is a systemic problem. 
I think if there is a systemic problem in a department, it is hard for 
that department to solve that problem. Some of Senator Scott's 
legislation helps create the tools they might need to get that done or 
the tools that we might need, as outside helpers, to say: Here is a 
department that somebody needs to look at.
  His legislation can assure us that for the small group of people in 
law enforcement who aren't conducting themselves in the way that 
everybody else in law enforcement does, there is transparency and there 
is reporting. Things can't be just swept under the rug, and an officer 
can't go from one department to another without the new department 
knowing exactly what they are getting.
  This legislation sets up more funding to make sure that body cameras 
are widely available and have to be used if you have them. I think 
there has been plenty of evidence since 2014, when we had the beginning 
of the modern body-camera movement, that if you have those cameras on 
your body and you

[[Page S3095]]

have them turned on, the escalation of violence, for whatever reason, 
happens much less frequently. The police officer knows that camera is 
on, and the person they are dealing with knows that camera is on, and 
it seems to make a difference.
  Reporting when there are deaths or serious injuries due to the use of 
force--and those are investigated, I believe, in every department in 
America, but there is no reason they shouldn't also be reported to see 
if there is a pattern that involves either an individual or a pattern 
that involves a department that needs to be looked at.
  Sharing records, as I said before, is critically important so that 
one bad officer doesn't get passed from one department to another.
  There are things in the realm of training where this legislation 
helps officers get training on tactics to deescalate a situation when 
it gets out of control. Officers want this kind of training. Officers 
want the kind of training that makes it easier for them to understand 
that if they are in a situation where mental health is the problem or 
opioid addiction is the problem or drug addiction is the problem, are 
they dealing with a real criminal here or are they dealing with 
somebody who has gotten themselves in a situation in which they need to 
figure out how to get them in a different and better place
  While we need to move quickly to take up this legislation, I think 
there are some areas where the administration can act and is acting, 
based on announcements that were made this week and things that weren't 
announced this week.
  I talked to Attorney General Barr a couple of weeks ago as these 
incidents began to become more clear in the sense of problems that 
could be within entire police departments and encouraged him to restore 
more of the pattern and practice reviews that were part of what the 
Justice Department used for about a decade. They were in place until 
November of 2018. I think they need to be back in place.
  We know from past usage that they don't have to be used on any 
situation or every situation, but they can be used. We have seen them 
used in my State in Ferguson, MO, in surrounding St. Louis County, 
which had a much bigger department and asked for a voluntary review, 
and the city of St. Louis, which has a big police department but not as 
big as St. Louis County in 2014 and 2017. Whether that review was 
voluntary or even if it involved a consent decree, I think that the 
case can be made that things happened in those three departments that 
might not have happened otherwise.
  The Attorney General and I both agreed that if you don't have a tool 
in the toolbox, you can't use it. It is important to see what you need 
to do to put every tool in the toolbox, even if it is a tool that you 
have previously taken out and said: Well, maybe we don't need that any 
longer. If you don't need it, you don't have to use it. But you are 
certainly not going to be able to use it if you don't have it.
  President Trump took some additional steps that I was supportive of 
and talked about earlier this week when the Presiding Officer and I 
were at our leadership stakeout: officers with better tools to deal 
with mental health, homelessness, addiction issues.
  Missouri is one of the eight Excellence in Mental Health States. This 
is legislation--bipartisan legislation--that I have worked on for 
several years with Senator Stabenow from Michigan. It allows law 
enforcement to connect people with the help they need and wind up 
having them someplace more appropriate than either jail or court.
  In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services, in monitoring 
this program, says that it has led to a 60-percent decrease in jail 
time. Part of that is, a lot of people don't wind up going to jail 
because it makes it more possible for people in many of the departments 
in my State and in others to have a constant contact with that mental 
health professional. Maybe it is on the iPad that they are carrying 
with them, where they can get that 24/7 connection with a healthcare 
professional. It certainly benefits from the training that many 
Missouri officers have had now in crisis intervention.
  In Kansas City, in St. Louis County, in St. Louis city, in 
Springfield, I have ridden with officers and talked to officers and 
watched how this happens, and that builds confidence. Senator Scott's 
bill builds the same kind of confidence.
  I have heard some of our friends on the other side say: Well, I am 
for 80 percent of what is in that bill. No, they don't even say that. 
They say: I am for 80 percent of the bill. Now, what is the difference? 
Being for 80 percent of the bill means that there are things in it you 
don't want, but they also say more frequently: No, that bill has 80 
percent of what I want in it already.
  Well, let me remind our friends how you make a law. Under the 
Constitution, the House passes a bill, and maybe you like that better. 
The Senate passes a bill, and maybe the Senate has 80 percent of what 
you would like to see in the final bill in Senate bill, and then you go 
to conference. It was taught in every civic school book that every 
Member of the Senate studied, and we don't do it much anymore.
  You can't get to conference unless there is a Senate product. No 
matter how much you love the House bill if you are a Member of the 
Senate, you don't get to weigh in on the House bill unless you have a 
Senate bill that allows you to go to that conference.
  This would be the perfect time when Members of the Senate say--and 
you and I should be listening carefully over the next few days when 
they say ``80 percent of what I want is in that bill or 85 percent of 
what I want is in that bill,'' particularly, if they--usually, they are 
not saying ``There is nothing in the bill I don't want; it just doesn't 
have everything I do want.'' Well, if 80 percent of what you want is in 
the bill and the House passes another bill that you like better, maybe 
you come out of that conference with 90 percent of what you want. If a 
solution that gets you 90 percent of what you want or 80 percent of 
what you want is the alternative to zero percent of what you want, if 
you want to be a legislator, you have to figure out that that is a 
better path for you to take than the zero-percent path.
  It would be tragic next week if the result of the House deliberation 
and, this month, if the result of the Senate deliberation is that there 
is no further discussion because everybody has decided that if it 
wasn't everything they wanted, they didn't want to have the process 
that we used to call--and the Constitution calls and civic books call--
the legislative process.
  These are not the first struggles we have faced together as a nation. 
We have come a long way. We still have a long way to go.
  Remember, the Constitution doesn't even promise a perfect Union. It 
promises a more perfect Union. You get to a more perfect Union one step 
at a time, not all at once. My guess is, we will always be on the 
journey toward a more perfect Union.
  Senator Scott has given us an opportunity to take some of the 
important steps on that journey and make the Union more perfect than it 
is right now.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.

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