Biden asked Congress to pass police reform bill, after report on police abuse in Minneapolis

President Joe Biden on Friday renewed his call for Congress to pass a police reform bill that would make it easier to control and eradicate police violence and abuse against racial minorities, hours after the Department of Justice (DOJ) will reveal in a report that the Minneapolis police have maintained practices of racism and police violence since long before the death of George Floyd.

Biden considered in a statement that are “alarming” the conclusions of the investigation carried out independently by the Department of Justice to the police and the city of Minnesota in Minneapolis, after the death of the African-American George Floyd, suffocated by a white police officer who put his knee on the victim's neck, in 2020.

The Department of Justice has concluded, in a report filed today, that this homicide was not an isolated case and that the Minneapolis police had been dominated for years by excessive use of force and discrimination against racial minorities, patterns that led to Floyd's death.

That report, Biden said in his statement, shows that it is “urgent” that Congress pass legislation that would end racial profiling and violence in America's police forces and allow the public to once again trust every police department in the country.

Specifically, the president asked Congress to pass a bill named after George Floyd that aims to combat racism within the police.

“I have a simple message For Congress: Send the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to my desk and I'll sign it. I will continue to do everything in my power to fight for police accountability in Congress”.

Despite Biden's pleas,

After the wave of protests that followed Floyd's death, Republicans and Democrats negotiated for months last year to try to pass a reform, called for police justice in 2021, but those negotiations failed.

One of the most difficult points in the negotiations was the idea of ​​“legal immunity,” which makes it more difficult for victims to file lawsuits against officers accused of using force disproportionately.

Democrats want to end that immunity for cops, but Republicans want to keep it.

Also, if the agreement was already difficult last year, when the Democrats had a majority in both houses of Congress, now it is even more complicated because control of the Legislature has been divided: Republicans dominate the House and the Democrats hold a majority in the Senate, although they do not have enough seats to pass legislation alone.

Human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, have repeatedly accused police forces of using violence disproportionately against African Americans.

In fact, almost a third of all people killed by police in the United States between 2013 and 2022 were African-Americans, despite being only 13% of the country's population, according to the organization Mapping Police Violence.