The JUSTICE Act would put in place commonsense steps to bring about police reform and rebuild lost trust between communities of color and law enforcement. It would incentivize state & local governments to ban chokeholds & increase reporting of use of force incidents, no-knock warrants, and disciplinary actions against police officers to increase transparency. It would also fund de-escalation training programs, make lynching a federal hate crime.
This bill doesn’t go far enough in banning chokeholds and the use of no-knock search warrants by federal law enforcement. It also doesn’t make any reforms to the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields police officers from liability for abuses unless there’s a clear violation of civil rights. Alternatively, law enforcement agencies should be defunded in their entirety, rather than reformed and provided with additional funding to make changes.