What the GOP Senate's police reform bill does — and doesn't — include

Tim Scott and Mitch McConnell. — (Image credit: OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Image)

Republican senators, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), unveiled the party's police reform bill Wednesday in response to nationwide protests against police brutality.

The package includes measures such as encouraging departments to severely restrict tactics like chokeholds by withholding federal grants to localities that don't comply with the policies. While this doesn't outlaw chokeholds, Scott said it's a de facto ban since the Senate believes departments won't wish to forego federal aid.

No-knock warrants, which the officer who killed Breonna Taylor utilized, also aren't banned in the bill, though the door was left open. As things stand, Scott said, there's no data on the issue, so putting an end to the practice isn't viable. Indeed, data collection is a major tenet of the bill — it notes "there is no official system for tracking police shootings" or other use-of-force incidents that result in death or serious injury. So the bill is requiring states and local governments to collect relevant data annually and provide it to the FBI National Use-of-Force Data Collection, which will then make the data publicly available. If state and local governments don't meet the request, they'll face funding penalties.

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Under the bill, the Justice Department would develop and provide training on alternative de-escalation methods for officers, and lynching would become a federal hate crime. As expected, the policy does not contain anything about ending qualified immunity for officers, which the White House reportedly considers a non-starter.

Scott and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are trying to push the bill quickly, though Democrats have already expressed concerns. Read a full summary of the bill here.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.