Opening Statement

Statement: John Conyers, Jr.
ACLU-Metro Detroit Forum
Modern Policing and the Community
November 20, 2014

     Tonight the nation anxiously awaits the decision of a small group of people on the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri.  Not since the days of the Rodney King beating has the ruling of 12 randomly chosen people carried such weight.

     Through the numerous leaks and press conferences of the past weeks, the community has been prepared to hear a result that it will not welcome.  I hope that in the coming days, we can all focus on the fact that the issues contributing to the Michael Brown shooting are more complex than the criminal indictment of a single police officer can begin to address.

     Justice for the Ferguson community will require our local, state and federal governments to take a comprehensive look at our overarching law enforcement philosophy.  Only a committed effort to address deep-seated discriminatory practices will produce the lasting changes necessary to bridge the divide between minority communities and the law enforcement agencies.

     While the focus of this discussion – Modern Policing and the Community – is timely, I should note that we have been at this work for a while at the Judiciary Committee.  On November 4, 2011, the Committee held a hearing entitled 21st Century Law Enforcement: How Smart Policing Targets Criminal Behavior.  That hearing explored the impact of racial profiling in the context of routine law enforcement encounters, with the aim of improving the current administrative and legislative proposals.  (The hearing featured the testimony of Chief Ron Davis, the current head of DOJ’s COPS Office.)

     It is difficult to escape the conclusion that racial profiling remains a divisive issue that strikes at the very foundation of our democracy.  The issues of race and reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct are so closely linked in law enforcement practices that profiling has an impact on virtually every area of criminal justice policy.  From the prison pipeline to the clemency and over-criminalization, race has a continuing impact on policy development in the criminal justice system.

     The tragic killing of Michael Brown & along with so many others & represents a continuing and dangerous cycle of disproportionate use of force against men of color.

     This tragedy and the events that have transpired since the shooting in Ferguson are reminiscent of the violent altercations that took place during the Civil Rights Movement.  For decades countless African Americans suffered injustice from unwarranted hostility and excessive force at the hands of their local police.  These practices served as a means of exercising unwarranted control over the community dating back to the days of the Fugitive Slave Act.  This tension between the African American community and law enforcement has remained an unfortunate theme in criminal justice reform.

     When you dig deeper into the issues facing communities with particularly poisonous police-community relations – like Ferguson – you generally find major themes of unemployment, low voter participation and educational inequality.  Ultimately, we need to ease racial tension by rebuilding our communities in a balanced way where everyone receives equal education, job opportunities, and a fair shot at the American Dream.

     The sad truth about these police shooting incidents is that their root causes are tied together with societal racism that brand young black men as predators with limited life prospects and police practices that reinforce these inequalities by treating them as potential perpetrators.

     Responding to this destructive cycle requires a broad-based approach that has been a part of my legislative agenda since entering Congress.  To address police practices, I passed federal statute 42 USC 14141 (as part of the 1994 Crime Bill) to allow the Department of Justice to sue and/or provide local police departments with the resources necessary to address dangerous and discriminatory practices that result in excessive force, racial profiling and other discriminatory practices.

     This enforcement authority has been used successfully across the nation to reduce the number of police-involved shootings and is being employed by DOJ to address the numerous issues with the Ferguson Police Department brought to light in the wake of the Brown shooting

     The federal enforcement authority of 42 USC 14141, along with my introduction of the End Racial Profiling Act, play a crucial role in breaking historically unjust practices of law enforcement. H.R. 2851 was introduced to directly address the issue of the illegal use of race by law enforcement agencies as part of broader the initiative criminal justice system.  Racial profiling is an issue that affects many people of color on a regular basis, and is a critical underpinning of many unjust practices directed towards minorities in different communities across the nation.

     Further, in the upcoming Congress, I will re-introduce the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act.  Drafted in response to outrages like the Los Angeles Rampart Division perjury scandal and tragedies such as the Amadou Diallo shooting, the legislation provides incentives for local police organizations to voluntarily adopt performance-based standards to ensure that incidents of misconduct will be minimized through appropriate management, training and oversight protocols and that if such incidents do occur, that they will be properly investigated.

     The bill also provides police officers – the vast majority of whom are decent people who are concerned about their communities – with the tools necessary to work with their communities and to enhance their professional growth and education.

     As we continue the discussion on criminal justice reform, we must also ensure that the development of a concrete plan of action to make local law enforcement agencies more accountable to their communities is a major part of that discussion.  Until we develop a concrete plan to address the root causes of police-community mistrust, incidents like the Michael Brown shooting, will be repeated in other communities across the nation.