Senate Republicans reveal police reform bill that breaks with Democrats on key issues

Senate Republicans on Wednesday unveiled their bill to reform the police, the latest effort by lawmakers to overhaul U.S. law enforcement in the face of unrelenting pressure from activists in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Here’s some of what the Republicans’ bill would do:

Incentivize law enforcement agencies to ban the use of chokeholds by tying funding to whether departments have prohibited the practice “except when deadly force is authorized”;
Ramp up data collection efforts to track when an officer’s use of force results in death or serious harm;
Provide federal money for additional training on alternatives to the use of force;
Include language recognizing the history of lynching in the United States;
Strengthen penalties for falsifying police reports;
Require law enforcement agencies to send the attorney general reports on no-knock warrants;
Create a commission to study issues that affect Black men and boys
The bill comes a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would incentivize police departments to update their standards and practices and strengthen efforts to track officer misconduct. The Senate Republicans’ offering in some ways hews closer to the president’s action than the sweeping legislative proposal put forward last week by congressional Democrats.