President Joe Biden’s recent decision to sign a Republican-backed bill blocking criminal justice reforms backed by Washington, D.C.’s city council remains one of the worst moves of his presidency so far.
But it appears the president is already looking to do some course correction.
After Biden quietly signed the bill — House Joint Resolution 26 — into law in late March, I wrote for the ReidOut Blog that Republicans quickly set their sights beyond Washington, D.C.’s criminal code and started preparing to roll back other policing reforms the district passed back in 2020.
Biden opened Pandora’s box by signing off on a ploy to usurp power from a majority-Black city council.
Biden opened Pandora’s box by signing off on a ploy to usurp power from a majority-Black city council, backed by a largely Black city. It made him complicit in a broader push by Republicans to undermine Black voters. It flew in the face of Biden’s previous calls for Washington, D.C., statehood. And it fed Republicans’ seemingly insatiable appetite for illiberal legislation.
Sure enough, on Wednesday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee voted to approve a new bill overturning the district’s 2020 police reforms, known collectively as the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act. The package was passed by the D.C. Council following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
As The Washington Post reported in early March:
The bill [Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act] was first passed as temporary emergency legislation in July 2020, and many of its provisions have been part of police policy for nearly three years. The bill adds civilians to disciplinary review boards and gives voting rights on those boards to an independent agency that reviews police conduct. It limits police searching people or property based on getting consent, instead of a warrant, and restricts the use of less-than-lethal weapons during riots and the use of…
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