South Carolina GOP senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday “America’s not a racist country,” as his neighboring state of North Carolina braces for Monday’s possible release of body cam footage of another fatal police shooting of a Black man.
“Our systems are not racist,” Graham told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “We just elected a two-term African American president … the vice president is of African American, Indian descent.”
Graham made the comments just days before President Joe Biden is set to deliver his first message to Congress on Wednesday. Graham’s South Carolina senator colleague, Tim Scott, will deliver the GOP response.
On Monday, police are expected to release body cam footage in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown, a North Carolina Black man who was shot and killed by police last week while being served a warrant. Elizabeth City, N.C., mayor Bettie Park has declared a state of emergency in her city ahead of the possible release.
“Reform the police yes, call them all racists no,” Graham said. “Within every society you have bad actors.”
Graham also described last week’s guilty verdicts against Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death, as a “just result.” But he also criticized what he called an “attack on policing.”
“The Chauvin trial was a just result,” Graham said. “What’s happening in Ohio, where the police officer had to use deadly force to prevent a young girl from being stabbed to death, is a different situation in my view. So this attack on police and policing -- reform the police, yes, call them all racist, no.”
“America is a work in progress,” he added.
Congress is ready to try again to change the nation’s policing laws, as once-stalled legislation on Capitol Hill is now closer than ever to consensus, lawmakers of both parties said after last week’s verdict, when Chauvin was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death. Negotiations are narrowing on a compromise for a sweeping overhaul, though passage remains uncertain.
“We know that this bill must be done, it must be enacted into law,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Pelosi said Democrats, with lead negotiator Rep. Karen Bass of California, are open to changes to “get it done” but that the final bill must be “a meaningful” version.
Negotiations could wrap up within two weeks, Scott said. Bass set a goal of passage by May 25, one year since Floyd’s death.
Biden is urging Congress to plunge back into policing legislation. “We can’t stop here,” he said after the verdict.
In private, Scott briefed key Republican senators on Wednesday, updating his colleagues on quiet negotiations that have been underway with Democrats for nearly two months.
Republican leaders, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have said little publicly of the Chauvin verdict, but McConnell has tapped Scott to continue leading the effort in talks with Democrats.
Congress struggled with a police overhaul bill last summer in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, but the legislation went nowhere after Democrats and Republicans could not agree to a compromise package.
The House, led by Democrats, has now twice approved a sweeping overhaul, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, that would be the most substantial federally ordered changes to policing in a generation.
The bill would allow police officers to be sued and damages awarded for violating people’s constitutional rights, limiting “qualified immunity” protections now in place for law enforcement.
The legislation would ban the use of chokeholds and would create a national databases of police misconduct in an effort to prevent “bad apple” officers from being hired by other departments.
A Republican bill from Scott does not go as far as the House-passed measure. It was blocked last year by Senate Democrats, a fact that Republicans are emphasizing.
The GOP’s Justice Act would step up compliance by law enforcement in submitting use-of-force reports to a national database. It also would require compliance reports for no-knock warrants, like the kind officers used to enter the residence when Breonna Taylor was killed in Kentucky.
The Democratic and Republican bills do share some provisions, including a measure making lynching a federal hate crime.
Talks in recent weeks have centered on one of the main differences, the limits on the public’s ability to sue law enforcement officers under “qualified immunity.” One alternative being discussed would allow police departments, rather than individual officers, to be held liable.
“I think that is a logical step forward,” said Scott, putting more of the burden on the department rather than the officer.
Senior administration leaders are consulting with members of Congress, as is the president, who has held separate Oval Office meetings with lawmakers, including a lengthy two-hour session last week with the influential Congressional Black Caucus. Aides are also working with civil rights organizations and other outside groups to pressure Congress to act.
And on Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice is opening a sweeping investigation into Minneapolis policing. It will examine whether there is a “pattern or practice” of unlawful or unconstitutional actions and could result in changes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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