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Elizabeth Warren Unveils Bill To Hold Police Accountable
HuffPost
The bill would nearly triple funding for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division over 10 years.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would give federal and state officials more power to hold police departments accused of bad behavior to account.
The Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act, led by Warren and in the House by Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to launch investigations into police departments involved in civil rights violations if the Justice Department fails to act on them.
The bill would also task the Justice Department with looking beyond “traditional law enforcement mechanisms” when providing reforms to selective police departments such as mental health support, civilian oversight bodies, and community-based restorative justice programs, according to Warren’s office.
Warren had introduced a version of the bill in 2020. This newest version of the measure would also revitalize the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, granting an increase in funding to pursue civil rights investigations into police departments and other government offices accused of discriminatory practices.
It would increase funding for the civil rights division to $445 million per year over a 10-year period. (For scale, the 2023 budget for the division was $189.9 million.)