Police must be limited further than through policy

Editorial:

During the height of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as images and discourse were being rapidly exchanged around the murder of George Floyd and a majority of people were watching calls for police reform take place in unprecedented numbers thanks to social media, cities promised to pass policies reforming the historical power of police. Three years later, the issue of police brutality persists. The Olympian looked at the impacts and changes–or lack thereof–of policy interventions, in the wake of Tyre Nichols’ murder.

For example, a federal policy that didn’t pass is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aimed to ban asphyxiation and excessive use of force as well as limit how hard it is to convict police. It’s passed in the House of Representatives twice, but not the Senate. After Tyre Nichols’ murder, there is a new addition to the bill; the Tyre Nichols Duty to Intervene, which outlines “officers’ responsibility to act when they witness misconduct.”

In 2019, there were 219 fatal police encounters in California, the same year that California passed one of the biggest police reform packages; AB-392: The California deadly force and clarifying that only “objectively reasonable force” is permitted. In 2022 in California, 139 people were killed in police encounters.

Nationwide, 1,192 people were killed by police in 2022–the highest on record since 2013. Only in nine cases were the begin with non-violent offenses or no suspected crime, “109 people were killed after police responded to reports of someone behaving erratically or having a mental health crisis.” Black people are over three times more likely to be killed by police than white people according to the Brennan Center for Justice.