Running Into a Brick Wall

Luke Pickrell responds to renewed support for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act after Sonya Massey's murder

Another person has been killed by the police. Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, was executed by Sangamon County Sheriff’s Officer Sean Grayson inside her house after reporting a suspected prowler. Bodycam footage shows Massey moving a pot of boiling water from her stove as instructed. In response, Grayson shouted that he would shoot Massey in her “fuckin’ face” — which he did. When one deputy went to get medical supplies, Grayson objected: “Nah, she’s done. You can go get it but that’s a headshot.” Massey’s former partner and father of one of her children said police initially told him that a neighbor had killed her and that at the hospital, police told nurses she had killed herself. It’s likely one of the deputies at the scene falsely told a dispatcher that Massey’s wounds were self-inflicted. Grayson has been fired and indicted on five counts, including three counts of first-degree murder.

According to Mapping Police Violence, 744 people have been killed by police in 2024, putting this year on track to become the deadliest one on record. The final count will likely be too low. Police agencies — all 18,000 of them — are required to report any use of lethal force. Still, a report by the Government Accountability Office revealed that at least 70 percent of states didn’t meet reporting requirements in 2021. In May, CBS News reported that county sheriff’s offices are three times more deadly than city police departments. The report documented “chronic misconduct in sheriff's offices and oversight failures that can enable abuses to go unchecked.” “Americans are needlessly dying and are being killed while in the custody of their own government," said Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Since 1994, the Department of Justice has only filed seven cases against sheriff's offices for civil rights violations.

Massey’s killing has renewed calls to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The bill is designed to “hold law enforcement accountable for misconduct in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.” It would set up a national registry of police misconduct, ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels, and overhaul qualified immunity. I’m not qualified to determine whether or not the bill contains the necessary provisions to accomplish its proclaimed task. However, as with gun legislation, I’m less interested in dissecting the content of a proposed law than pointing out how the Constitution makes passing laws immensely difficult regardless of popular opinion. While important, focusing on the content of a law ignores the critical point: we don’t live in a democracy.

No qualification is needed to understand the Constitution's undemocratic nature and how it has prevented (and will continue to prevent) the George Floyd Act from becoming law. The bill passed the Democratic Party-controlled House in 2020 and died in the Republican-controlled Senate. It was introduced again in 2021 by a Democratic-controlled House, passed, and then killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate after receiving less than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. At the time, Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat leading police overhaul efforts in the House, said, “We are still trying to transform policing in the United States” and that she was “confident that we will be able to have a bipartisan bill in the Senate that will reach President Biden’s desk.” No such luck. Not even a watered-down bill could get passed the Senate.

In May, Rep. Sheila Lee, a Texas Democratic who died last week, reintroduced the bill into the now Republican-controlled House. Govtrack.us, a common source for tracking legislation, gives the bill a one percent chance of getting out of committee and a zero percent chance of being enacted. Govtrack also notes that between 2021 and 2023, only eleven percent of bills passed committee, and only about two percent were enacted. Joe Biden called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Act in response to Massey’s killing, adding that “our fundamental commitment to justice is at stake.” He might as well have kept his mouth shut.

University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman, founder and director of the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, said that “[The killing] dramatizes the importance of passing national reforms, the kinds of reforms that could prevent incidents like this from continuing to happen.” He added, “If this isn’t the sort of thing that moves people to act, to seek to pass some common sense reforms, it’s difficult to know what will.”

Many common sense reforms could go a long way in tackling our country’s most pressing issues, including rampant climate change, unaffordable healthcare, gun deaths, and police killings. Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a democracy where common sense reforms can become law. Instead, we live in a constitutional republic that flagrantly violates the principle of one person, one equal vote through the malapportioned Senate, the gerrymandered House, the unelected and corrupt federal judiciary, the Electoral College, and the veto-wielding and prosecution-proof President. Gun legislation? Nope. Money for healthcare and education? Nice try. Changing the Supreme Court? Not a chance. Doing something about the police? Nuh-uh. More roadblocks, more vetos, more minoritarian checks. The Constitution blocks the way.