For now, Democrats in the House and Senate are deadlocked over policing reform.
The Senate version of policing reform isn't as bold as the House version. It allows police to use chokeholds, and it allows sheriffs to acquire armored vehicles from the military. For now, each side is digging in and insisting their way is the right way.
Here’s Delegate Marcus Simon during a recent committee meeting. “I would hope that it would be the pleasure of the committee to adopt the substitute now so that we can keep that conversation going and hopefully by the time these things reach the floor, we will be able to work out all our differences on both sides and move forward with some consensus on these things.”
The Senate version has something that the House version doesn’t have, though: approval from law enforcement interest groups representing police officers and sheriffs.
“They made the commitments. They cannot back off from those commitments with the police chiefs and the sheriffs,” says former Republican Delegate David Ramadan. He's now with the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “Here’s where a Dick Saslaw would walk in and say ‘You want the whole loaf of bread? Ain’t getting it. I’ve got the chiefs. Here’s what you’re going to get. Take it or leave it.”
Conference committees between the House and Senate are usually driven by a deadline. Lawmakers need to come to some kind of resolution before a date certain so they can head out of town.
But because they could not come to an agreement on a procedural resolution, there’s no deadline. That means each side could try to wait the other side out indefinitely.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
