House Passes Resolution Overturning DC Policing Bill

The House passed a disapproval resolution on April 19 to block the District of Columbia’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.

The vote was 229-189. Fourteen Democrats joined all 215 Republicans in voting for the resolution.

The D.C. act, which is set to take effect on May 11 unless Congress and the president block it, would prohibit the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) and other local law enforcement personnel from using “neck restraints or any other technique that causes asphyxiation, presents an unnecessary danger to the public and constitutes excessive force.”

The act—which D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, vetoed in which the city council overrode the veto—also approves the use of police body camera footage and requires, with a couple of exceptions, the mayor to release such footage with the names of the officers behind the footage where “officers [were] directly involved in the officer-involved death or serious use of force.”

However, the mayor cannot release footage if the next of kin of an officer-involved death or “the individual against whom the serious use of force was used, or if the individual is a minor or unable to consent, the individual’s next of kin” does not agree to its release.

Additionally, the act authorizes District of Columbia Housing Authority Police Department (DCHAPD) members “to make arrests, carry a firearm, and perform other functions normally reserved to members of the Metropolitan Police Department.” It also allows personnel of D.C.’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) “to carry a firearm, make warrantless arrests for felony violations of the law, and serve as affiants for search warrants.” The law subjects DCHA and OIG to the same oversight and process that is used in dealing with complaints against MPD officers.

The act establishes a Police Complaints Board consisting of nine members, including a representative from one of D.C.’s eight wards and one at-large member. The members are appointed by the mayor and require confirmation by the D.C. Council, which has 90 days to act on the nomination. If there is no vote on the nominee within that timeframe, then the appointee is rejected. The act would strip the mayor’s power to appoint the board’s chairperson, giving it to the board. However, the mayor can remove a board member for cause.

The policing and justice reform act has been criticized by Republicans for being harsh on law enforcement.

“This Joint Resolution would disapprove of the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022 which was passed by the D.C. Council in defiance of very real safety concerns raised by law enforcement,” Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) told The Washington Post. “It’s time to say enough is enough and push back on the anti-police narrative, starting here in our nation’s capital.”

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who introduced the disapproval resolution, called D.C.’s pending law an “anti-police measure.”

However, D.C. congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton expressed objections to the GOP resolution.

“The legislative history and merits of D.C.’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022, which is the subject of this disapproval resolution, should be irrelevant, since there is never justification for Congress nullifying legislation enacted by D.C., but I would like to set the record straight,” she said on the House floor.

“D.C.’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022 would, among other things, make it easier to fire officers for misconduct; prohibit the hiring of officers with prior misconduct; require the release of the names and body-worn camera recordings of officers directly involved in an officer-involved death or serious use o