Today, U.S. Congressman Donald Norcross (NJ-01) voted in favor of H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, which passed through the House of Representatives. This transformative legislation reimagines the culture of policing in America with unprecedented reforms to build greater trust between law enforcement and our communities. 

“I stand with my community and the millions of Americans marching and demanding action following last summer’s senseless murder of George Floyd, along with real, meaningful change to the American policing culture and an end to systemic racial injustices,” said Congressman Norcross, a co-sponsor of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021. “I’m honored to stand with the Biden-Harris Administration in support of this legislation and thank the Congressional Black Caucus for their leadership in advancing a bill that delivers the reforms needed to address systemic racism and save lives, while ensuring bad actors are held accountable.”

Norcross continued, “In Camden City, we saw our police department rebuild itself from the ground up, embrace new strategies and technology like body cameras and become recognized as a national model for effective community policing. It was a collaborative effort at every level to reinvest in our community, and while transformative reforms are never easy, we in South Jersey know that by working together and always striving to improve, change is possible.”

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 will take numerous key steps to achieve structural change, including:

• Establishing a national standard for the operation of police departments;
• Mandating data collection on police encounters;
• Reprograming existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs;
• Streamlining federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigation;
• Banning chokeholds and carotid holds at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning chokeholds
• Banning no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level;
• Ending racial, religious and discriminatory profiling;
• Enabling individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement;
• Creating a nationwide police misconduct registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave one agency, from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability; and
• Making it a crime for a federal law enforcement officer to engage in a sexual act with an individual who is under arrest, in detention or in custody.

More details on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act can be found here.

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Contact: Carrie Healey, Communications Director
carrie.healey@mail.house.gov