Cory Booker Demands Database Of Officers Fired For Cause So 'They Never Put People In Danger Again'
During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) lamented the death of Sonya Massey, and demanded transparency and accountability for officers fired with just cause to prevent repeat offenses.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Madam President, I rise today with a lot of hurt and anguish.
00:10I start with these words, please don't hurt me.
00:15Please don't hurt me.
00:19Those were the first words that Sonia Massey said to the officers who knocked on her door
00:27on July 6th.
00:30She had called 911 for help.
00:35She dialed those digits out of distress.
00:40She thought there might have been a possible intruder at her home.
00:47Two officers responded.
00:51They were supposed to help.
00:55Less than five minutes later, she was dead with a bullet to the head.
01:03The officer who killed her stopped the other officer at the scene from rushing forward
01:12to render aid by saying these words, nah, that's a headshot, dude.
01:22Chuckled, she's dead.
01:27Sonia Massey's words, please don't hurt me, her words, please don't hurt me, four words,
01:35please don't hurt me.
01:39Sonia Massey was a mother and a daughter.
01:42She was a friend and a neighbor.
01:46She was young.
01:47She was just 36 years old.
01:51This African-American woman was in her home and needed help.
01:58She should be alive today.
02:04We all grow up being taught in school that when we need help, police will be there.
02:14We know and are taught that they are to protect and serve.
02:19All across America, there are extraordinary stories of officers who do just that.
02:27I know it intimately.
02:29Some of the bravest people I've ever encountered are men and women who serve as law enforcement
02:34officers.
02:37They do keep our community safe.
02:42I believe overwhelmingly, the overwhelming majority of American officers are not just
02:50good people, but they are good people who do great things in times of extraordinary
02:55distress.
02:59I have such incredible experience and forged incredibly close bonds with many police officers.
03:10As mayor of New Jersey's largest city, I actually oversaw a police department.
03:13I sat with officers for countless hours, hundreds of them, in patrol cars.
03:20I went out with them in patrols in some of our more challenged neighborhoods in late
03:25hours of the night.
03:26I watched them put themselves in harm's way.
03:29I watched them intervene in life and death situations.
03:34I know countless police officers who report to work day in and day out and carry out their
03:40oath to protect and serve faithfully and professionally, often going above and beyond the call of their
03:48duty.
03:53And yet I also know, in the small fraction of those officers, from some of the worst
04:00tragedies that this country has had to witness too often, I know that there are people that
04:10should not be officers, that have not merited those badges, should be kept away from the
04:16profession.
04:19I've seen some of it in attitude and conduct and behavior of people that view it as an
04:25us versus them.
04:26They don't see themselves as guardians of the community.
04:29They often see themselves as warriors.
04:31They don't know the neighborhoods that they're serving or respect them.
04:36There are some, a very narrow, small fraction of a percent of our officers who don't do
04:43their job, who are quick to jump to conclusions, who see often people of color or poor people
04:53or homeless people or those suffering from addiction as threats.
05:06We are a nation that must do better.
05:12There are people that somehow get on to our police departments in America that are unfit
05:18to serve.
05:20The officer that killed Sonia Massey should never have had a badge and a gun.
05:28While we still do not know all the details, here's what we do know.
05:31We know that he had worked for six different police departments in less than four years.
05:38He was discharged from the Army for, quote, serious misconduct, unquote.
05:45He had pleaded guilty to two charges of driving under the influence.
05:49He also failed to obey a command while working for another sheriff's office in Illinois and
05:57was told that he needed high-stress decision-making classes.
06:02Unfortunately, this officer is not the only one who's managed to go from department to
06:09department escaping scrutiny and accountability.
06:13This is because in the United States of America, we have no real system to keep bad officers
06:21from simply jumping over to the next town if they're fired.
06:25Think about this.
06:27So many of our local communities have police departments.
06:31They have people that apply for those jobs.
06:35And there is no national system or database that they can check to see if that officer
06:42came from a different state or a different city and was bounced out of their job for misconduct.
06:52In one of the most important roles in American society, there is often the difference between
07:01life and death, where you have the power and the capacity to fire weapons, where you have
07:09to operate and act under high-stress situations.
07:15We have no national way, no database that departments can check to see if the officer
07:21they're hiring has shown in other jurisdictions behavior and conduct unbecoming of an officer.
07:33Sonia Massey should not be dead.
07:36This could have been prevented.
07:39We have known this is a problem in our country because of past tragedies.
07:46This November will be a 10-year anniversary of a little boy's death.
07:55His name was Tamir Rice.
07:57Tamir was 12 years old, doing something that I did in my childhood, that I imagine lots
08:05of kids have done in their childhoods, play with toy guns.
08:10A 12-year-old was playing when an officer drove up to him, jumped out of the car, and
08:20shot him within three seconds of leaving his vehicle.
08:27I talked to other police officers 10 years ago when this happened, and they bemoan the
08:32fact that that child died.
08:36They talked about how no well-trained officer should ever let that happen, that good police
08:44officers would have never made that fatal mistake.
08:50But this was not a good police officer.
08:52This officer had been fired from his previous police job.
09:01He'd been deemed unfit for his duty in another jurisdiction, and then left that jurisdiction
09:09and applied for a job.
09:10Was there a database in our nation that that department could have checked to see if this
09:17officer was fired for just cause in another jurisdiction?
09:22No.
09:24This was a decade ago.
09:29This was a little boy.
09:33But here I am, talking about this problem, and the death of another American, and unnecessary
09:45murder of another American, a preventable murder of another American, by someone who
09:55should have never been hired by a police department.
10:01I appreciate that President Biden has taken steps to correct this issue.
10:05I appreciate that under his administration, in America, we established a police officer
10:10accountability database to try to track bad officers and make sure they're never hired
10:16again, so that they never put people in danger again.
10:22But right now, departments aren't required to report these officers into that database.
10:30They're not required to check that database before hiring an officer.
10:36This is the change that's needed.
10:40It reflects best practices.
10:43It reflects what police leadership, police professionals, and others have said we should
10:48have in America.
10:51This is not some effort to federalize police departments.
10:57It's simply about keeping the public safe and officers safe.
11:04It's about doing things that deepen the trust and the faith in those who are sworn to protect us.
11:11We have rules and laws for doctors.
11:16Rules and laws for lawyers.
11:19Rules and laws for manufacturers.
11:22Rules and laws for the energy sector.
11:25Rules and laws even for the media sector.
11:31How is it that we can't demand that every police department have to check a database
11:37to make sure that the person they're hiring, or thinking of hiring, doesn't have something
11:42in their background that puts the community they serve in danger?
11:47This is not too much to ask.
11:49This is common sense.
11:53Every police chief that I have ever talked to does not want to hire an officer that has
12:02been fired for misconduct or conduct unbecoming an officer from another jurisdiction.
12:09It's just common sense.
12:13We should not resist the kind of changes in this body that can make sure that the deaths
12:20of Tamir Rice or Sonia Massey do not happen.
12:26It's change that's overdue.
12:30When George Floyd was murdered four years ago, our country had a reckoning.
12:37So many people from every end of the political and ideological spectrum acknowledged that
12:42we could make sure that we could improve police accountability.
12:48We heard this from every sector.
12:52People came out in every state demanding that we take common sense measures to improve one
13:01of the most important jobs we've had.
13:03I sat with police leaders who talked about steps we could take, common sense, to improve
13:08the profession, to create higher standards that our officers could meet because they
13:13want to.
13:17But here we stand again on the Senate floor talking about another death that could have
13:24been prevented by a common sense measure.
13:31I worry about this reality that we still live in a nation where parents teach their children,
13:38often young African-American children, survival techniques about police encounters, have a
13:50conversation with them that shouldn't necessarily be had to have, but when you have example
13:55after example, like with Sonia Massey, who herself evidenced fear when the police came
14:01to her house, a 12-year-old boy shot with a toy gun, a woman afraid when she calls the
14:15police.
14:19I've been fighting for greater police accountability my entire time in the Senate.
14:26And I stand with others who have done the same.
14:32One of those people is Representative Sheila Jackson Lee.
14:37Today we mourn her loss.
14:39She passed on July 19th.
14:43With her passing came an extraordinary, fierce leader in Congress.
14:48In the nearly three decades that she spent in Congress representing the people of District
14:5318 of Texas, she fought not only for her constituents, but for Americans across the country.
14:59She was the daughter of Jamaican immigrants.
15:02Ms. Jackson Lee was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950.
15:07She went on to graduate with a degree in political science from Yale University and a law degree
15:13from the University of Virginia.
15:15This was not a thing that many black women at the time did.
15:21But she broke down barriers of race and gender that kept so many like her from these elite
15:27institutions.
15:27She went on to become a municipal judge before she was elected to the United States House
15:33of Representatives in 1994.
15:38One of the very last bills Ms. Jackson Lee introduced was the George Floyd Justice in
15:43Policing Act.
15:46She had not stopped fighting for what she believed was right to raise standards of accountability,
15:53to increase transparency, to create higher standards of professional conduct.
16:02I received a voice message from Sheila Jackson Lee just days before her death.
16:09I could hear in her voice the illness that was taking over her body.
16:15I could hear her voice shaking, but still just as strong as defiant.
16:20And one of the last things she said to me in that voice message days before she died
16:27was calling on me to not give up, to press forward with the George Floyd Justice in Policing
16:33Act.
16:35I think about that.
16:36I played this message over and over on my phone that the last thing she said to me was
16:43about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
16:48Then one of her last communications with her colleagues, one of her last calls to a United
16:52States senator days before her death was about police accountability, about police transparency,
16:59about raising professional standards.
17:02I know she would have condemned the death of Sonia Massey.
17:05I know she would have stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and demanded
17:10change.
17:10She would have said that her death would not be in vain, and she would have said that
17:15we need to create a mandatory database that has to be checked before you hire officers
17:22in the United States of America.
17:24She would have demanded that the principles and pillars of the George Floyd Justice in
17:29Policing Act be put into place.
17:32So I will heed her call.
17:34In the coming days, I'll reintroduce the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act here
17:39in the Senate with my colleagues to bring about that accountability, to bring about
17:44that transparency, to raise those standards of professionalism.
17:51I will work to make sure there is not a day again in America where people unnecessarily
17:58die, where when people call the police, they can be confident that they'll be protected,
18:04not shot dead.
18:08Where the most important profession perhaps in our nation, those who every day get up
18:14and go to bed with this firm commitment to protect us, where there are thousands of officers
18:21every single day do not have their profession besmirched by that narrow few who violate
18:29our values, who abuse their position and commit crimes like the one that killed Miss
18:39Massey.
18:40There's an old proverb from the Old Testament that says, do not withhold good from those
18:48to whom it is due when it is in your power to act.
18:52It is within our power to act.
18:55It is our duty to act, to do the common sense things that could prevent the deaths of people
19:03like Tamir Rice and Sonia Massey.
19:08It's an oath we take in this body.
19:13It is the call of our country first and foremost to defend our citizens.
19:19These tragedies must stop.
19:21These unnecessary deaths must stop.
19:24We must rise in this moment to be instruments of justice, to make sure that the oath we
19:32swear is more true and more real, that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all.
19:40Thank you, Mr. President, Madam President.