Senator Tammy Baldwin is backing a sweeping bill to overhaul how police departments are run in the United States.
Baldwin says too often police have to deal with issues that they’ve never been trained for.
“They often become mental health counselors, social workers, dealing with addiction issues that should be handled by other professionals and would result in greater community safety if we made those investments.”
Baldwin says having a public safety presence through policing shouldn’t change. “But I do think it’s healthy when we take more than a moment to look at what we’ve built and what might be better to promote safety in our communities.”
Among its many proposals, the bill will peel back qualified immunity laws that protect police from being sued, require more reporting on use of force by police departments, and create a federal registry of police officers who are fired from their jobs for misconduct.