Biden White House weighs executive orders for police reform amid Floyd bill

EXCLUSIVE: High-ranking sources tell theGrio that presidential executive orders were the topic of conversation in a previously unknown meeting between the Biden team, civil rights lawyers and families of slain Black Americans

The White House is trying to pick up the broken pieces of the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, which failed in negotiations on Capitol Hill, by exploring ways President Joe Biden can mend together some type of police reform through presidential executive orders.

TheGrio has exclusively learned that White House officials this week, including senior-level Black members of the administration Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice and the head of public engagement Cedric Richmond, met with civil rights attorneys and families of Black men and women killed by police. Those represented on the call were the families of George Floyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Ronald Green and Ahmaud Aubrey.

Knowledge of this meeting was previously unknown.

There will be separate meetings with civil rights leaders on the issue but the White House wanted to meet first with families.

Biden officials are working to address police reform through executive orders as negotiations caved on the Hill between Democrats Congresswoman Karen Bass and Senator Cory Booker and Republican Senator Tim Scott.

As a point of reference, Sen. Scott felt the sides were too far apart on policing with the issue of qualified immunity being one of the major sticking points of the negotiations. President Biden is also on record saying he did not believe reform of qualified immunity, which provides legal protection for police, should be removed.

During an interview last month, Scott also said he walked away from the negotiating table because, from his view, language in the bill that would withhold federal dollars from police departments that do not comply with proposed reforms is “defunding the police.”

The question of Scott being an honest broker on behalf of Republicans to come up with a bipartisan police reform bill has been a cloud over the negotiations as his claim that “America is not racist” in his Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s joint address to Congress earlier this year have loomed negatively over the negotiations considering the role race has played in the national conversation and reality about policing in America.

Story continues

Sources near the police reform conversation with the White House this week tell theGrio that the administration can escalate prosecutions for bad actors at police departments based on current laws already on the books.

Kurt Schmoke, attorney and president of the University of Baltimore, tells…