WASHINGTON — A small group of U.S. Senate Republicans are seeking to draw attention to U.S. crime rates, saying they plan to introduce a bill that would direct more resources to state and local police departments as well as require the Government Accountability Office to study the amount of time it takes crime labs to process rape kits.
“We are offering solutions to combat this violent crime wave that is plaguing our nation and our cities,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn during a press conference on Wednesday.
Blackburn was joined by fellow Republican Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and John Kennedy of Louisiana. Grassley, Johnson and Kennedy are up for reelection in November’s midterm elections in which Republicans are seeking to make Democrats’ record on crime a major issue.
The yet-to-be released bill, Blackburn said, would create a grant program for local and state police departments to hire more officers and detectives to focus on violent crimes as well as increase resources for police departments to address drug crimes.
Funding for federal law enforcement as well as grants for state and local police departments are typically handled through Congress’ annual appropriations process, not one-off bills such as the one the Republicans detailed. And it was unclear whether the legislation the Republicans plan to introduce at some point would garner the bipartisan support needed to get past the chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, especially with little time left in the legislative session before lawmakers leave to campaign.
The most recent federal spending package, enacted in March with broad bipartisan support, appropriated $3.88 billion for grants from the U.S. Department of Justice to local and state law enforcement agencies, a 15 percent increase over the prior fiscal year’s bill, and $575 million for the Office on Violence Against Women grants, the highest funding level ever for that program.
The funding package also included $201 million for State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance and Community Oriented Policing Services, a program intended to improve relationships between police departments and the communities they serve. That represented a 31 percent boost in funding over the previous year’s level.
Crime details
The GOP senators on Wednesday, in pushing for their future bill, recounted graphic details from numerous crimes, including the names of victims, before chastising Democratic lawmakers for their approach to police funding and police accountability.
Hagerty called on President Joe Biden to take unilateral action to address crime throughout the country, suggesting he’d like the White House to do something akin to so-called Operation Legend during the Trump administration.
That effort sent law enforcement personnel from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Marshals Service to Kansas City, Mo., and several other cities during the summer of 2020 to address violent crime.
The initiative was hailed by then-President Donald Trump, who was in the final months of what would become a failed reelection campaign that led to a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump refused to accept his electoral loss.
Hagerty on Wednesday urged Biden, the sitting president, to follow Trump’s example on federal law enforcement operations.
“We’ll work on it through legislation, but the president has the ability to step up right now, to help us address this,” Hagerty said. “We’re calling on him to do that.”
Kennedy of Louisiana said he believed the pathway to reducing crime will be through hiring more police officers, “to stop the retirements among our police officers” and to improve police morale.
He did, however, say that violent police should be held accountable — an issue Democrats…
Read More: U.S. Senate Republicans pan Democrats on crime, say they’ll introduce their own bill