I am of course shocked that Congress blew the deadline to produce a Police Reform bill by the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. And despite brave words about “making progress” I suspect whatever is finally produced will fall well short of the basic changes needed to control routine abuses of police authority.

That said, Ben Crump, the attorney representing Floyd’s family and a half dozen other victims of panicked/racist cops, is clear-eyed about the best and most immediate solution. Says Crump, “My goal is to make it financially unsustainable for them to keep killing Black people, unjustifiably, as we continue to fight for these policy reforms to prevent the next George Floyd.”

If the $47 million that Minneapolis alone has paid out to victims of its thin blue line of protectors and servers isn’t enough to force the city and police administration to put a shock collar around the neck of its worst-trained and regularly violent employees, nothing Congress comes up with will have any great impact.

The great Randy Newman once sang, “It’s Money That Matters” and this being the USA, he was spot on. The twist within that idea of course is connecting these enormous ever-larger pay-outs to the bottom line of residents far more terrified of ransacked auto parts stores than black folks being murdered — in front of children — over a $20 bill.

Back to legislation: the fixes that would do the most to put the spook in your average gun-waving, f-bomb dropping former telemarketer/security guard-turned-cop remain boldly obvious.

1: End qualified immunity. Republicans and a few nervous Democrats are leery of this because they imagine a ceaseless tidal wave of law-suits against individal cops for anything a citizen doesn’t like about an interaction with police. Moreover, the fear of getting sued personally would put a serious chill on cop recruitment. (There are only so many well-heeled former telemarketers and mall cops pining for the ego boost from being handed a badge and a gun.) But this is another example of cops having little to fear if they actually obey both the law … and the spirit of the law. Namely, turn on the body cam, keep your cool and treat whoever you’re dealing with basic respect, regardless if they’re a nice suburban lady in her pajamas or a big, scary black guy who maybe might have passed a fake $20. Camera on? Case dismissed. No body cam footage? Waving a loaded gun and cursing in someone’s face? You’re on your own, dude.

2: Pre-textual traffic stops. Frankly, I’d think even cops would be happy red-lining this widely-accepted policy, which as practiced around the country is a tortured abuse of the Supreme Court’s Whren v United States decision from 1996. As it is commonly perverted, “broken tail lights”, and the most minor of traffic violations (failure to signal, two miles over the speed limit) are sufficient basis for a cop to ignore any semblance of probable cause, hit the lights and get down to what they’re really up to, namely “stopping and frisking” for something that looks good on the squad room wall and gins up some easy revenue for their municipality. Deep red states have made thousands of such stops under the guise of “interdicting smugglers” from “drug states”. (I.e. more liberal places that conservative politicians want to show they won’t tolerate.) These stops — flagrantly bogus to any reasonable adult — mean a couple thousand dollars worth of court costs for someone caught with CBD oil or a couple gummies in their medicine bag. It’s one thing if the stopped and frisked are white folks. But as we’ve seen over and over … and over and over again … a whole different animal when the gung-ho cop gets in the grill of anyone whose grandparents didn’t come from northern Europe. Crude, over-aggressive police work mixed with naked pretense for the stop itself not only seriously undermines the credibility of police authority but has a habit of going very bad way, way too often.

But all this is pretty well lost in the usual partisan gamesmanship. No Republican is going to make a big show of supporting anything that might be construed as getting “soft on crime” (i.e. crimes committed on streets by black folks). Hell, unless I missed it, there wasn’t a Republican face to be seen up on the stage for Minnesota’s kick-off to these days of remembrance for George Floyd.

Maybe it’ll take another $40-$50 million out of Republican cities’ insurance funds to get their attention.

But I doubt even that’ll be enough.