#Dick Durbin apologizes to Tim Scott for ‘token’ remark on GOP police reform bill

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin apologized to GOP Sen. Tim Scott for saying the Republican’s police reforms amounted to a “token” approach.

“The minute Sen. Durbin heard that he had offended Sen. Scott, he sought him out on the floor and apologized. What Sen. Durbin took issue with in his floor speech was not Sen. Scott’s bill, but that the Senate Majority Leader would short circuit this critical debate and fail to make the changes needed to prevent the killing of Black Americans by police officers,” Emily Hampsten, Durbin’s communications director said in a statement.

“Addressing systemic racism and changing policing in America requires and deserves more than one Judiciary hearing, one floor vote, one conversation,” she continued.

In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Durbin of Illinois said this was a “historic moment” amid the nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police to pass.

“Let’s not do something that is a token, half-hearted approach. Let’s focus instead on making a change that will make a difference in the future of America,” he said.

Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, responded soon after on Twitter.

“Y’all still wearing those kente cloths over there @SenatorDurbin?,” Scott of South Carolina posted, a reference to dozens of congressional Democrats who took a knee earlier this month in honor of Floyd while wearing the African cloth around their necks.

Scott, in a Senate floor speech, commemorated the five-year anniversary of the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, by a self-avowed white supremacist who killed nine people.

He accused Democrats of playing politics with police reform.

“To have the senator from Illinois refer to the process, this bill, this opportunity to restore hope and confidence from the American people, from African Americans, from communities of color, to call this a token process hurts my soul for my country, for our people,” Scott said.

“To think that the concept of anti-lynching as a part of this legislation to be considered a token piece of legislation because perhaps I’m African American, the only one on this side of the aisle, I don’t know what he meant, but … those comments again hurts the soul,” he added.