The Five Goes Off on Democratic ‘Scam’ of Opposing Senate GOP Police Reform: ‘Blood on Their Hands’

The Five’s Jesse Watters and Dagen McDowell went off on Senate Democrats for opposing the Republican Senate’s police reform bill in favor of their House counterparts’ reform package. Watters called out the Democrats as perpetrating a “scam” for trying to prolong the police reform issue and McDowell blasted the decision to block the GOP package as “doing it with blood on their hands.”

During a long segment on police reform in the wake of the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, the pair clashed with the show’s lone liberal, Juan Williams, over the Senate Democrats’ filibuster of Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) reform package.

“The vote by the Democrats against consideration basically stopped it in its tracks,” McDowell said. “It looks like they’re trying to use the death of George Floyd for political gain and more power.

“I disagree, Dagen,” Williams said, before pointing out that Scott’s bill, unlike the House Dems’ bill, would not permanently ban chokeholds, end qualified immunity for police, or eliminate no-knock warrants, and it would shield a proposed registry of violent or oft-disciplined cops from the public. “I think that’s why people want police reform.”

“Let me clarify some of the things in Tim Scott’s bill,” McDowell fired back. “It conditions federal grants to jurisdiction that restrict chokeholds. Addressing chokeholds. Addressing the no-knock warrants, trying to collect some data on the use of them because we don’t know how they’re used or even how often. Directs the Justice Department to develop a program to train officers on how to deescalate confrontation and respond to suspects with mental illnesses because they result in 25% of fatal police shootings. I could go on. There’s 70% compromise in this bill, Jesse, and it’s going nowhere because the Democrats want this as a political win and nothing more. And they’re doing it with blood on their hands.”

Watters joined the fray, hammering the Democrats as well.

“Here’s the scam that Juan and the Democrats are perpetrating. You don’t need Congress to do it. Juan, why doesn’t a Democrat Mayor just do it? How about the mayor of Atlanta? They don’t need congress. How about the mayor of Milwaukee, San Francisco? How about Nancy Pelosi calls her friend? San Francisco and says hey, let’s ban cloak holds? Choke holds banned.”

In fact, a number of large metropolitan cities, like Minneapolis, Houston, Raleigh, N.C., San Diego, and Denver, have totally banned chokeholds in the wake of the George Floyd killing while in police custody. But a federal ban on the police submission tactic, which the House bill would put in place, would apply across the country.

“You don’t have to do it in Congress,” Watters insisted. “That’s the scam. They want to drag this out and make Republicans look like they’re not playing ball. But they are playing ball. The Democrats don’t want to actually do anything.”

The Democratic House majority plans to hold a vote on their version of the police reform, which is expected to easily pass, on Thursday.

“The sad part is the way they politicized this and demonized police,” Watters added, before defending the GOP’s decision to shield the nationwide “bad cop” registry from the public. “If you want to put a little registry up, let’s put a registry up of all the bad teachers, all the teachers in these unions that molest kids and do drugs and stuff like that. Put their names in a national registry for everybody to see. All right? You think it’s really smart to put a cop’s identity and all of his personal information on a website so everybody can see who he is, where he is, what is he about? You don’t think that puts a target on his back?”

Watch the video above, via Fox News.