Rep. Elijah E. Cummings wants congressional hearings into the "issues raised by the tragic deaths" of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police.
Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and fellow Democratic Reps. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi wrote senior Republicans Tuesday outlining a plan for a series of hearings.
"These troubling events raise grave concerns not only about what happened to these individual unarmed men, but also about what occurred before and after these incidents in the police departments and district attorneys offices that handled their cases," the lawmakers wrote.
"We firmly believe that events in Staten Island, New York, Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere have fractured the trust of Americans in the integrity of the criminal justice system."
Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August, fueling weeks of protests, and Garner died in July after an officer in New York placed him in a chokehold.
Brown and Garner were black; Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson and Officer Daniel Pantaleo are white. Separate grand juries declined to indict the officers, triggering more protests.
The lawmakers proposed hearings on topics including how police use force, the effects of giving police military gear and the use of grand juries to investigate police killings.
House Speaker John Boehner said last week he would not rule hearings out.
"Clearly both of these are serious tragedies that we've seen in our society, and I think the American people want to understand more of what the facts were," he at his weekly press conference. "There are a lot of unanswered questions that Americans have, and, frankly, I have. …
"I do think that the American people deserve more anwswrs about what really happened here, and was our system of justice handled properly."