Months of bipartisan negotiations over policing reform legislation have ended with no agreement, according to the lawmakers who led the process.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, told reporters that he had a conversation on Wednesday with Republican negotiator, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, indicating that the talks were over.

“We weren’t making progress — any more meaningful progress on establishing really substantive reform to America’s policing,” Booker said.

The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

After a Minneapolis jury found a white police officer who killed George Floyd guilty of murder in April, lawmakers in both parties had expressed cautious optimism that they could broker a deal. Lawmakers said they believed that the verdict would provide new momentum to reach a compromise.

But the negotiators, which included Booker, Scott and Democratic Rep. Karen Bass of California, were unable to reach an agreement on a number of issues, including how to address the legal doctrine known as “qualified immunity,” which shields police officers from civil lawsuits.

Booker said that negotiators were able to pull off some “pretty big accomplishments,” but that it was “clear that we were not making the progress that we needed to make.”

“The effort from the very beginning was to get police reform that would raise professional standards, police reform that would create a lot more transparency and then police reform that would create accountability,” Booker said. “And we were not able to come to agreement on those three big areas.”

In a statement, Bass said that Democrats “accepted significant compromises, knowing that they would be a tough sell to our community,” but added that “every time, more was demanded to the point that there would be no progress made in the bill that we were left discussing.”

She said that policing overhaul legislation now requires a “re-engagement of the legislative process.”

But Scott, the lead Republican negotiator, said that Democrats had walked away from negotiations and rejected his offer to introduce a bill that included ideas that Democrats and Republicans agreed on. In a separate statement, Scott said that Democrats “could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement.”

“Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table,” Scott said.

While some activists have called for slashing funding for police departments or disbanding them entirely, that notion has not found widespread support among Congressional Democrats.

President Biden had initially called on lawmakers to reach a compromise by the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. But that May 25 deadline came and went without any breakthrough.

Biden said in a statement on Wednesday that he still hopes to sign a “comprehensive and meaningful police reform bill” into law, because legislation is necessary for “lasting and meaningful change.”

“But this moment demands action, and we cannot allow those who stand in the way of progress to prevent us from answering the call,” he added.

Biden said that in the coming weeks the White House would engage with key groups, including law enforcement and civil rights leaders, to discuss “a path forward.”

Biden said that those discussions would include “potential executive actions,” but did not detail what those might include.

Civil rights leaders and policing reform advocates on Wednesday expressed their frustration that talks had broken down with no agreement, despite months of work.

“In a year unlike any other, when the American people spoke up, marched, and demanded reforms in policing, law enforcement unions and partisan politicians chose to stand on the wrong side of history,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP. “They have chosen to stand with those who have lynched the very people they are meant to protect and serve.”

Johnson called it “disheartening that there is a lack of courage and bravery to bring about true reform.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the lack of an agreement “appalling and unacceptable.”

“To have a weak bill would make a mockery of the murder of Floyd and those of us that fought for his family,” he added.

The House passed its own policing reform bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in February, with almost exclusively Democratic votes.

That legislation sought to prohibit racial profiling by police, ban the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and make it easier for police officers to be criminally charged for civil rights violations, among other things. It also would have allowed victims of misconduct to sue officers. But that legislation faced steep Republican opposition in the Senate.

Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, who was an activist leader in Ferguson, Mo., where Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in 2014, said she was “disgusted” to learn that negotiations had broken down.

“The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, it may not have been everything that we wanted it to be, but we need to get something, we need to make sure that ending qualified immunity happens in our communities,” Bush said in an interview with All Things Considered host Audie Cornish.

Bush said that she believed there was still an opportunity to pass policing reform legislation, but noted that she had not personally been involved in the recent negotiations.

“This is just the beginning. I was not at the table, I’m not coming against anybody who was at the table,” she said. “And I don’t believe that there were bad faith actors, but I do believe that adding to who was at the table, that could have been done differently.”

NPR’s Lynn Kim, Ashley Brown and Elena Burnett contributed reporting.

There’s been national focus over the last few days on the unfolding story of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old white woman whose death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday, nearly two weeks after she was last seen on a cross-country road trip with her now-missing boyfriend.

Media coverage of the case is intense and, as some people have pointed out, disproportionate to the kind of attention typically given to missing Indigenous women and people of color.

The families of two Black men who have gone missing in recent months — Jelani Day and Daniel Robinson — are drawing attention to this disparity, and pleading for the public’s help in finding answers. Here are their stories.

Aspiring doctor Jelani Day was last seen in Illinois in August

Day, a 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student, was reported missing by his family and a faculty member on Aug. 25, according to the Bloomington Police Department.

His family could not reach him after they spoke on the evening of Aug. 23, and he was last seen on surveillance video entering a retail store in Bloomington the morning of Aug. 24.

Police located Day’s car in a wooded area near the Illinois Valley YMCA in Peru on Aug. 26, with the clothing he was last seen wearing left inside.

Just over a week later, on Sept. 4, a team of police, fire and rescue officials found “an unidentified body just off the south bank of the Illinois River” while conducting an organized search of the LaSalle-Peru area.

Bloomington police said the following day that the LaSalle County Coroner’s Office had begun an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the person’s death, and that identification could take several days or weeks.

“We ask that people refrain from speculation as the investigation remains ongoing and could take considerable time,” they added.

Carmen Bolden Day told member station WGLT that the discovery of the body has seemingly brought her son’s case to a standstill. She said state police collected DNA samples from her family members on Sept. 6, but was told that their lab does not have the chemical needed to process them.

She also said that the Bloomington Police Department has only been able to devote one detective to the case, asking, “Once he stops, does that mean we stop looking for my son?”

BPD Officer John Fermon told the station that while one detective is assigned to lead the case, other staff members are directed to help with the investigation as necessary.

In an update on Monday, BPD said detectives are still “actively investigating the case” and sorting through tips. Their efforts include collecting and analyzing digital and physical evidence, locating and interviewing witnesses and searching for other leads, it added.

Bolden Day has spoken out on social media and interviews about the differences between her son’s case and that of Petito, noting at one point that Petito’s face was “plastered everywhere” and the FBI got involved after she had been missing for two days, but Day didn’t get that same attention after being missing for longer.

As she told WGLT, she is not arguing that Petito deserves less but that Day deserves more.

“I want them to look for my child like they’re looking for her,” she said tearfully in a local TV interview. “He is not a nobody, he is somebody, and I want him to come back home. I want them to give my son the same attention and it makes me mad because this young white girl is getting that attention, and my young Black son is not.”

Arizona geologist Daniel Robinson went missing in the desert in June

Robinson, 24, was last seen leaving a job site in Buckeye, Ariz., on June 23, and was reported missing later that day.

He was driving his 2017 blue/grey Jeep Renegade, and is believed to have been heading west into desert terrain, his father wrote on an online fundraising page.

David Robinson II wrote that his son, who moved to Phoenix for a job as a field geologist after graduating college in 2019, oversees many sites in remote desert areas and often travels long distances for work.

“Daniel has an innate passion for adventure and is known to travel inopportune moments,” David Robinson II wrote. “However, he always communicates with friends and family about his travel plans.”

A landowner found Robinson’s Jeep in a ravine on July 19, Buckeye police said, adding that it had “significant damage” and had not been clearly visible to search crews because of the rough terrain.

The vehicle appeared to have rolled and landed on its side, AZ Central reported, citing police. Its airbags were deployed, and evidence suggests Robinson was wearing a seatbelt at the time.

Police also said his clothes, cellphone, wallet and keys were found at the scene, and that foul play was not suspected given the state of the car.

On July 31, police said, a human skull was located in an area south of where the Jeep had been recovered.

Officials later determined the remains did not belong to Daniel, and said in their Sept. 16 update that no additional human remains — only animal bones — have been found since.

“Since his disappearance, the Buckeye Police Department has worked with outside agencies to search more than 70 square miles in an effort to locate Daniel,” police said. “Investigators have utilized UTVs, cadaver dogs, and air support including a drone and a helicopter.”

Robinson’s father, however, has publicly alleged that he is doing more to find his son than law enforcement is.

In an online petition, Robinson writes that Buckeye police are “unwilling to move beyond their theory which leads to non-action on their part,” and urges signatories to hold the department accountable for continuing to pursue answers.

He also calls for the missing person investigation to be changed to that of a criminal investigation, which he says would allow police to seek warrants based on any evidence obtained.

Robinson has created a separate online fundraising page to raise money for other efforts to locate his son, like printing flyers, hiring a private investigator, enlisting a desert search and rescue team and covering the cost of his Arizona hotel stay.

Robinson, who lives in South Carolina, wrote that he intends to stay in the area “until we have answers and bring Daniel home safely.”