House lawmakers Wednesday passed a bill that asks a police advisory board to create a statewide policy for using Tasers, but not without adding one last-minute amendment and killing another.
The bill charges the Law Enforcement Advisory Board with creating a policy for training and use of Tasers, the electronic stun guns law enforcement officers use to subdue people. It asks the Criminal Justice Training Council to ensure Taser-toting officers are trained.
The legislation received preliminary approval Tuesday with one amendment. The amendment legislators adopted Wednesday mandates that all officers, whether or not they want to carry a Taser, must receive training in dealing with mentally ill people, known as Act 80 training.
Rep. Jim Masland, D-Thetford, proposed the Taser bill, H.225, as well as the mental health amendment. In 2012 Thetford resident Macadam Mason died after a state trooper shot him in the chest with a conducted electrical weapon. Mason is said to have had a cognitive impairment.
As long ago as 2008, Attorney General Bill Sorrell recommended that police adopt policies and receive training about Taser use.
H.225 charges the Law Enforcement Advisory Board with creating a policy that must include key elements.
The Vermont ACLU says those elements are weak and merely codify the way police already use Tasers. Some members of the House Government Operations Committee, which vetted the bill, said it lacked teeth, although they ultimately voted for it anyway.
The bill says the policy must include language about when police are allowed to use Tasers. Tasers can be used in response to an “actively resistant” subject, under the legislation, if there is reason to believe using another “compliance technique will result in a greater risk of injury to the officer, the subject or a third party.”
“Active resistance,” defined by the Law Enforcement Advisory Board, includes “pulling away, escaping or fleeing, struggling and not complying on physical contact, or other energy-enhanced physical or mechanical defiance.”
In addition, the bill specifies that Tasers can be used in response to “an assaultive subject when lethal force does not appear to be objectively reasonable.”
An amendment proposed Wednesday by Rep. Mary Hooper, D-Montpelier, would have changed the standard for when Tasers can be deployed. The amendment said an officer can deploy a Taser “if reasonably necessary to reduce an immediate risk of serious injury to the subject, officer or others.”
“What we’re trying to do is have a simpler, more straightforward, easy to understand thought process that an officer would engage in in these tense, difficult situations,” Hooper said on the floor. “It not intended to prohibit the use of Tasers. It is intended to create a clear standard of use.”
Hooper is a former mayor of Montpelier, which in 2011 released a study recommending the city police department not buy Tasers.
When Hooper finished her speech, the Government Operations Committee asked for a recess to discuss the amendment. The panel emerged from a huddle on the House floor and declared they did not support the amendment. It failed on a voice vote.
“We need to let the people who are the professionals do it in the manner that they need to do,” said Rep. Ronald Hubert, R-Milton. “If we tie the hands of the professionals that we have charged to do this then we are doing them an injustice.”
The bill includes a reporting requirement. If improper behavior is reported, the committee will change the law, Hubert said.
Reps. Susan Davis, P/D-Washington, and Sandy Haas, P/D-Rochester, spoke in favor of the Hooper amendment. Haas said she worries about how a court will interpret “actively resistant.”
“I don’t know if it includes spitting on the police officer, cursing a police officer, I don’t think I would want to find out. (The Legislature) is the body that sets policy for this state, not the police board, and I think we need to take our job seriously,” Haas said.
Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, chair of the Government Operations Committee, after the vote said changing the standard for when Tasers can be used doesn’t allow for police discretion.
“It leaves no room for the officer to make a judgment,” Sweaney said.
The Vermont ACLU pushed for the Hooper amendment. Executive Director Allen Gilbert has pushed for several changes to the Taser bill, which he says does nothing more than codify the current way police use Tasers, which he says is often unsafe and too frequent.
“People have to realize that there’s a deficient standard in that bill that in the past has led to five lawsuits, settlements amounting to at least $80,000 and the death of a man that was killed by a Taser,” Gilbert said after the vote.
“We’ll keep working to try and get an appropriate standard,” he said. Gilbert has asked for other changes, such as cameras attached to Tasers or the officers who use them.
The other Taser bill amendment introduced Wednesday had to do with de-escalation training in situations in which police confront people with mental illness. It passed on a voice vote.
Masland said the Act 80 training teaches officers to intervene without using lethal force.
The amendment requires all state, local, county and municipal law enforcement officers by June 2017 to complete Act 80 training, whether they carry a Taser or not.
“We’re glad to have this added to our Taser bill,” Hubert said.
