Thursday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee began preliminary work on a bill which would establish a statewide model on police use of force, as well as tie compliance with the policy to state grants.
Chair Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said that he hopes to be able to move the legislation, S. 119 — which is partially based on California’s police use-of-force measure — out of committee by next Friday.
“I know that’s a tight timeline for the committee,” he added. “I think it’s absolutely necessary to hear from as many people as possible. But we are limited in the amount of time to get this bill so that the House can at least look at it in a timely manner.”
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, joined the judiciary committee briefly, telling his colleagues in the upper chamber why he believed it was necessary to take swift action on police use-of-force reform.
“I do believe that the time to act on some of these issues is now, even if it requires some creativity in the manner in which it occurs,” Ashe said.
The Senate leader said “there will undoubtedly be calls from the law enforcement community, and the Attorney General’s community, and possibly others, to say that ‘it’s complicated, let’s delay, create a task force’ and so on.”
“I’m not here to diminish legitimate considerations of how we move forward. but I do believe we can adopt a policy now and let those same stakeholders come back in August or beyond with suggested modifications.”
Ashe also addressed national calls to defund police departments, saying that Vermont has already started to make sure there is more financial support for mental health experts.
“I do want to emphasize that our investments in mental health in recent years, well not sufficient to dig out of a hole that really developed over a long period of time, is a piece of reducing the need for law enforcement to be essentially mental health workers on so many calls,” he said.
Later in the day, in Senate Gov Ops committee members started to decide on what aspect of law enforcement reform they will work to complete in the next week.
Michael Schirling, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, said the department supports the creation of statewide, uniform use-of-force policy for law enforcement. He added that state police “have committed” to having all officers have body cameras this year.
– Kit Norton
This is an excerpt of Final Reading. For the full rundown of bills in motion at the Statehouse, the daily legislative calendar and interviews with newsmakers, sign up here for the unabridged version delivered straight to your inbox Tuesday through Friday evenings.
