A police reform bill already stripped of a key provision in the Senate ran into some opposition in a hearing before a House panel on Thursday — mostly around the creation of a database of alleged police misconduct.
The state’s top cop told the House Committee on Government Operations that the database provision wasn’t ready for prime time and needed more work before going live.
Meanwhile, an advocate for a leading civil rights organization said the public should have access to the database, if S.250 passes.
The panel took no action on the bill on Thursday after hearing from several witnesses. The committee is expected to take more testimony.
“It’s a somewhat winnowed down bill from where we started,” Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, the bill’s sponsor, told the committee of the legislation.
“The thrust here,” Ram Hinsdale said, “is that there needs to be an understanding of what’s in a law enforcement officer’s file related to a lack of credibility, a misclassification of information, misconduct that was not otherwise reported.”
The bill had included a section ending qualified immunity — which can be used to prevent citizens from suing individual police officers for events that happened on the job — that was removed before gaining approval last month in the Senate.
Remaining portions of the bill include a proposal to expand the data collected by law enforcement and to commission a study on “the use of deceptive and coercive interrogation tactics employed by law enforcement” in the state.
The legislation also calls for the recording of custodial interrogations by police in a place of detention in felony cases.
However, it was the section of the bill that would establish what was referred to during the session on Thursday as a “Giglio” database that drew the greatest attention.
A Giglio letter — sometimes termed as a “Brady” letter — gets its names from national cases. Such letters are prepared by prosecutors to inform defense attorneys of an officer’s possible credibility or integrity issues. It has also been called a scarlet letter, because receiving one often ends an officer’s career.
VTDigger published a series in December 2020, “Tarnished Badge,” that examined the issuance of Brady and Giglio letters around the state. The reporting found that 28 letters had been issued over a five-year period.
The reporting also revealed wide disparities around Vermont’s 14 counties, with some state’s attorneys issuing no letters over that time period and one issuing nine. There was also no central repository for the letters.
S.250 calls for the Vermont Criminal Justice Council to maintain the database with potential impeachment information that may include:
– a misconduct finding that speaks to the truthfulness or possible bias of an officer;
– past or present criminal charges brought before an officer;
– prior findings by a judge that an officer testified untruthfully, made a knowingly false statement in writing or engaged in a search or seizure or illegal confession;
– information that could be used to show an officer is biased for or against a defendant.
Michael Schirling, the commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety, testified in writing as well as by video during Thursday’s hearing.
He said the department supports the “direction of reforms” in the bill, including the expansion of data collection to the creation of a statewide Giglio database.
But, the commissioner said, the current version of the bill needs more “clarity” around how the proposed database would work.
For example, Schirling said, the bill should address who decides what information is included in the database.
Also, according to the commissioner, the current legislation lacks a “due process” system to provide officers the notice and opportunity to challenge the information proposed to be included in the database.
“Long story short: Supportive of creating this database, but it needs quite a bit of additional detail in order to actually be able to operationalize,” Schirling said.
He questioned whether that work could be done before the current legislative session concludes.
Under the legislation, the database would be accessible to prosecutors in Vermont, including the State’s Attorneys’ Office in Vermont and the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. The public would not have access to it.
Falko Schilling, advocacy director for the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the committee on Thursday that his organization supports the “goals” of the legislation, though it is not as “robust” as the group had hoped and as the original bill had proposed.
The ACLU of Vermont did have some concerns about the “confidentiality” of the information contained in the Giglio database, Schilling said.
“We think this is information that should be available to the public in general, not just to the state’s attorneys,” Schilling said. “This is important information about the people who are being sworn to protect and serve our communities.”
