Another bill aimed at police reform in Vermont is getting gutted, with a key provision of the proposed legislation that had called for creating a database of law enforcement officers with credibility issues reduced to a study.
That’s according to the latest draft of S.250 presented Wednesday to the House Committee on Government Operations. The committee briefly discussed the proposed changes to the legislation, but took no action on the bill.
“It’s a continuation of what we’ve seen with many of the bills focused on law enforcement accountability this year,” Falko Schilling, advocacy director for the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
“Time and time again,” he added, “important reforms are turned into studies and the can is just kicked down the road.”
A separate bill, S.254 — which had called for an end of qualified immunity, which can be used to prevent citizens from suing individual police officers for events that happened on the job — was also gutted this session, with the latest version authorizing only a study of the issue.
S.250, sponsored by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, had earlier called for establishing a central repository for “Giglio” letters, which are sometimes referred to as “Brady” letters. Both monikers relate to national court cases.
Prosecutors prepare the letters to inform defense attorneys of possible credibility and integrity issues with police officers. Being named in such a letter can end an officer’s career, as a prosecutor may choose to never take their cases or put them on the witness stand.
An investigative series by VTDigger in December 2020, “Tarnished Badge,” revealed about 30 Brady or Giglio letters had been issued around the state over a five-year period.
The reporting found that there was no central location where all the letters are kept, while there was wide disparity in how such cases were handled across the state’s 14 counties. Some state’s attorneys had never issued letters during those five years, while one had written nine.
S.250 would have had the Vermont Criminal Justice Council maintain the database of potential impeachment information on officers. An earlier version of the bill passed by the Senate included several categories of impeachment information that could result in an officer’s inclusion in the database, including misconduct related to an officer’s truthfulness or bias. It would also include information related to past or present criminal charges brought against an officer.
Law enforcement officials, including Windham County Sheriff Mark Anderson and Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Schirling, who had testified on the legislation, called on lawmakers to spend more time studying the process leading to the creation and management of such a database.
They said any legislation needed to provide a way for officers to challenge their inclusion on the list and to be removed from it if an allegation that had been made against them later was proven not to be true.
The latest draft of the bill axes the creation of the database, and calls for setting up a Giglio Database Study Committee. The panel would include administration officials, law enforcement leaders, prosecutors and lawmakers.
That panel is called on to report back to the House and Senate committees on government operations before Dec. 1 with proposed legislation resulting from its study.
The committee chair, Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, D-Bradford, referred questions about the legislation to Rep. Hal Colston, D-Winooski, a fellow committee member. According to Copeland Hanzas, Colston had worked at handling changes to the legislation.
Colston could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
The bill also previously included a section ending qualified immunity that was removed before gaining approval in the Senate earlier this session.
Other remaining parts of S.250 propose expanding 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 bill also proposes requiring the recording of custodial interrogations by police in a place of detention in felony cases and misdemeanor cases.