State lawmakers are calling for renewed police accountability legislation in the wake of the high-profile death of George Floyd in Minneapolis that has sparked protests in Connecticut and around the nation.
After a sweeping bill on police accountability was signed into law last year, some legislators say the General Assembly still must go further with more changes that could include increased use of police body cameras and heightened penalties for use of excessive force by police.
House Majority Leader Matt Ritter of Hartford said he needs to talk with members of both the House and Senate in the coming days and weeks because no final decisions have been made on a special session that could be held in late June or early July to address police use of force and other issues.
“In this day and age in 2020, you have a camera on your phone and you can have a video camera on your front door,” Ritter said. “I don’t see any reason why every officer is not equipped with a camera at this point in time.
“The push back a couple of years ago was money, and the state put in grants to help subsidize it. If we need to put in more money, we should do that immediately.”
Concerning increased penalties on the use of force, Ritter said, “My instinct is to tell you yes, but I have a lot of conversations and a lot of listening that I have to do as a leader to know exactly what the best response is. I don’t feel comfortable just coming out and giving a litany of things without having those conversations first.”
Part of the conversations, he said, involves listening to legislators and their constituents about their experiences. Floyd, who was black, died after police arrested him on the suspicion that he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill. Video of his arrest showed one officer kneeling on his neck for at least eight minutes until he grew unresponsive.
“As a white person, I’ve never had the experience of someone who is a minority who was beaten or mistreated by police officers because they are a minority,” Ritter said. “My job is to listen, and part of being a good leader is listening.”
Another issue raised by some legislators is that the most recent state police contract includes a new provision that internal affairs reports and some personnel files are not subject to the state’s Freedom of Information laws if the allegations are determined to be “unsubstantiated.” FOI advocates have opposed the provisions, which were made last year as part of the new contract that was awarded by an arbitrator. The contract was approved in the House last year on a mostly party-line vote, and Democratic leaders said that legislators could strip out the provisions in the future if they wanted. They said at the time that rejecting the contract would have required for it to be sent back once again for arbitration.
Last year’s police accountability law was approved unanimously in the state Senate last year but passed mostly along party lines after a heated, three-hour debate in the House of Representatives.
The new law, prompted in part by police shootings in Hamden and Wethersfield that occurred within a span of five days and were both captured on video, made changes to police practices, including prohibiting officers from shooting into fleeing vehicles unless the officer or another person is in imminent danger.
The law also established new deadlines for police to release videos from both body and dashboard cameras, along with new incentives for local police departments to use dashboard cameras and adding reporting and record keeping requirements in cases of deadly force. The video must be released within 96 hours of the use force against a person or if the police officer is under disciplinary investigation for the recorded incident. If the officer involved has reviewed the video, it can be released within 48 hours.
Rep. John Hampton, D-Simsbury, voted against the bill last year because he said it should have increased penalties even further for excessive force and should have forced police to release body camera videos sooner following confrontations with the public.
“Obviously, we have more to do,” Hampton said. “This is not the America we should be. Communities like mine, which are largely white and privileged, have to take the initiative. It’s got to start in communities like Simsbury, Canton and Avon. Talk about white privilege. We’re the definition of it.
“With the void in national leadership, the governors and state legislatures are picking up the pieces and doing the work on their own. That’s fine. We’ll take the lead.”
Some lawmakers said the issue is politically complicated and cannot be solved quickly by the legislature. Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat who co-chairs the judiciary committee, said lawmakers are awaiting recommendations from a task force that was created under last year’s bill, as well as advice from the Police Officer Standards and Training Council.
Stafstrom said he has not heard from law enforcement that the new law has handcuffed them, which was a criticism last year.
“We want to tighten the instances in which the use of deadly force is justified,” Stafstrom said. “We will continue to look at the definition of the justified use of deadly force.”
House Republican leader Themis Klarides of Derby said some Republicans opposed the bill last year because some key elements never had a public hearing and were substituted into the bill on the last day of the legislative session.
“I can’t put myself in the place of an African-American person and know what it feels like when they get pulled over by a cop just like somebody can’t put themselves in my shoes as a woman when I walk into a room and get treated differently because I’m the only woman there,” Klarides said. “If we believe that what happened was wrong, in the name of George Floyd, then we have to get together and figure out an answer. That doesn’t mean that anybody gets 100% of what they want.”
David McGuire, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, said the legislature must take action that backs up their words.
“As someone who has worked on these issues for over a decade here in Connecticut, I can tell you it is frustrating to hear so many legislators speak out over the last few days, sending thoughts and prayers and supporting black lives, but then inevitably when we get back to the legislature, they are either nowhere to be found or are actively opposing police violence legislation,” he said. “This is a life-and-death issue which has waited long enough.”
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com.
