Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, speaks as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers a bill dealing with fair and impartial policing at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Friday, May 3, 2019. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
A Senate panel voted Friday to advance a fair and impartial policing policy, paving the way for the measure to advance to the full chamber.
An amendment that would have given the Vermont Human Rights Commission the authority to investigate police compliance with the policy failed.
The bill, H.518, passed the House earlier this session. On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to move the legislation forward.
“Frankly, the most important issue is to make sure that every police agency in the state is compliant with the most up-to-date policy,” Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, the committee’s chair, said prior to the panel’s vote.
Under the proposal, the state’s model policy would be the “floor,” rather than the ceiling for what law enforcement agencies across the state must adopt.
Law enforcement agencies, according to the legislation, would be permitted to adopt more restrictive policies for sharing information with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants in Vermont.
The state’s current model policy has been criticized by advocates for undocumented immigrants in Vermont.
They have contended it doesn’t go far enough to set limits on the sharing of information between law enforcement and federal authorities about a person’s immigration status.
Backers of the existing policy have said that they did the best they could while staying in compliance with federal law.
Earlier in the week, Bor Yang, the executive director of the Human Rights Commission, urged lawmakers to approve an amendment that would give the commission authority to review police departments. The provision would give the commission the power to inspect records, policies and training materials related to a department’s fair and impartial policing policy, Yang said.
“This really is a tool to use when it appears very clearly from the public that there needs to be agency-initiated inspection and not just wait for a complaining party,” Yang said.
Yang cited the case of Kiah Morris, a Democrat from Bennington and the first African American woman in the Vermont Legislature, who did not seek re-election last year, because she says her family was harassed by white nationalists.
Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan, said while an investigation showed Morris was the victim of racial harassment, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges under free speech protections in the First Amendment.
Civil rights organizations have raised questions about the Bennington Police Department’s handling of evidence related to allegations of threats against Morris.
“A lot of the questions that were raised by many people were, why isn’t the Human Rights Commission doing something?” Yang said.
Beth Novotny, a lobbyist representing the Vermont Police Association, said at a legislative hearing last week that the amendment was a “broad expansion” of the Human Rights Commission’s authority.
The Senate panel agreed that if they took up the measure now, in the waning days of the legislative session, the bill likely would not get enacted this year.
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said he was “interested in having that conversation but it’s a much deeper dive than we have the ability to do right now at the end of the session.”
Yang said it was more important to pass the bill as-is for now than to push for the amendment.
“It’s a significant step in the right direction and I’m proud of it and I’m proud to support it,” she said.
Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, said after the vote Friday that he saw the legislation as a compromise the organization, which represents migrant farmworkers in Vermont, could support.
“It doesn’t go as far as it needs to to address the current inadequacies in fair and impartial policies and practices, but it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.
“We think it sends the clear message to law enforcement agencies that they have the discretion to implement policies that align with their values and gets law enforcement out of the business of deportation,” Lambek said. “We hope they use that discretion to do so.”
On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee also unanimously passed an amendment to the legislation that establishes a working group aimed at helping inform the public about the policy and where to go to file complaints.
The group, according to the amendment, is charged with developing an “outreach and education strategy to inform Vermonters of the resources available to protect civil rights.”
The group would be facilitated by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, with representatives from the Human Rights Commission, Migrant Justice and the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Law enforcement would also be represented on the panel by officials from the Vermont Sheriffs’ Association, the Vermont Police Association, the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police and Vermont State Police.
The group will provide a report by Nov. 1 with “recommendations for legislative action to protect marginalized populations in Vermont.”
Yang told the committee Friday that while she didn’t oppose the working group, she said her organization as well as others are already doing that work.
“We need an outreach coordinator and that’s how you support the (Human Rights Commission) — to give us more resources and staff to do the work that we need to do,” she said.
“That to me is the more important amendment, which is in Appropriations,” she said. “That’s the better response, not necessarily creating a working group as part of fair and impartial policing.”
Later Friday, the Senate Appropriations Committee set aside $85,000 to fund the Human Rights Commission outreach position.
VTDigger reporter Kit Norton contributed to this article.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Anti-bias policing policy heads to Senate floor vote.