The Vermont Legislature moved swiftly to adopt police reforms on June 26, just a month and a day after George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
But fast action is not expected on the next round of police reforms. The reason: Reform advocates think the Legislature is acting too much on its own, without hearing from the people who would be most affected by the changes.
Round one of police reform legislation, S.219, signed into law in mid-July by Republican Gov. Phil Scott, requires all state police to wear body cameras, prohibits officers from using chokeholds and similar restraint techniques, and requires the Legislature to pass additional criminal and racial justice measures, both during the current Covid-19 budget session and in the coming years.
However, as they moved forward on reforms, legislators received differing opinions from advocates about how quickly things were moving. One argument — put forward by Etan Nasreddin-Longo, who chairs the Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Advisory Panel; Xusana Davis, the Scott administration’s executive director of racial equity; and myriad others — was that the Legislature, however well-intentioned, was acting on its own. The advocates wanted legislators to reach out to people throughout the state who are affected the most by systemic racism, including encounters with police.
“If more time allows us more opportunity for community feedback and input, if more time allows us to come up with a scheme to resource it properly,” Davis said at a mid-June committee hearing, “then I am for more time — with the bold-faced caveat that it is not to defer, but rather to perfect.”
Legislators were aiming to adopt statewide policies on the use of force and use of police body cameras this year. The House committees on the judiciary and government operations held three Zoom public hearings in August to hear from Vermonters on those issues. Comments at those hearings didn’t offer lawmakers much clarity. Some people said action is needed now; others asked for more discussion and outreach to Black, Indigenous and people of color — BIPOC — in the state.
“It is imperative , first and foremost, that we take a smarter, more up-to-date approach in soliciting community input,” Ashley Laporte said at a hearing Aug. 12. She grew up in Stowe and now lives in Burlington. “This is incredibly frustrating for me, and the lack of familiarity with technology is no excuse.”
“You cannot invoke the name of a Black man who died under the knee of police officers as a reason behind the urgency for this hearing — for this public forum — and then refuse to prioritize BIPOC voices,” Laporte said. “An unwillingness to prioritize us is missing the entire point and is the reason why we have this problem and it is demonstrative of systemic racism.”
In the runup to the Aug. 25 start of the Covid-19 budget session, House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, told VTDigger that lawmakers will focus on hearing from people of color throughout Vermont, and won’t necessarily rush through legislation.
“We are hearing the simultaneous calls for ‘reform now,’ and ‘please, please, please put aside your assumptions and your privilege and your bias and listen — sit, absorb and listen,’” Johnson said. “So that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Judiciary committee chair Maxine Grad, D-Moretown, echoed Johnson’s sentiment in an interview last week.
“We need to continue to hear from impacted communities and marginalized communities in terms of police reform — racial justice issues,” Grad said. “We will certainly continue to do that in this session and then also in January.”
Two bills this year?
Grad and her counterpart in the government operations committee, Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, both say they hope two bills — S.119, which outlines a uniform use-of-force policy for law enforcement, and S.124, which updates police training and police oversight — will be adopted before the Legislature adjourns for the year.
But neither made any guarantees on timing.
In June, there had also been talk about revising the state’s “justifiable homicide” statute — which says an individual can kill or wound a person legally under certain circumstances, including self-defense. Both House and Senate lawmakers said work was needed immediately to attend that law when the special session convened. In particular, they were worried about the law’s provision that civil officers, members of the military and “private soldiers” who lawfully are called on to suppress “riot or rebellion” are protected from homicide charges.
“We will be looking at it now,” Grad said. “We can definitely start the discussion in the short term and then, if we can’t get through it, then we will certainly continue it in January.”
“I think there is so much commitment and so much recognition that this work has to be done and that it is ongoing work and I think there are a lot of us who are committed to continuing the work in January,” she said of police reforms.
Rep. Hal Colston, D-Winooski, the only Black member of the House Government Operations Committee — which, along with the judiciary panel, has jurisdiction over police reforms — said the Legislature is trying to make concrete progress on criminal justice while also making sure to provide for community involvement.
“We’re trying to get at least one foot out the door, but we need to have the right process to make sure we’re getting input from people with lived experience, and there are a lot of Vermonters who need to share their stories,” Colston said.
Colston thinks the Legislature’s work in the coming weeks “will lay the groundwork” for January.
Colston also said he’s not worried about losing momentum on police reforms, which was created by the killing of George Floyd and the recent maiming of Jacob Blake by police in Wisconsin.
“I don’t think it’s going to go away at all,” he said. “This is a different moment.”
‘It needs to be done right’
Rep. Kevin “Coach” Christie, D-White River Junction, the lone Black man on the House Judiciary Committee, said he understands the push to move swiftly on police reform, but also sees the need to give Vermonters a chance to weigh in properly and share their stories.
“It needs to be done right,” Christie said of the reforms. “I think that’s why we’ve reached out to the community in a lot of different ways that we haven’t before.”
“I think the effort to make sure we pay attention to people from all over the state that are being impacted by institutional racism, I think it’s incumbent upon us to do that,” he said.
Skyler Nash, an advocate with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, agreed with Colston and Christie, saying he is less concerned about “missing this moment nationally” and more worried that lawmakers will feel that, by passing something, they will have solved the problem of racism in the state.
“This is not a moment; this is a lifetime,” Nash said. “So those voices are never going to quiet down. If anything, they’re going to continue to intensify.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Legislature may slow down on police reform so it can hear from more Vermonters.