The Vermont House passed reform legislation Tuesday that sets guidelines for when police can use deadly force as well as mandating new law enforcement training practices and oversight.
In the waning days of the legislative session, the lower chamber voted in favor of its two reform priorities: S.119 — which outlines a uniform use-of-force policy for law enforcement — and S.124 — which updates and expands police training protocol.
“These bills are a critical step by the Legislature to address the systemic racism that permeates our systems of justice, public safety, and corrections, as well as our State Government,” Speaker of the House Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, said in a statement.
S.124, which passed on a virtual voice vote, addresses several key policy questions Democratic lawmakers had prioritized before they adjourned for the summer back in June.
The bill includes a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology by police until approved by the General Assembly and requires the Vermont Criminal Justice Council to craft a statewide policy for the use of body cameras in the upcoming months.
If the legislation is enacted, Vermont would join only a handful of states and municipalities — including California and Somerville, Massachusetts — to prohibit police from using facial recognition technology.
Until an updated body camera policy is presented to the Legislature, the bill mandates that law enforcement agencies must use the justice council’s 2016 policy.
The legislation also ties compliance with race data collection of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies, as well as reporting incidents of death or serious bodily injury, to grant funding for police departments.
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, said on the virtual House floor that she believes the legislation addresses many of the concerns lawmakers had at the end of June but that the Legislature will continue the work when it returns in January.
“It’s worth noting that as a state we do want our local communities to be making local decisions but there are certain areas where it’s really important to have statewide standards,” Donahue said. “I think the area of public protection is one of those areas.”
The more controversial of the two measures, S.119, amends the state’s “justifiable homicide” statute — which currently stipulates an individual can kill or wound a person legally under certain circumstances, including self-defense. The bill also outlines how and when law enforcement are allowed to use deadly force, including chokeholds and other prohibited restraints.
The House approved the measure on a vote of 99-32, but not before Rep. Tom Burditt, R-West Rutland, who is the vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, told his colleagues that he opposed the legislation.
Burditt, whose son is a police officer in Seattle, Washington, said that he felt the bill had been rushed through the legislative process and that he was concerned that mandates in statute — as opposed to model policies — could lead to police officers being unable to properly defend themselves.
“This all sounds good on paper,” Burditt said. “I don’t believe that’s the way it’s going to be, there’s always the unintended consequence.”
“Police have to use restraints. There are situations that it is unavoidable and in this bill it does allow them to use restraints when those situations are unavoidable,” Burditt added. “That’s not a bad thing, but we heard testimony that it has the potential to make them think that extra second whether or not they can use it in a life or death situation.”
Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, who drafted and reported the bill, responded to Burditt by saying that the legislation does not add anything into statute that courts across the country have not already ruled on and decided is best practice.
“We want these standards in place so that the policy can be developed consistent with these standards,” LaLonde said. “I’ll just make clear my disagreement of whether these are severely altering how law enforcement does their job — they are already doing their job consistent with these standards.”
Both House and Senate lawmakers had said the justifiable homicide law needed to be updated, with a specific focus on its 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.
The legislation changes current law by stipulating that homicide is justifiable when committed by a law enforcement officer who is in compliance with the use of force policy laid out in the bill.
The bill also states that a police officer must immediately stop using deadly force as soon as an individual who has committed a crime is “under the officer’s control or no longer poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person.”
The legislation also requires that the Department of Public Safety and the state’s executive director of racial equity to report back to the Legislature in the next session on developing a statewide model policy on the use of force for all law enforcement agencies in Vermont.
Criminal and racial justice reform measures became a priority for the Democratic-controlled Legislature after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May.
At the end of June, the Senate and House passed Act 147, which requires all state police to wear body cameras, prohibits officers from using chokeholds and other similar restraint techniques, while also mandating that the Legislature pass additional criminal justice measures in the special Covid-19 budget session.
On July 13, Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed that proposal into law, and he followed that up with an executive order detailing police reform measures he would like the Legislature to take up.
However, while the Scott administration has outlined several policy proposals — many that lawmakers were already looking into — Michael Schirling, the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, does not support S.119.
In an email Tuesday morning to House lawmakers, Schirling said that he felt he and others who work in public safety had been “dismissed as background noise.”
“The latest version of S.119 remains fraught with language that will create uncertainty of outcomes, inconsistency in application, an inability to train because we will not know how to fully implement it until after extensive litigation occurs that will take years,” Schirling wrote.
Read the story on VTDigger here: House approves measures on police use of force and training protocols.
