Maryland lawmakers have passed a comprehensive police reform bill that reduces the ability of police to use violence and expands liability for their misconduct, in part through the state’s powerful and first-in-the-country law enforcement officer’s Bill of Rights to do. passed in 1974.
Maryland’s Democratic-controlled legislature has passed bills over Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s objections and vetoes, and the legislative package is being praised by Democratic lawmakers and police reform advocates as an important step toward a more progressive criminal justice system in the state.
“Last year I attended several demonstrations of people demanding change – young and old, people of all races and societies, and I took part in it,” said Charles Sydnor, a Maryland Democrat who sponsored one of the measures. , according to Maryland said. to the Baltimore Sun. “With so many situations before our eyes, we could no longer deny what we saw, and I thank my colleagues for believing their eyes and listening to the majority of Marylanders.”
The new laws cover a wide range of policies and include the restriction of warrants without beating, the mandate of body cameras, the prohibition of police officers to prevent civilians from recording them and the prohibition of life sentences without the possibility of parole for youth.
As the New York Times reports, there are also new guidelines designed to increase the standard for police use:
One division creates a new policy on the entire use of force and says officers who violate these standards and cause serious injuries or death can be convicted and sent to prison for up to ten years. According to the standard, violence can only be used to prevent a threatening threat of bodily injury to a person or to achieve a lawful goal of law enforcement. ‘
The policy also states that violence must be ‘necessary and proportionate’. Police reform groups have said it is a stricter standard than the traditional standard of ‘reasonableness’, which they say is not sufficient to hold officers accountable for blatant acts of violence.
One of the bills repeals the state’s police bill of rights adopted in 1974 – the first of its kind in the country, which helped inspire similar laws in about 20 other states. It gives police officers protection in the workplace far above those offered to other government employees, allowing them, among other things, to appeal to a local council without civic input. The new law that replaces it offers civilians a role in the disciplinary process of the police.
Hogan initially vetoed the laws, saying it went too far and would further erode police morale, community relations and public trust.
Police unions also criticized the reforms as too drastic. ‘They’re going to make it harder for the police to police. There is reform, and it goes beyond reform, “said Angelo Consoli, second vice president and chair of the legislative committee of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police, according to the New York Times.
But Democratic lawmakers and police reform advocates see it as a long time in the fight against excessive police violence.
“These new laws are a victory swept through the coordinated efforts of community members and advocates who have campaigned for police accountability, transparency and justice,” a statement from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund read. “This distinctive package of bills required hard advocacy and the removal of a number of barriers to police accountability occurred after more than a decade of a just public safety system.”
It is important to revoke the police charter
Criminal law activists have been criticizing the police bill for decades as serious obstacles to police accountability. As the Washington Post explains, when Maryland passed the very first one in the 1970s, it seemed undisputed at the time, but it set powerful new precedents to protect police from liability for misconduct:
[The law’s provisions] These include giving officers a formal waiting period before cooperating with internal investigations into police action, scrubbing records of complaints lodged against officers after a certain period of time, and allowing only fellow officers – not civilians – to investigate. not.
Experts say the Maryland police charter has gone further than other states in the time it allows officers before it is investigated – five days in Maryland versus 48 hours in other states, according to the Post.
This waiting period until the investigation clashes with the guidance of U.S. justice, in part because it could give officers more time to make a conspiracy and draw up a story while preparing to be questioned about alleged misconduct.
Maryland’s new law provides for civilian input into the process and removes some of the protections. Per the New York Times: “Citizens will play a role in administrative prosecution committees that will review the findings of law enforcement agencies and recommend discipline for officers. Police chiefs cannot take more disciplinary action than the panels recommend. And the waiting period and the policy on scrubbing records is over.
However, some activists do not think that the new surveillance policy that replaced the police charter has gone far enough. Dayvon Love, director of public policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a think tank in Baltimore, told the Post the new laws are a ‘net positive’, but ultimately do not have a substantial enough mechanism for overseeing the community does not.