July 28, 2020

State Rep. Kathy Kennedy statement on Police Accountability Bill

This article was archived from the previous WordPress site. Formatting and media should be close, but may not match the original post perfectly.

Last week , I voted against a major police reform measure, because I believe at the end of the day, the bill could do more harm than good for the communities of Milford and Orange. I am disappointed in the legislative process which led to a rushed public hearing without all stakeholders at the table and a final bill put on our desk for debate starting at 1:30 am on Friday morning.

Yes, I wanted to fully support a true reform bill that would address some of the racial injustices of our past and present reignited after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in broad daylight and the subsequent protests across the country.

I support greater transparency and more accountability for our Connecticut law enforcement officers. Police officers who break the law must be prosecuted but unfortunately this legislation fuels the notion that all police are the problem, not a few bad actors, when we know that is not the case.

Some of the positives of the police accountability bill were:

1) the implementation of implicit bias training so law enforcement can better recognize how they unconsciously treat, judge and interact with members of certain backgrounds or races

2) greater transparency when it comes to collective bargaining and public records disclosure

3) looking to keep better data on minority recruitment of police officers

4) studying the feasibility of having licensed social workers assist on certain calls where appropriate

5) periodic mental health and drug screenings to make sure we are putting the best officers in the field.

The bill included many other sections which not only I viewed as harmful to the overall police community – I spoke with many police officers from both Orange and Milford and they told me this bill would leave our officers disheartened and possibly making it harder to do their already tough and dangerous job.

The concept of gutting qualified immunity for police officers, which would permit law enforcement to be sued for equitable relief and money damages for things they might do on the job. Right now, law enforcement officers are entitled to qualified immunity when their actions do not violate a clearly established statutory or constitutional right. Without having qualified immunity in the law, police officers and the cities who employ them have serious concerns that the additional liability will make officer recruitment and retention more difficult and could potentially be very costly to insure a city’s police force. To be clear, even now, willful misconduct by a police officer is not protected by qualified immunity.

Another section of the bill goes against the very concept of crime fighting and harms our ability to keep drugs and guns off our Milford and Orange streets by limiting consent searches by law enforcement. In taking away this valuable policing tool to ask consent of a person to search a motor vehicle or their person, we diminish the ability of our police to do their jobs in real time.