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Here's What's In The Massachusetts Police Reform Law [1]
['Steve Brown', 'Ally Jarmanning']
Date: 2020-12-01
Update: Gov. Charlie Baker signed an amended version of the police reform bill into law on Dec. 31.
Some of the biggest changes in years to law enforcement oversight and rules are coming to Massachusetts.
That’s after Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law on Dec. 31 of last year a landmark police reform bill.
Police lobbied hard against the bill. They say it gives too much oversight to people without law enforcement experience. Meanwhile, some progressives say the bill doesn’t go far enough to end things like facial recognition and qualified immunity protections.
But the new law is the compromise lawmakers came up with. This year, we’ll be tracking whether the bill delivers on key promises. Here’s what those new rules dictate:
Creation Of A New Commission To Certify Police Officers Statewide
For the first time, Massachusetts will have a system to certify and decertify officers across the commonwealth. The new Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commission will have the power to investigate misconduct independently, with subpoena power to compel witnesses and documents as part of its investigations.
The governor and attorney general will appoint the nine-member commission — six of those members will be from outside law enforcement. A current police chief will serve, along with a retired Superior Court judge and a social worker.
The POST commission can undertake its own investigations, including identifying patterns of unprofessional police conduct, escalating behaviors or other increasing complaints against an officer or agency.
An earlier version of the bill would have also given the POST commission power to set training standards, but that was removed after Baker said training for police shouldn’t be handed over to a civilian-control commission.
Slight Changes To Qualified Immunity, And The Promise Of A Study
Qualified immunity — a legal doctrine that provides protection to public officials, including police officers, in civil lawsuits — was one of the most contentious parts of the debate around reforms. The compromise bill doesn’t go as far as the earlier Senate version, which would have put the burden on public officials to make the case as to why they weren’t liable in a civil suit.
The compromise bill ties qualified immunity to decertification. If a police officer is decertified by the state, he or she loses immunity. But some legal experts question the wording of the legislation, which states only officers who violate a person’s right to “bias-free policing” and are decertified lose their qualified immunity protections.
Bias-free policing means decisions made without considering a person's race, ethnicity, sex, gender or other aspects. Many civil rights violations that are subject to lawsuits aren’t about bias necessarily, but about actions like excessive force or wrongful arrest. So some lawyers doubt that this provision changes much in practice.
Advocates are also disappointed that the provision leaves in language about “threats, intimidation and coercion” in the state civil rights law. That makes it difficult to sue police officers for a civil rights violation unless the officer explicitly threatens, intimidates or coerces the plaintiff in some way. (For example, just punching a person excessively isn’t enough, the officer would have had to explicitly threaten or intimidate the person before throwing the punch.)
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[1] Url:
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/12/01/massachusetts-police-reform-legislation-explainer
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