Sponsors Introduce Bill to Hold Law Enforcement Accountable

Denver, CO – Today, Senate President Leroy Garcia, Senator Rhonda Fields, Representative Leslie Herod, and Representative Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez unveiled legislation to improve public confidence in the integrity of law enforcement. The bill formalizes repercussive actions regarding police brutality and requires increased transparency by requiring the use of body-worn cameras. 

“Communities of color have been brutalized by police discrimination and violence for far too long and the recent demonstrations reflect that,” said President Leroy Garcia (D-Pueblo). “Police officers are in a position of public trust and should be held to the highest standard of conduct and accountability. But countless officers have escaped justice–eroding people’s confidence in those responsible for protecting the community. We need to root out those causing this erosion and reform our police transparency and repercussion standards.”

“Coloradans who have taken to our streets to protest injustice and declare that Black Lives Matter were sparked by an incident in Minnesota, but we’ve seen similar tragedies happen in our own state,” said Black Caucus Chair Leslie Herod (D-Denver). “We need to make changes here at the State Capitol and at statehouses across the country. We will take action to protect black lives, hold law enforcement accountable, and ensure that police officers truly serve and protect all of us.”

Additional transparency measures outlined in SB20-217 include mandating that all law enforcement agencies must track and publicly report data, including demographic information on uses of force, stops of civilians, searches of civilians, and forced entries into homes. This information will then be used by the Department of Public Safety to complete an annual report. 

The bill also works to rein in the use of deadly force by officers – bringing Colorado law in line with Supreme Court precedent which specifies that deadly force may only be used when there is an imminent risk to human life. If any peace officer is convicted of, pleads guilty to, or fails to intervene in the inappropriate use of physical force, they will be immediately terminated, de-certified, and barred from any future posting.

Furthermore, SB20-217 works to prevent the rehiring of officers who are found untruthful, terminated for cause, or are decertified, by listing them in a database that would prevent them from moving from one law enforcement agency to another, where they could continue to do harm. 

Finally, this legislation would remove the ability of officers to avoid public accountability by removing their eligibility for qualified immunity which has shielded officers from consequences and denied families justice

In the U.S., African Americans are at least 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people.  They are also 1.3 times less likely to be armed compared to Caucasians. Even more alarmingly, and despite well-documented cases of the use of excessive force, 99% of killings by police have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.  

According to recent studies, there are solutions that are proven to significantly reduce the number of police killings, but few departments have adopted them.