New Haven Independent

She applauded the success of the Raise the Age campaign, and a bill requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns within 72 hours of when they should have known one was missing (i.e., when not away from home). Gov. Rell signed that law, which goes into effect Oct. 1.

But, Fair said, “There’s still a loophole between the violence in our community and the gun control bill, because the person who’s putting the guns in the hands of the kids is still not paying the price. Police said a few months ago they started tracing guns and overwhelmingly those guns were coming from the suburbs, and you’d have to be a fool to believe kids from the inner city are going out to the suburbs to break in and steal guns.”

State Rep. Mike Lawlor, an East Haven Democrat who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee, has a somewhat different take: “There are very severe penalties for anyone who traffics in guns. The only loophole is the one this bill closes, which is that some people could avoid an arrest for trafficking in guns because they could say, ‘Someone must have stolen my gun’ when police find a gun used in a crime. Now they won’t be able to use that excuse. It’s been a felony since 1984 to unlawfully transfer a gun, [but] under the old law, there was nothing cops could do because there was no obligation to report a lost or stolen gun. Now, this allows the police to do something. If you lie to police, it’s a five-year felony. It’s an important loophole to fix, but no one’s suggesting this is the solution to the violence problem.”

Fair said her biggest disappointment was the governor’s veto of a medical marijuana bill. “We just came so close, and then it was vetoed. The governor said, ‘It was a difficult decision.’ What’s difficult? Seventy percent of people in this state supported it. I think she’s following her own personal opinion. I’m losing a lot of faith in government because it seems all about personal ambition, and we’re trying to get people to get more involved. It’s not about what the people have to say.”

Lawlor said the use of medical marijuana has been legal in the state since 1982, but it’s also a crime to possess it under federal law; there was no mechanism to bridge that gap. The bill that passed this year, which he supported, would have put strict guidelines in place to regulate its use. “This would have been an affirmative step if you got caught,” he said. “Assuming your doctor prescribed it and you were registered, if you got caught with a small amount you would not be prosecuted. We would have been the 13th state to do this. If you think this would be an entré to abuse marijuana, good luck, because they’d be registered, the cops would know who they are, and it’s already widespread in Connecticut from what I can tell. What this would have done is that for people who use it for alleviation of muscle spasms, nausea, wasting syndrome [e.g., from AIDS] — they’re going to do it anyway, but they wouldn’t have felt like criminals.”

Another bill People Against Injustice and other grassroots groups around the state supported would have removed 1,500-foot “drug-free zones” around schools, day care centers and public housing. Those arrested on drug charges in such zones receive mandated longer prison sentences; the zones cover practically entire cities around the state. One reform group estimated that the only part of New Haven exempt from coverage under this law is the Yale golf course.

“It didn’t pass again,” Fair lamented of an effort to change that. She called the law blatantly discriminatory. “All it does is lead to locking up more African Americans and Latinos. Prosecutors use that to get people to plead guilty because if they don’t, they know they have an extra three years hanging over them.”

Lawlor called the 1,500-foot law is a result of the law of unintended consequences. “That law was supposed to address people who sell drugs to kids and near schools. In practice it’s the same penalty no matter where you are so you might as well sell to kids right outside school. It’s an example of how drug laws create racial disparities - I don’t think it was intended - but if you get caught possessing drugs in an urban area the penalties are more severe than if you’re caught in a suburban or rural area. I don’t think there’s an agenda. Legislators just don’t like lowering penalties.” He supported the change, however.

The signature issue for People Against Injustice this year was promoting the creation of an oversight commission of the Department of Correction, which the group felt could make Connecticut a national model for citizen/legislative oversight. Their commission would include “not only DOC officials, but also DOC employees, past and present prisoners, families of prisoners, service providers, volunteers and individuals with expertise in corrections.”

The bill was opposed by the corrections union. Lawlor said he tried to come up with a compromise, because the original proposal had no chance of passing. In the process it was transformed into an advisory committee, all of whose members would be appointed by the DOC Commissioner - a totally unacceptable compromise, Fair said.

In the end, nothing passed. Although Lawlor supported the original proposal, he added, “In theory the General Assembly is the civilian oversight of all the departments; we can bring them in to testify and we’ve certainly done that from time to time. We’re supposed to hold the agencies accountable, and we do.” Asked then if another body was necessary, or extraneous, he didn’t respond definitively.

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