City’s Criminal-Justice Quest Prevails At Capitol

Hartford — New Haven lawmakers saw years of lonely advocacy of criminal-justice reforms to protect citizens from brutal cops and blacks and Latinos from mass incarceration suddenly come to fruition — thanks in part to the assassination of nine people at the hands of a white supremacist in a historically black church in Charleston, S.C.

After annually shooting down the New Haveners’ proposals, the state’s suburban-dominated House and Senate handily approved two reform packages in a special session Monday, an ​“Act Concerning Excessive Use of Force” and a ​“Second Chance Society” bill.

The packages, which await the governor’s expected signature, include previously defeated measures proposed by State Sens. Gary Winfield and Martin Looney, such as eliminating extra ​“drug-free zone” penalties for narcotics purchasers and holding cops legally accountable for arresting most people who photograph or video-record them in public, and/or confiscate their cameras. Two such incidents of police abuse of activists Luis Luna in New Haven in 2010 and Father Jim Manship in East Haven in 2009 originally led Looney in 2011 to advance the proposal; but only this year, when citizen videos captured fatal encounters with police elsewhere in the country, did the bill get over the top in Connecticut.

The packages also require that independent investigators (prosecutors from outside a local district or specially named investigators) probe all civilian deaths at the hand of police; streamline the probation and parole process; push departments to hire more officers of color; and promote the spread of body cameras worn by police, with a requirement that video footage be preserved. Winfield has been at the forefront of those proposals as well, which like Looney’s camera bill would either get voted down or not even make it to a vote.

“I think this is the after-effect of what happened in Charleston,” State Rep. Bruce Morris (pictured above), a Norwalk Democrat who chairs the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, said after the vote. ​“There is a change in the mood in the country when it comes to issues of racial importance.”

The life and spirit of one of the nine people killed June 17 at Charleston’s Mother Emmanuel AME Church, Clementa Pinckney, was invoked several times during debate Monday. Pinckney was not only the pastor of Emmanuel AME, but also a state senator who championed reforms to address police brutality in that state. A bill in that state requiring police officers to wear body cameras that Pinckney championed after the death of Walter Scott, was signed by South Carolina’s governor, after he was killed. It was just the latest of a series of killings of black citizens — the rest by police — that have galvanized support around the country for long-dormant reforms.

Connecticut lawmakers passed the two criminal-justice reform bills Monday before voting to alter the state budget. That surprised proponents like state NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile. He had prepared for a bigger, longer fight.

“I am really at a loss for words,” Esdaile (pictured with New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker, another longtime reform proponent) said of the passage of the two bills. ​“This is one of the biggest political wins I’ve seen in my time in politics.”

One bill headed to Gov. Malloy’s desk took aim at making a number of changes to policing including requiring state law enforcement officers and municipalities that receive Office of Policy and Management grants to wear body cameras, holds police departments liable for cops who interfere with people recording them and requires departments to develop guidelines for the recruitment, retention and promotion of minority officers. (Read an Office of Legislative Research analysis of that bill here.)

The other bill that the governor is expected to sign eliminates mandatory two-year minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders caught with illegal substances within 1,500 feet of a a school, day care center or public-housing development. (Read an OLR analysis of this bill here.) Malloy came to New Haven specifically to illustrate how urban centers were impacted by the enhanced penalties of the ​“drug-free zones.” (Read more about that here.) The House passed the bill 98 to 46 while the Senate approved it 23 to 13.

But it was clear before the votes Monday that not every lawmaker was infected with the mood that Morris referenced. The opposition to the the bills, particularly the one aimed at policing, made for a bittersweet celebration for New Haven State Rep. Robyn Porter and Sen. Winfield.

Porter (pictured on the floor Monday) had tears in her eyes after white suburban opponents of the police reform bill questioned the motives of the bill. The opponents spoke of ​“reverse racism” over the bill’s language on recruiting, retaining and promoting minority officers. They argued that there was no reason to deal with the issue of race in the bill at all.

Some criticized the bill for not protecting more minorities, and suggested that language that defined minorities as people ​“whose race is other than white or whose ethnicity is defined as Hispanic or Latino” was divisive.

“The discussion has been lost,” said Rep. John Shaban, a Redding Republican. ​“We started with a discussion on excessive force and landed in a discussion about race and ethnicity, and that is unfortunate.”

After four hours of debate, the House ultimately voted 108 to 37 in favor of the measure. Porter, who is black, lives in Newhallville and is the daughter of South Carolina natives, said many of her colleagues’ objections to the bill were based on hypothetical situations that negated the real, documented experiences of people of color who are disproportionately brutalized or killed at the hands of police. She said she found that offensive.

“Experience changes your perspective,” she said. ​“If you don’t have the experience, trust my experience because it is true. Honor that. Respect that and help me do something about it.”

Winfield, who helped negotiate many of the details of the bill and was down in the House Monday working to ensure it passed, said the measure is designed to address the real experiences of black and Hispanic communities because those are the communities most impacted by police brutality.

“It’s not designed to address fictitious scenarios for communities that don’t have a problem,” he said. Like Porter, Winfield said he was offended by the made-up scenarios of discrimination that some legislators used to describe their concerns, particularly given the public testimony given by black and Hispanic people, including lawmakers, during the regular session about being racially profiled and harassed by the police. (Click here to read about and above to watch a similar exchange between Winfield and a suburban lawmaker during a similar debate on the measure earlier this session.)

On Monday, one lawmaker invoked a comparison of discrimination based on eye color that he experienced in a college class to describe his concerns. Another raised questions about the definitions of ​“white” and ​“minority.”

Winfield had not intended to speak on the bill when it came to the Senate Monday for a vote. But when he did his voice broke with what sounded like unshed tears as he described what it is to tell his 9‑year-old son why some people might fear that ​“he would grow up with the intention to rape white women” based on the color of his skin.

He said the reality is that unlike other groups in America that experienced discrimination, black people won’t ever be white, no matter how it is defined. And they won’t have access to the privilege that accompanies checking that box.

“I think it is important to recognize what police officers face, but there should be no inherent danger in walking out of your house and being black,” he said.

State Sen. Looney hailed the bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate, as ​“one of the most important policy bills we have dealt with in 2015,” particularly the very language on hiring to which some lawmakers objected.

He said that many of the protests around policing like those in Ferguson, Missouri, arose out of a ​“lack of trust and understanding” directly related to the racial makeup of police departments that are ​“so radically different from the communities they policed.”

“Policing in those communities was seen as an occupying force,” he said. ​“One of the ways to change that is for the police department to reflect the community that it serves.”

Morris said that the bills passed in special session are first steps to reform. But he said ​“there is work to be done on people’s understanding of the black and Latino experience … [and] understanding and recognition of systemic injustice.”

“Though we were able to pass these bills in a bipartisan way, there are still a number of minds that need to be changed,” he said. ​“We must continue the conversation because it is in the best interest of the state and the country.”

The Second-Chance Society bill drew some Republican and conservative support. It passed 98 to 46 in the state House and 23 to 13 in the Senate.