With Little Civilian Oversight of LE; Things Get Worse For Black and Brown Folks

We call on the legislature to withdraw S.132 and H.496; ensure the oversight of the Criminal Justice Training Council's legislatively mandated responsibility to investigate the Bennington Police Department pursuant to 20 V.S.A. § 2401 and 2404 and call for immediate public hearings on civilian oversight of law enforcement. 

The newly introduced notion of “biased incidents” in the wake of the Morris case has set a standard of policy violence that is harmful to black and brown people in Vermont. This “bias language” creates a distraction and in some cases an alternative to a duty to prosecute the law.  The problem is exacerbated by the creation of the “Bias Incident Working Group”; confused by the re-designation of hate crimes to “bias crimes” and obfuscated by the replacement of criminal infractions with civil penalties.

Sufficient laws exist to address simple assault, disturbing the peace, stalking and hate crimes. Civil injunctive relief is also available. The laws must simply be equally prosecuted.  The amendment to S.132 that was adopted on March 19th, 2019, removed Sec. 1, 13 V.S.A. § 1466, in it its entirety.  The removal of the preexisting language in subsection (a), withdraws the AGs ability to impose a civil penalty or injunction.  H.494 in House Judiciary is proposing the use of language from 13 V.S.A. § 1061 to create civil penalties and changing our longstanding Hate Crimes statute (13 V.S.A. § 1455), to a "Bias Motivated" Crime bill.  None of this is helpful.   

The path that we are on has already emboldened white supremacists and left all our communities Incident Reporting Protocol.    Doing otherwise makes law enforcement less legitimate and is not conducive to building the trust required to promote the cooperation required to keep us safe.