Colorado state lawmakers passed legislation on Saturday that will be signed by Governor Polis. It fundamentally changes policing in the state into the Progressive vision. The recent riots over the death of George Floyd are an excuse. Scapegoating police are an excuse. They are excuses for the far-left to install their progressive policing.
The Denver Post reported that Senate Bill 217 – the Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Bill – calls for multiple dramatic changes to the manner in which policing is conducted across the state.
Under the new law, every officer in the state will wear a bodycam by July of 2023, and bodycams are required to be activated whenever officers respond to a call, the Denver Post reported. If they don’t do it, they can be held criminally liable and face other penalties. They also have to make their bodycam footage available to the public on a short timeline.
Officers must intervene if they think another officer is using excessive force or they will be charged with a class 1 misdemeanor or worse.
Police will lose all their limited immunity protections. Colorado is setting itself up for massive lawsuits for aggressive policing or violating a person’s civil rights. That could mean anything and everything. Police will be held liable up to $25,000 per suit.
If a police department determines that an officer acted in bad faith, they may hold the officer accountable for up to 5% or $25,000, whichever is less, of the settlement or judgment collected by a plaintiff, the Denver Post reported.
Police officers have no due process to avoid fines outside their police department’s review. A department can agree to large settlements and the officer will have to pay 5% of it.
SB 217 bans chokeholds and even carotid control holds and would ban the use of deadly force against someone for a minor or nonviolent offense.
Deadly force can only be used as a last resort and never against a fleeing suspect unless he presents an immediate risk to the officers.
The legislation calls for officers to lose their Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board certification permanently after having pleaded guilty to inappropriate use of force, failure to intervene to stop the excessive force, or after having been found civilly liable for excessive force or failure to intervene.
The law also requires the creation by the state of a database of officers who have been decertified, fired, found to be untruthful, or repeatedly failed to follow training requirements, the Denver Post reported.
Not only that, but all law enforcement agencies will also have to track all contacts with the public and report it to the state for use in a searchable database. It will require a number of details like race.
If agencies don’t do it, they lose state funding.
Progressive policing will eliminate enforcement and neutralize the police. The excuse is the recent riots. They are making the police the scapegoats so they can basically end policing as we know it. Colorado hopes their law will become the model for the nation. It’s as if George Soros himself wrote it.
This may go too far but something has to be done about corrupt cops who routinely violate the Constitutional rights of citizens with impunity because they are not held accountable. The Government must revisit the qualified immunity statutes and make adjustments. There are far too many cops out on the streets who either don’t know or don’t care about the Constitution. This new law and all the mayhem across the country is in part due to this fact..
Qualified Immunity is NOT a statute.
It leaves regular policemen little choice, time to get out now.
They have been thrown under the bus.
Democrat policies have made policing impossible.
An officer who responds to a call can have anything happen.
The pendulum swings, sometimes too far.
These give em up liberal politicians are creating a big problem and they’re awakening a sleeping giant that they may regret.
Several more conservative states soon will be able to hire trained and experienced ex-Colorado police officers who will be resigning in droves. No one on a cops salary and who is confronted daily with potential violent people will be able to face the liability which this law sets upon them. For the sake of their families, Colorado officers will have to quit being police officers in that state. Other states readily will hire them, however, as most agencies always are recruiting, particularly experienced certified officers.
The Colorado voters who allow this to go forward are either apathetic or else duped, for no one with a modicum of sense would support this kind of legislation.
The long shot change is to disarm the people so that’s the beginning of a passive aggressive total control.
The next step in Colorado and other “progressive “ states will be to disarm the police so they don’t have the ability to hurt someone. You may think that is ridiculous, but mark my words, it will happen.
Absolutely. A person would be foolish to carry a weapon now. Better to let criminals get away with infractions than be possibly involved in a fatality which could result in you going to jail, even the death penalty for murder.
Perhaps you could drive a police cruiser off the parking lot, but what’s the liability of doing so?
I don’t think officers in Britain have been armed for years, so if there is an altercation, bystanders may stand in to help, but police officers can’t intervene in violent situations.
They can call for armed reinforcements, but apparently that’s pretty rare.
This move is solely for the destruction of the United States and just the next step in the communist plan to capture America. It will not end until these socialists/communists are held to account, either by the government or the citizens. I am thinking the citizens are going to have to be the ones to set things right. The commies would be much better off if it’s the government that doles out the punishment as apposed to citizens, because once the citizens are upset enough to act we will act violently.
I have a solution. Have every officer turn in their resignations and start a business, either individually or collectively, and provide security for those who will pay for that service. But refuse service for politicians and similar anarchists.
Welcome to anarchy and criminals running wild along with drug cartels.
So true.
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