Police law will cause harm to state

It took the founders of America three pages and fewer than 1,500 words to start this country with the Declaration of Independence. It took the state legislature of Connecticut 71 pages and nearly 20,000 words to undermine security and freedom while costing the taxpaying public more money. Regarding the recently passed “Police Accountability Act” in Connecticut, I would like to offer a few common sense observations. The first is the more words expended, the less straightforward the result. This bill’s verbosity will serve to allow a wide range of interpretations by those that seek to maintain control of our lives.

This legislation will do nothing to improve the lives of our citizens, or our police officers in Connecticut. Quite the contrary, it will increase insecurity of our lives and our property as the officers responding to a crime in progress will be forced to decide if their reputation, livelihood and freedom will be compromised by acting in a manner that is later reviewed and deemed to be excessive, inappropriate or unlawful. This second guessing will destroy pro-active policing.

Qualified immunity will be eliminated. While taking protections from our police officers for those split-second decisions, the bill’s language feeds additional work for the trial lawyers association, which as always, translates into more expenses to be borne by the taxpayer. Also included is language that mandates that an officer has a duty to intervene in situations where one of the colleagues may have overstepped normal police practices. This concept could even be applied to an officer who becomes aware of an issue after the fact via shop talk.

Yet again, Connecticut is being ill-served by legislators who have zero concept of their responsibilities to properly and efficiently manage state resources and expenditures. They prefer to enact measures that make them feel good in their social circles. Instead of cheap virtue gained by adding burdens to our law officers and taxpayers, when will our single-party-controlled state cut costs, break the unholy alliances of the well-connected and encourage a renaissance of true liberty in Connecticut?

Robert Ham Cheshire