⏩ State Senate nears vote on police reform.

HARTFORD — A landmark bill in the era of Black Lives Matter was heading for a vote in the state Senate on Tuesday night, with the Democratic majority pushing to hold police more accountable for malicious brutality and ending the decades of bad cops who were fired from one department and then found work in other towns and cities.

At about 5:30 p.m., Sen. Gary Winfield introduced the bill and stressed that the transparency and reform legislation has been in the making since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but is not aimed at the many exemplary Connecticut cops.

“I don’t want to talk about the good officers,” said Winfield, D-New Haven, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “Let them go do their job. I want to have a discussion about the officers who are operating in a rogue way and make sure that we deal with them. This conversation is focused on the officers who do the wrong thing, who are given power and don’t know how to use it, and that power goes unchecked. And this bill checks that power.”

If approved, the bill, which passed the House of Representatives last Friday, would head next to Gov. Ned Lamont, who said on Monday that he would sign the legislation into law.

It would create an independent inspector general to investigate policerelated shootings, prohibit choke holds except in cases where cops fear for their lives, and train police in better de-escalation tactics when dealing with crowds. Cops who witness coworkers abuse suspects would be required to intercede and report the instances, with new whistle blower protections in attempt to end the so-called blue wall of silence.

Sen. John Kissel, Renfield, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said that even though he might have spent 60 hours collaborating on the bill, he wasn’t going to vote for it. He had serious doubts about its goals.

“I’m not a racist, I’m not a bigot, I’m not insensitive to what’s going on out there,” Kissel said, “but there are parts of this bill just go a little bit too far.” He warned that nuisance lawsuits could result from the most-controversial section of the bill that would eliminate immunity from civil liability for officers linked to brutalizing people in a willful, wanton manners.

“I think this issue is not simply about the case in which someone is killed in an interaction with police, but how power is given to police and how they are able to use that power, and whether or not that power has a check on it,” Winfield said. “Someone said to me is this about history or policing, and I don’t see a difference there. This is not something that is new, not something that is rushed, but something that is a longstanding part of our history.”

Winfield acknowledge that the immunity section, which survived in a tie vote in the House Friday morning, was important because of the failure of the system.

“If you’re one of the people on the wrong side of the equation, when the system fails you again, you deserve the ability to have some form of recourse,” said Winfield. “That’s why that is important to this conversation. And I will say as the father of four children who walk this earth in the black skin that I have, it’s important to me that if something ever happened, they’d have recourse.”

Kissel warned that someone suing police would likely target as many officers as possible.

“You’re going to maybe over-charge in the litigation to make sure that you are correct about who’s ultimately at fault,” Kissel said. “I also get that there’s litigation out there where folks are looking to get money and if you examine some of these suits, many of them are ultimately settled. Well, people can say the settlement is probably nuisance value. You add up enough nuisancevalue suits, all of a sudden you’ve got a big issue.”

Kissel warned that the legal exposure could discourage officers from staying in the profession.

“I think ultimately there might be unintended consequences,” Kissel said.

During a 45-minute back-and-forth with Winfield, Sen. Dan Champagne, R-Vernon, a retired police officer, continually referred to the so-called defund the police movement. “This bill is bad for police and it’s bad for correction officers,” Champagne said. “We’re rushing this through.”

But Sen. Alexandra Kasser, D-Greenwich, said that police abuse and domestic abuse are very similar, in which power is exploited to take advantage. “It’s a power differential,” she said. “One party, one person using their power to dominate, control, hurt or exploit another person and it’s wrong, whether it happens inside our homes, or inside our communities, on our streets, anywhere. It is wrong.”

Sen. Julie Kushner, D Danbury, said she’s spent much of the last six weeks listening to her Black colleagues. “I’ve heard about their experiences,” she said. “I’ve heard about the fear in Black and brown communities. I’ve heard and believe that too many Black and brown children are raised in fear of the police rather than having the trust we would all want in the local authorities.”