Moment Seized: Winfield Pushes Cop Accountability Bill Past The Finish Line

The State Senate early Wednesday voted 21 – 15 in support of a hotly contested police accountability bill after over 10 hours of impassioned debate led by New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, culminating his decade-long quest to convince a suburban-dominated legislature that Black lives matter when it comes to law enforcement.

The vote came at 4 a.m. at the end of the State Senate’s marathon socially distanced special session, which started at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and was held in the State Capitol building in Hartford and broadcast live on CT‑N.

Now that the bill, called House Bill 6004: An Act Concerning Police Accountability, has been approved by both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate, it advances to Gov. Ned Lamont to be signed into law. He is expected to sign it.

To get there, Winfield spent hours arguing passionately against efforts by some colleagues questioning his assertions about police misconduct against people of color.

“This is an issue about power,” Winfield, the bill’s top proponent, said on the Senate floor Tuesday evening. ​“This is an issue about how power is used in communities. This is an issue about how power is misused in communities. Yes, this is about cost, but there are costs for communities who cannot believe — although I wish they could — that the police are operating to protect them. That’s what this is about.”

Click here to read the full bill.

All the chamber’s Republicans voted against the bill. All the Democrats but one (Waterbury’s Joan Hartley) voted for it. Police unions fought against it, civil-rights groups for it.

The vote comes just over two months after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked mass protests across the state and the nation against police brutality.

Thousands of people in New Haven and across Connecticut demanded in those rallies an immediate and overdue response to the long history of unequal treatment of Black and brown people at the hands of law enforcement in this country. The marches led legislators to be receptive to considering police reform proposals — including ideas they rejected when Winfield proposed them in the past — in a special session.

The bill’s provisions include:

• Creating a new independent inspector general office charged with investigating deadly use of force by police.

• Requiring behavioral health assessments for police officers every five years.

• Banning chokeholds except when officers believe they personally face an imminent threat of deadly violence.

• Authorizing all Connecticut municipalities to create civilian review boards with subpoena power.

• Requiring an officer to intervene if they see a colleague violating someone’s rights.

• Prohibiting police departments from hiring officers who have been decertified for past misconduct while employed by another law enforcement agency in Connecticut.

Speaking towards the end of the debate at 3:30 a.m., New Haven Democrat and State Sen. President Pro Tempore Martin Looney (pictured) described the bills as ​“addressing urgently needed transparency issues, issues of professionalism, issues of accountability, and issues of public safety.”

“The problem isn’t the good officers,” Winfield argued at one point. ​“The problem is that there are officers who have been given power, and they’ve been allowed to use that power, and we’ve pretended as if the system is going to check it. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. And it will not check it” without reforms like this.

Logan Leads Attack On Immunity Change

As was the case during a 12-hour virtual public listening session earlier this month as well as during an overnight nearly eight hour debate in the State House of Representatives last week, Republican and Democrat critics alike focused their concerns on the 71-page bill’s Section 41.

That section limits when police officers can invoke the legal defense of governmental immunity. It also creates a new cause of action in state court designed to make it easier for people harmed by police officers to file civil lawsuits seeking financial damages when an officer’s actions are found to be ​“malicious, wanton or wilful.”

George Logan, a Republican senator who represents Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, Hamden, Naugatuck and Woodbridge, offered perhaps the most ardent attack on Section 41 in a 20-minute speech decrying what he said would be inevitable unintended consequences of the bill’s passage.

Logan said reforming governmental immunity — a state-level equivalent of the federal judicially evolved, common law doctrine of qualified immunity — would result in higher crime, fewer police officers, frivolous lawsuits, and greater costs to municipalities in the form of officer-specific insurance policies.

“The effect of [Section 41] is going to be that cities, towns will hire less police officers to try to make ends meet,” Logan asserted. ​“That will result in less patrols. Less patrols will result in higher crime and violence. The criminal will know this. That is the problem. That is the fatal flaw.”

Logan repeated a line of criticism offered by many Republicans Tuesday night: That reforming governmental immunity as it currently exists will discourage officers from doing their jobs because it will expose them and the municipalities that employ them to expensive, frivolous lawsuits related to the necessary work of proactive policing.

North Haven Republican and Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano (pictured) offered a less dire take during his time at the mic around 3 a.m. Wednesday. But he too opposed the governmental immunity change as worded in the bill, warning that it will likely lead to an increase in ​“frivolous lawsuits” — particularly because of the one-year statute of limitations as defined in the bill. He said that limited time frame between when an alleged civil rights violation has occurred and when a plaintiff has to file suit will likely encourage lawyers to sue quickly and generously.

“Good cops are going to be sued,” he said. ​“No doubt about it.”

Winfield, East Hartford Democrat Saud Anwar, an American flag-clad Bridgeport Democrat Dennis Bradley (see more below), and other defenders of the bill argued that that critique misrepresents the actual language of the bill. They said it overlooks the very real harm caused by ​“bad apple” police officers who can avoid legal, professional, and financial consequences all thanks to a doctrine developed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Winfield pointed out that Section 41 allows a police officer to invoke governmental immunity only if they have an ​“objectively good faith belief that such officer’s conduct did not violate the law.”

Per the language of the bill, a municipality or law enforcement agency must indemnify a police officer from financial loss and expense in court so long as they are ​“acting in the discharge of the officer’s duties.”

And the only time that an individual officer would be held personally, financially liable — in the form of having to repay a municipality or law enforcement agency providing insurance for them — would be when a jury finds that that officer’s actions were ​“malicious, wanton or wilful.”

“Do we need police officers in our communities who are doing bad-faith activities?” asked Anwar (pictured).

“Do we need people who are actually going to harm fellow individuals with malice, with wilful bad intention?”

This bill is not about defunding the police, Anwar insisted. No matter how many times critics said that’s what the bill sets out to do.

Instead, he said, it’s about defining ​“bad apples” and removing an obstacle currently in place that prevents people harmed by officers from even having their day in court in a suit alleging civil rights violations by police.

Bradley (pictured) laid out exactly how qualified immunity works in practice after the U.S. Supreme Court essentially created the doctrine in 1967.

“It is not enough for a plaintiff or a victim to say, ​‘This officer did something to violate my rights,’” he said. ​“It’s not enough. You have to show as a matter of law that there is case law that is extremely similar to the action of that police officer. And on the basis of that, the police officer should have known that his conduct is illegal.”

Without that ​“clearly established” judicial precedent, he said, any officer is almost always left off the hook.

“It doesn’t matter how egregious the conduct is.” That’s because a judge can and will simply throw out the case if there is not a past case with nearly the exact same fact pattern and context, and that resulted in a judgment against the officer.

This bill, Bradley said, in particular Section 41 of this bill, will not result in police officers losing their homes, their assets, and their financial livelihoods because of frivolous lawsuits. Rather, this will allow people harmed by the police to bring civil suits in state court and have a greater likelihood of their cases heard by a jury.

During that trial, he said, the plaintiff still has to convince the jury that the officer’s actions were ​“malicious, wanton or wilful.”

“Those words have meaning,” he said.

At the end of his roughly 10 minutes of testimony, Bradley pulled out an America flag and pulled it over his shoulders. He said he did so not out of disrespect, but because he loves this country more than he loves himself.

“We don’t want to see a country that is divided,” he said. ​“We have to bring everybody together. And this legislation is exactly that.” It isn’t designed to bring cops down, he said, but rather to let all civilians know that they can hold accountable police who do harm.

“People Who Have Not Been Able To Get Justice”

The Democrats who defended the police accountability bill Tuesday night and Wednesday morning did not turn solely to legal arguments when making their case.

They also shared personal stories about the harmful impact of living one’s life in the shadow of structural inequality.

“The center of this problem is that Black people in this state, in this country, have a problem when it relates to police,” Winfield (pictured) said, ​“and it goes back to the foundational history of this country. It goes back to the foundations of policing in this country. It goes back to slavery.”

Winfield said he has seen people in his neighborhood of Newhallville get pulled over by the police — that he has been pulled over by the police — and feared whether or not he would survive the encounter, simply because of his skin color.

He said he is the father of four children ​“who walk this earth in Black skin. It’s important to me that if something ever happened [to me], that they have recourse. But it’s also important to me that [the State Senate] think about where the conversation should be centered. And the conversation should be centered on those people who have not been able to get justice.”

Bridgeport Democrat Marilyn Moore (pictured above) agreed. She also opened up about some of the discrimination she has faced as a Black woman born and raised in Bridgeport.

She said she’s been stopped by police in Bridgeport, Trumbull, and Monroe. She said a man once confronted her in a Fairfield parking lot because he believed she had stolen a car with a State Senate license plate. She said she received hundreds of ​“vulgar” letters from people from majority white towns throughout Connecticut, urging her to vote against the bill.

“We get this all the time,” she said. ​“This cannot continue.”

Monroe told her Senate colleagues that when she uses the terms racism, equality, and social justice, ​“that is not rhetoric. That is what we live as Black and brown people every day.”

“We’re here today because our communities will not allow us to continue on the same road that we are on,” she continued. ​“Because it’s taking us down as a community. It’s taking us down as a state. It’s taking us down as the United States of America.”

Hartford Democrat Douglas McCrory (pictured) said that two of the most difficult days in his life were July 5 and July 6, 2016.

On July 5, he said, Alton Sterling was shot and killed by two Baton Rouge police officers in Louisiana.

McCrory said he drove his teenage son to school and asked him if he had seen the video showing Sterling’s death. ​“Yes,” his son replied. And the two then had a conversation about how to ​“survive the encounter” with as a Black person interacting with a police officer.

The very next day, on July 6, Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota. Driving his son to school that day, McCrory asked him if he had seen the video showing Castile’s death.

“Yes,” his son replied. And then he turned to his dad and asked, ​“When does it end?”

“What do you mean?” McCrory replied.

“When does the mistreatment end?” his son continued.

McCrory paused. ​“I said, ​‘Boy. As long as you stay Black, this is how it’s gonna be. And you’re going to have to figure out how to survive in this society as a Black man. And that’s not the type of environment or country I want to live in.”

He said this is why he and Winfield and Moore and so many other Black and brown legislators are so passionate about this police accountability bill, and other reforms like it. ​“We cannot understand what we did to be treated this way,” he said. ​“We just wanted to be treated like anyone else.”

“What It’s Like To Feel Different”

Greenwich Democrat Alexandra Kasser (pictured) said she supported the bill in part because she has spent the past two months listening closely to experiences with police shared by her colleagues of color.

She also described the ​“intimidation and fear, domination and control” that she experienced in a previous relationship with someone who was violent and abusive.

“I know what it’s like to be dehumanized and feel powerless,” she said. ​“Domestic abuse and police abuse are different, but the power dynamic is the same. Because that’s what it is is. It’s a power differential. One party or individual using their power to dominate another.”

She said that this bill, and particularly Section 41, seeks to address that power imbalance. ​“It draws a line and says we cannot dehumanize one another without consequences. It creates a boundary that cannot be crossed that says every person is a person, every person has value, every person must be heard and validated.”

Danbury Democrat Julie Kushner (pictured) said she too would be supporting the bill because of conversations with constituents and legislative colleagues in recent weeks about ​“systemic racism” and its connection to law enforcement.

Like Kasser, she relayed her experiences living on the margins of a community — in her case, growing up in the only Jewish family living in a rural Iowa community populated mostly by German-American farmers in the 1950s.

“It taught me what it’s like to feel different,” she said. And her parents, she said, instilled in her the belief that ​“no one should be treated as lesser than because they’re different.”

Vernon Republican Dan Champagne (pictured) also tapped into his own personal history with the police — as a member of Vernon law enforcement for over two decades — to underscore his opposition to the bill.

He said he came within a second of shooting a man who had driven to Connecticut from Boston with his kidnapped wife held captive in his car. That man pointed his gun at Champagne’s partner, Champagne recalled. He said he was a split-second away from shooting the man, but the man killed himself first.

Champagne also recalled using a chokehold in one instance because that was the only tactic he said he could use in order to pry a man who was choking someone himself off of the third party.

He said he’s worried that those actions — whether the chokehold he used to protect someone else, or the shot he could have fired to protect himself and his partner — could be found to have violated the law, if the police accountability bill were passed.

“Call And Responsibility”

Champagne, Logan, and their colleagues ultimately were not able to win over enough Democrats to vote against the bill.

Instead, the majority voted in support of the bill championed by Winfield.

The New Haven state senator made what felt like a closing pitch for the bill in a speech given at around 2:10 a.m. (the final vote wouldn’t come until just before 4 a.m.)

Winfield has proposed police accountability bills since his winning his first election to the legislature in 2008 after years of police-accountability activism. Some, including racial-profiling measures, have passed. Others remained blocked until the Black Lives Matter marches over the past two months convinced his colleagues to take them up in this bill.

Wiping tears from his cheeks and pausing frequently to maintain composure, WInfield said, ​“No matter what I do, part of me is broken because of the work I’ve been doing for the past three decades. Part of me is broken because I walk around in the skin I walk around in.’

To his Democrat colleagues who criticized the process — who saw the Judiciary Committee take the lead on the bill, while other committees did not hold public hearings or listening sessions on the matter during the special session — Winfield said, ​“To invest more in the process than in the people who are affected by the process is a problem itself.”

“I know that history is written in the action that we take right now,” he concluded. ​“And there has never been a greater call and responsibility.”