In 2016, at the request of community members I introduced HB 2908 to convene a 27-member Joint Legislative Task Force on the Use of Deadly Force in Community Policing. The next year, Sen. David Frockt and I sponsored Senate Bill 5073 / House Bill 1529 which proposed adoption of all the recommendations of the Task Force and provided the platform from which the subsequent conversations and negotiations occurred.

I am proud of how the resulting HB 3003 sponsored by Rep. Roger Goodman in the 2018 Session demonstrated the best of the citizen legislature at work. After years of the very necessary but difficult community conversations, it perfected I-940 with a compromise between community leaders, prosecutors, police, defense attorneys and other stakeholders. Along with changes to our state law, the new reforms would have included better training for officers on how to de-escalate situations.

This is just the beginning of changing the culture of law enforcement – to embrace the notion of community policing, with stronger bonds of trust to the neighborhoods and people served by law enforcement. I look forward to I-940 results and follow-up bills in 2019 to increase culturally appropriate training of our law enforcement officers.