The House on Tuesday advanced a bill to prompt creation of a statewide policy for use of the electric shock guns police use to subdue suspects.
The bill gained preliminary approval on the House floor, with one last-minute amendment. At least one more amendment is expected Wednesday, when H.225 is scheduled for a final vote.
The House Government Operations Committee vetted the bill and supported Tuesday’s amendment, which has to do with de-escalation of incidents to avoid the use of force in the first place. The amendment expected Wednesday will mandate mental health training for officers.
Over the past two months, the committee has heard testimony from the CEO of manufacturer Taser International and law enforcement officials who support the bill, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, which opposes it, among others. Taser is a brand name for stun gun devices, also known as conducted electrical weapons.
Before the committee voted on the bill last week, some members said the legislation didn’t have enough teeth. They wanted more training requirements and other measures to prevent an occurrence like the 2012 death of Macadam Mason, a Thetford man said to have cognitive impairments who was shot in the chest with a Taser by a Vermont state trooper and died.
Other members of the committee said the bill, while perhaps not perfect, is better than nothing. There is no statewide Taser policy and training is not mandated beyond that offered by the manufacturer.
“This is a first step in order to have a statewide policy,” Rep. Ronald Hubert, R-Milton, of the Government Operations Committee told the House assembly Tuesday morning. Tasers are a “less-lethal alternative to deadly force,” he said.
Tasers are pistol-shaped weapons that fire two probes into a person and deliver a strong shock that causes full-body muscle contraction. The weapon can also be pressed against a person causing pain without muscle contraction.
The bill does not contain a policy, but asks a police oversight body, the Law Enforcement Advisory Board, to create one that includes certain guidelines. It charges the Criminal Justice Training Council with overseeing training.
The original bill said Tasers could only be used in situations that justify lethal force or “that will directly reduce an imminent risk of a person’s death through self-harm.”
The current version says Tasers may to be used “in response to an actively resistant subject, if there is reason to believe that using another compliance technique will result in a greater risk of injury to the officer, the subject or a third party.”
Tasers can be used in response to an “assaultive subject when lethal force does not appear to be objectively reasonable,” the bill says.
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, an original sponsor of the bill, introduced an amendment Tuesday on the floor that changes the word “should” to “shall” in a section instructing officers to first use de-escalation tactics to avoid using force in the first place. That amendment was adopted.
The bill also says Taser training must be coordinated with the Department of Mental Health.
An amendment expected Wednesday could further specify what type of mental health training officers must receive. That so-called Act 80 training is an eight-hour training session provided by the Criminal Justice Training Council to officers and all new recruits.
The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the current version of the bill. Executive Director Allen Gilbert has told the committee it does nothing more than codify existing police behavior, which he and others call overzealous.
Gilbert on Tuesday said the ACLU wants the bill altered to change what it considers “loose, permissive standard” for when Tasers should be shot to one that is “clearer, shorter” and reflects language from the U.S. Supreme Court case ruling Graham v. Connor (1989).
“We’re hoping that there will be an amendment to change the standard of deployment of Tasers, so they’re used in a way that will prevent another Macadam Mason incident,” Gilbert said after the House vote.
There should be an immediate (rather than imminent) threat of serious injury or expected death to an officer, subject or others, Gilbert said, before a Taser is used.
State police track the use of Tasers, and their data shows their use has declined in the past three years. There were 80 Taser deployments in 2011 and 36 in 2013, according to state police statistics.
During floor debate, Rep. Mary Hooper, D-Montpelier, asked Hubert whether public safety agencies have enough money to train all the officers who would need training under the bill.
Hubert said those entities told lawmakers they do have the capacity.
Rick Gauthier, executive director of the Criminal Justice Training Council and chairman of the Law Enforcement Advisory Board, said the potential cost of training is unknown at this point.
“Until I know how many officers we’re talking about who might be missing that mental health piece, it would be tough for me to assess what that would cost,” Gauthier said.
There could also be other costs such as time, supplies and overtime for departments who have to send officers to training, he said.
“The larger cost might be to those agencies who haven’t yet had that mental health training,” Gauthier said.
