Community leaders rally support for police reform legislation
Calls to slow down and reconsider police reform bills under negotiation on Beacon Hill are outnumbering those in support by a margin of about 5-1, said a group of activists Sunday pushing for more outreach to state lawmakers.
“While it’s beautiful and important that we get out in the street and march, it is also important that they get thousands of email and calls from us and that those will get logged,” said the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond of New Roots African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dorchester.
Police unions and their supporters opposed to reform sent state legislators more than 2,500 emails, letters and calls in the month of August alone, urging lawmakers to reconsider — about five times as many calls as they received from police-reform advocates.
“We need every city and town to mobilize. … We need everyone to say, ‘The way we’ve been doing policing is unacceptable,” White-Hammond said.
The high-profile killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police on Memorial Day sparked mass protests nationwide and triggered widespread support for policing reforms designed to increase accountability.
“We’ve seen too many incidents like these to make it clear that Massachusetts does indeed have a policing problem,” said the Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lynn.
Negotiations on the bill have moved behind closed doors as Massachusetts House and Senate delegates work to reconcile competing versions of the legislation that handle qualified immunity, facial recognition technology and no-knock warrants differently.
Police unions have stood up in opposition to the wide-ranging reforms, urging lawmakers to slow down, but even Gov. Charlie Baker — who typically stays out of the debate while legislation is being vetted — has pushed lawmakers to make a deal.
In an open letter to legislators last week, Massachusetts Coalition of Police President Scott Hovsepian called on lawmakers to “stop the reckless calls to ‘defund’ and ‘disarm’ police.”
“And we urge them to be honest and forthright about what genuinely constitutes effective police reform here in the Commonwealth, as opposed to mere punishment and retribution for acts committed by officers in other states,” he wrote.
On Thursday, Baker also called on lawmakers to come to a resolution on the bill and get it to his desk for a signature.
“I really hope that at some point this fall, we have a chance to appropriately celebrate the signing of legislation that will, hopefully, deal with and solve some of these very important and significant public safety issues going forward,” Baker said.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3jmCzyB
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