During Friday's broadcast of Alabama Public Television's "Capitol Journal," State Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D-Birmingham) spoke critically of House Bill 202 (HB202), also known as the Back the Blue Act.
The bill, sponsored by State Rep. Rex Reynolds (R-Huntsville), would improve civil liability protections for law enforcement officers while performing their official duties.
Smitherman claimed the legislation was fraught with problems that would threaten potential innocent people and alleged it would give police "a green light to kill black folks."
"Well, I'll say this — under this present form, I don't have any intention of voting for it," Smitherman said. "I can just tell you that. I don't know from there what will take place on the floor. But I can assure you that on this present form, I don't. Number one — you have a situation where all police officers are not POST-trained. So you don't even have a set standard of what they're going to be measured by and held accountable in terms of their training. So that's the first thing. They need to be POST-certified trained the way all of them should have the same training. And yes, it's going to take some time to do that, but that should be in place first because what you're doing now, you're asking a person who hasn't been trained to make a split-second decision on whether they're going to shoot somebody or not under every circumstances that can exist. Then the bill moves to a point where it has another buffer before you get to court by having some review panel look and see whether or not it ought to go to court. Well, you know, that's all you got to do is just stack the review panel and then they are going to rule in favor of the officer every time. So the citizen is lost then at that point. They dead and they lost."
He continued, "The third thing is that the bill talks about that if you are on a legitimate assignment — legitimate, going to serve a warrant, that's legitimate. But you go to the wrong house. And then that person, you tell them to get your ID or something, they go in your pocket, and then you think they get in the gun and you kill them. It's no, they protected. The bill protects that kind of action. You can't bring a court action. You can't be successful in a court action, or you may not even get to court. So what I, the statements I made, I said that that's a green light to kill black folks. That's what I said. Because if you notice, most of these folks getting shot anyway are African-Americans around the country, no different situations."
"And now you got a situation where you got one group of officers who are very good officers," Smitherman added. "You don't have to worry about them. You got another group over here, I don't know what percentage, but you got another group over here who have biases against black people. They tell the truth as it is — they have bias. And you got another group that may have a little fear. These two groups, they're going to, I'm worried about these two groups, because that immunity bill protects their action."
Jeff Poor is the editor-in-chief of 1819 News and host of "The Jeff Poor Show," heard Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-noon on Mobile's FM Talk 106.5. To connect or comment, email [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @jeff_poor.
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