Massachusetts state senators agreed Monday to scale back restrictions they had sought to put on the use of facial recognition software by law enforcement and to limit the influence of a civilian led commission over police training.
The "Cost of Police Misconduct Act" mandates that the information would be maintained on a federal online database managed by the Attorney General's office.
"[Officers are] not signing up for people to show up at their private residence and intimidate them and their spouse and the rest of their family. That's nothing that our law enforcement officers sign up for," Sen. Luetkemeyer told
“These jobs are complex, they’re difficult, and we should not just hand them over to people who haven’t fully developed themselves,” said Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who is chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
Lawmakers in Massachusetts are set to vote on a police reform bill that would make some of the biggest changes in years to law enforcement oversight and rules in the state.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a number of police reform bills that ban chokeholds and carotid restraint techniques and allow the state's Justice Department (DOJ) to probe police shootings.
The bill was prompted after deputies in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department took unauthorized photos of the deceased at the site of the Bryant helicopter crash in Calabasas that were later shared outside the context of the investigation.
Kentucky law currently states that participating in a riot where someone damages property is enough to face first-degree felony charges.
The Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday narrowly passed a bill to eliminate qualified immunity for police, a legal defense that often prevents officers from facing civil lawsuits, just days after rejecting the same bill.
St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden says his department is currently down 145 officers and that the residency requirement is the greatest challenge his department has with recruitment and retention.