One day after a Minneapolis jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, the Colorado House Judiciary Committee advanced legislation seeking to build on the historic police accountability package approved in the aftermath of Floyd’s death in 2020.

Though that trial was conducted more than 900 miles away from the Gold Dome, it was cited repeatedly over the course of the hearing that stretched just shy of five hours on Wednesday.

“At the end of the day, …  our goal is to ensure that we stop seeing hashtags; that we don’t know anyone else’s name because they are dead, and instead be able to know them and judge them and love them for who they are alive,” said Rep. Leslie Herod, who along with Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez is serving as the House prime sponsor of House Bill 21-1250.

Both Denver Democrats also served as the House prime sponsors of Senate Bill 20-217. The bill heard by the Judiciary panels seeks to further that legislation with some major provisions, including:

• broadening the requirement for law enforcement officers to use body-worn cameras to include wellness checks;
• expanding data collection requirements;
• adding flexibility to consequences delivered by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board for officers who use unnecessary force;
• and removing qualified immunity for Colorado State Patrol troopers, a protection that was stripped from local law enforcement officers by SB 217.

Polis signs historic police reform bill, among first in the nation

The legislation would also strip funding from law enforcement agencies in municipalities that shield officers from the personal liability exposed by a provision of SB 217. Under that bill, employers indemnify peace officers for liability and judgments. But if the peace officer did not act in good faith or acted unlawfully, the officer would be held personally liable for up to $25,000 or 5% of the judgment, whichever is less.

The move to strip funding is a direct response to the Greenwood Village city council, a body that last summer passed a resolution to continue indemnifying its officers against any expenses, judgments and settlements that could arise by preemptively determining its officers would not act in bad faith.

Greenwood Village under fire for its resolution to protect officers from civil liability

That resolution drew a series of marches and protests last summer and brought six current and former Greenwood Village residents before the Judiciary panel to testify in support of the bill. Among those was Jeff Leitner, a white man who said he feared for the life of his Black son in the aftermath of that resolution.

“My fear now, every day when my son walks out the door to go to school and I look him in the eye and I say, ‘Make smart decisions today,’ is that that may be the last day that I see him, not because of his actions but because of the color of his skin,” he said while testifying in support of the bill. “The city of Greenwood Village has made that more of a possibility than it was previously.”

But while Leitner, some of his Greenwood Village neighbors, the ACLU of Colorado and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar cheered the bill, a series of law enforcement groups and officials called for changes . Those included the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police, the Arapahoe County Sheriffs Office, the County Sheriffs of Colorado Association, the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and the Colorado Municipal League. The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, opposed the bill outright.

Those groups indicated they took issue with nearly all of the bill’s provisions, saying they wanted clarity in how to execute SB 217 but were instead presented with more confusion on reporting requirements, broader body-worn camera requirements and changes to civil liability.

Law enforcement stakeholders took issue with one provision beyond all others, though: one that seeks to clarify use-of-force standards by requiring officers exhaust de-escalation techniques before resorting to force. Ron Sloan, director of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, called those standards “impractical and unacceptable.”

“That is a deadly formula for officers to interact with the public,” he said. “They have to at times take people under control and they have to use force in order to effectively affect an arrest or an apprehension.”

Sloan cited a 1981 incident in which a standard DUI took a violent turn and ended with the suspect killing Officer Debra Corr with her own weapon.

“Officer Corr had no time or opportunity to run through a continuum of de-escalation strategies when this individual immediately turned from unarmed and compliant to combative and deadly,” Sloan said. “I give this example to illustrate for you the real-life dynamics of what occurs in events across the state with peace officers every hour of every day.”

But Herod said the use-of-force standards had been called for in meetings with law enforcement officers and added “there has been a lot of conversation” about the use of force since passing SB 217.

“It is something that continues to evolve and this reflects the evolution of today and where we are at in this country, and where we want to go,” she said, “how to hold law enforcement accountable and when they should use force against someone in our communities.”

The legislation cleared the committee on a 7-4 party-line vote, with Rep. Terri Carver voicing much of the GOP opposition. The Colorado Springs Republican cited many of the same concerns as the law enforcement stakeholders, including a primary focus of the use-of-force standard. She said the definitions of the bill made that standard less clear and more subjective. 

The bill now heads to the House Appropriations Committee.