By BRIAN PORTER | The Rocky Mountain Voice
Rep. Ryan Armagost, formerly a law enforcement officer, was critical Wednesday of a rushed process and lack of stakeholder involvement in House Bill 1460, titled “addressing measures to strengthen responses to law enforcement misconduct.”
The bill advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday and to the House floor by a 6-5 vote.
“This bill was pretty blatantly designed to be punitive for officers,” he said. “It is littered with punitive action without due process.”
The bill requires law enforcement agencies to respond to allegations of officer misconduct with an investigation, and officers are required to report allegations of misconduct by their peers. Should an officer fail to report, a Class 2 misdemeanor penalty could be assessed. That penalty could potentially take an officer off the street for four months and place them in jail. It could also result in a Brady bill for an officer simply accused of wrongdoing, Armagost argues.
He says the bill is related to three claims of officer wrongdoing by advocates.
“The problems they encountered were not anything that would have been prevented or otherwise fixed by this bill,” Armagost said. “The agencies have a process now.”
Rep. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, wrote the bill in response to “several” law enforcement officers who complained they had faced retaliation after speaking up. That included McKinzie Rees, a former Edgewater Police Department officer assaulted by a colleague, who pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact under a plea agreement, Colorado Politics reported. Armagost says there were two others.
A bipartisan collection of House members on the committee were opposed to the bill, and “we did everything we could to kill the bill,” Armagost said.
It passed by a single vote, he notes, but not before amending the bill to “move forward with something like a task force, rather than a law.” He later called it a study.
“I feel that was a pretty good victory,” Armagost said. “The process was very rushed and there was no stakeholder involvement. There was no fiscal note.”
It does now have a fiscal note indicating the expense of $1 million in the first year of implementation.
The bill was opposed by the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police and County Sheriffs of Colorado.
One element of the bill which could draw more broad-based support is the prohibition of fees being applied by law enforcement agencies for the release of body camera footage. Those fees, like an open records request to a city hall, help cover staff time to fulfill the request. Some don’t like the fees, and it is unclear how those costs would be covered in the future.
The bill advances to the House, but it remains unclear when it could be scheduled for floor debate.