HARTFORD — Lawmakers are looking to strengthen landmark legislation requiring police to record the race of motorists in traffic stops.
The law, as currently written, directs the African-American Affairs Commission to analyze the data to determine if racial profiling exists. The legislature, led by the late Sen. Alvin Penn of Bridgeport, passed the measure in 1999, but it has been largely ignored for years.
Now lawmakers are pondering ways to add teeth to the law.
A bill before the judiciary committee would require police departments to use standardized forms to record data from every motor vehicle stop. Officers would also be required to provide a copy of the completed form to the driver who was stopped.
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That data would be analyzed by the state Office of Policy and Management as well as the Criminal Justice Information System Governing Board, instead of the African-American Affairs Commission, which says it never received any money from the state to do the job.
The bill, discussed at a public hearing Monday, was praised by civil rights groups. Racial profiling is a form of institutional racism, wrote Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut state conference of NAACP branches.
"An ineffective racial profiling law will lead to injustices that will continue to perpetuate disparities in the judicial system,'' Esdaile said in written testimony provided to the committee. "In 2011 we can no longer subject human beings to discrimination and punishment based upon race.''
Glenn Cassis, executive director of the African-American Affairs Commission, told lawmakers that the current system for reporting traffic stop information is ineffective.
"Unfortunately without empirical data, it is impossible to assess the extent of racial profiling in the state,'' he said. "The original purpose of what was written into law ... is not working for a variety of reasons.''
Those reasons include a lack of resources and a lack of a standardized system for reporting and analyzing data, Cassis added.
But critics, including the governor's under-secretary for criminal justice policy and planning at OPM, cited the same lack of resources as a reason why they cannot take on the task.
The Connecticut Police Chiefs Association backs the bill — with a caveat. The group agrees that the current system is not working. "Since responsibility was shifted to the African-American Affairs Commission, police sent data into a vacuum from which no reports issued,'' Chiefs James Strillacci of West Hartford and Anthony Salvatore of Cromwell said in written testimony.
But the police chiefs' group questioned the logistics of requiring officers to provide motorists with a copy of the form. It argues that such a provision would either mandate printers be installed in police cruisers or prolong traffic stops while the officers fill out the forms by hand, annoying the motorist and wasting police time.
Speakers Favor BillLimiting Liability
Also Monday, scores of climbers, walker, joggers, hikers and bikers came before the judiciary committee to speak out in support of a bill that would grant limited immunity from lawsuits to municipalities that open their land to the public for recreational use. They said the measure is needed to protect cities, towns and water companies from lawsuits brought by people injured on their property.
Last year, a woman who crashed her bicycle into a closed gate while mountain biking at the West Hartford reservoir won a $2.9 million legal judgment against the Metropolitan District Commission. In response, the MDC threatened to close its reservoirs to the public but relented in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
The bill before the judiciary committee, one of several similar proposals pending before the General Assembly this session, also drew widespread support from municipal leaders and public health experts, who said access to open land is especially important in a densely populated state such as Connecticut.
"Open spaces are not manicured, engineered lands. They are natural spaces,'' Martin Mador, a volunteer with the Sierra Club of Connecticut, said in written testimony submitted to the Judiciary Committee. "The financial burden on towns to continuously find and remove fallen tree limbs, clumps of wet leaves and piles of acorns would be enormous and would serve no purpose other than fear of liability lawsuits.''
The bill's chief proponent, Rep. David Baram, D-Bloomfield, said the bill would not protect municipalities if they intentionally create a hazard or fail to warn the public if one exists.
The Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association is opposed to the bill. In a brief interview earlier this year, the group's president, David Cooney, said the barriers to suing municipalities are already extremely high. The state Constitution gives every person the right to seek legal redress, the trial lawyers said in testimony submitted to the committee. Besides, the group noted, municipalities "have always historically made their open space open to the public, as it is the public's land."
However Robert E. Moore, the chief administrative officer for the Metropolitan District, said the water company is under no obligation to open its land to people for recreation, except in one instance where such a requirement was specified when the district acquired the Barkhamsted reservoir.
Janet Brooks, an environmental and land use lawyer and a former assistant attorney general, urged passage of the bill. She said it would eliminate the current "hodge-podge" of laws governing liability on recreational lands, based on which entity owns the property. For instance, private landowners are generally immune from such claims, as is the state.
"There's no consistent policy set,'' Brooks told lawmakers Monday
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Monday, April 4th 2011 at 8:41PM
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