Maryland's Police “Bill of Rights” Has Come Under Attack by Lawmakers
Despite minor revisions following the Freddie Gray episode, the Maryland law retains its most objectionable features, as I observed in a piece this summer, including a five‐business‐day “get your story straight” period in which a department cannot question officers after an incident; rules prescribing that the process of investigation and discipline be reserved in general to fellow officers; and a lid on the release of information in which the public is legitimately interested.
A working group of Maryland lawmakers appointed by House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne Jones yesterday recommended that the state repeal its first‐in‐the‐nation Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, a law that I and others have inveighed against for years.
As I wrote in 2015:
Maryland was the first state to pass a LEOBR, in 1972, and by now many states have followed, invariably after lobbying from police unions and associations. Often the bills are sponsored by Republicans, who seem to forget their normal skepticism of public employees as an interest group when uniformed services are involved.
Despite minor revisions following the Freddie Gray episode, the Maryland law retains its most objectionable features, as I observed in a piece this summer, including a five‐business‐day “get your story straight” period in which a department cannot question officers after an incident; rules prescribing that the process of investigation and discipline be reserved in general to fellow officers; and a lid on the release of information in which the public is legitimately interested.
As lawmakers observed at a late September hearing, repeal would still leave in place numerous other mechanisms by which police officers charged with misconduct could resist investigation and discipline, including state civil service rules, union contract provisions, and Supreme Court doctrines giving public employees constitutional rights to contest some dismissals.
Definitions vary, but per one 2015 roundup, at least a dozen other states as of then had enacted bills similar to Maryland’s into law, including California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. All states with such a law, and the equivalent laws sometimes enacted for correctional officers, should follow Maryland’s lead in considering repeal. And the truly terrible idea of making everything worse by imposing LEOBR rules from shore to shore, a perennial measure championed in the U.S. Congress by such as Sens. Mitch McConnell (R‐Ky.) and Joe Biden (D‐Del.), should be buried on the ocean floor, never to rise again.
This article was first published by the CATO Institute.
Image: Reuters