Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed a dozen pieces of legislation into law on Tuesday to overhaul policing in Washington state.
The 12 bills, which Inslee said lay a foundation “to halt inequity’s pernicious influence in our systems of government,” include a measure banning chokeholds and neck restraints, one outlining legally permissible uses of force by police, and another that creates an office of independent investigations for potential instances of force violations.
“The crises of the past year have unmasked long-standing inequities in our society,” Inslee said in a statement Tuesday. “The consciousness of our state and nation has been raised against inequity in many forms. Our moral mandate to acknowledge these hard truths crystallized in the fallout from the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the killing of Manny Ellis in Tacoma.”
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Manuel “Manny” Ellis died on March 3, 2020, while in the custody of the Tacoma Police Department. The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Ellis’s death a homicide.
“The bills I am signing today respect these truths and lay a solid foundation to halt inequity’s pernicious influence in our systems of government,” Inslee added.
The slate of bills Inslee signed included a measure supporting community-police partnerships and another requiring police to record interrogations of juvenile suspects and any suspect accused of committing a felony.
House Bill 1310, the use of force measure, creates a “reasonable care” standard governing police interactions. A stated goal of the measure is “to address public safety concerns by limiting the use of deadly force to very narrow circumstances where there is an imminent threat of serious physical injury or death.”
“It is the fundamental duty of law enforcement to preserve and protect all human life,” the bill text read.
Republican state Sen. Mike Padden, who is a ranking member of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, criticized the policing package by pointing to the law enforcement environment in Seattle, where 20% of the city’s police force left during the past year and a half.
“There’s a shortage of law enforcement officers, I think partly because of some of this legislation and things that have been going on in Seattle,” Padden said in a May 13 interview on Inside Olympia. “What we’ve done is taken some of the problems of Seattle and the philosophy of Seattle and imposed that on a statewide basis.”
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the offices of state Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig and state Republican Minority Leader John Braun for comment on the policing measures but did not immediately receive a response.