PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - A proposal to make it easier to sue individual police officers for their actions during the line of duty sparked a passionate discussion Thursday with supporters touting it as means of making police accountable and critics warning of a chilling effect on police recruitment and retention.
The Maine Legislature’s Judiciary Committee heard testimony via Zoom from dozens including police officers and their spouses, civilians, lawmakers and even Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
The testimonies come against a backdrop of a growing push for police reform and a national debate over police use of deadly force.
The bill’s sponsor, independent Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos, said the legal concept of “qualified immunity” protects bad police officers from being held accountable for misconduct, and he insisted that good police officers have nothing to fear from lifting the legal protection.
“Recent news reports from across the nation and right here in Maine make it imperative that Maine adopt standards that allow its people to legally confront law enforcement in court when police abuse their authority and violate our civil rights,” said Evangelos, of Friendship.
Qualified immunity protects police officers from most lawsuits stemming from work performed in the line of duty. New York City and four states recently passed laws ending qualified immunity, making it easier for those who feel they were wronged by police officers to sue them for damages.
Evangelos’ bill contains no limit on liability. A similar bill by Sen. Anne Carney, Judiciary Committee co-chairman, would include additional criteria for being able to sue and establishes a $10,000 liability limit.
“This bill strives to focus on the most egregious situations, and to deny qualified immunity when all the factors point to the right being clearly established,” said Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth.
The idea of withdrawing qualified immunity drew a fierce pushback from Maine’s law enforcement community.
Cpl. Elgin Physic, a Black state trooper, testified against Evangelos’ proposal even as he acknowledged that systemic racism has led to excessive force being used by police officers against Black people.
“When I watch these time and time again, my core aches as a Black man, my core aches as a father of Black children, my core aches as a police officer,” Physic said, reflecting on news accounts of police abuse.
Physic told the committee officers agree about the need for police reform but he said it’s best to bring about change through collaboration and without putting officers in fear of financial ruin.
The aunt of a person killed by police, Dale Bois, told the committee about how police who were asked to check on her nephew’s well-being escalated the interaction, causing a high-speed chase that ended in his fatal shooting. The attorney general concluded the shooting was legally justified.
Bois testified in support of the proposed bill saying, “Don’t give them a shield that says, ‘You won’t be accountable.’”
Others who testified in support of the bill were Cohen and Greenfield, founders of Vermont’s Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and part of a national coalition that Greenfield said is “dedicated to holding cops accountable.”
“If you don’t hold someone accountable, you’re not toing to get the result you’re looking for. We learned that business,” Greenfield said.
But Kristin Guay, whose husband is a police officer, said the bill presents another worry for her family on top of fears about personal safety and mental anguish from an extremely difficult job.
“The very person that my husband rushed to help rescue or protect would be able to rip away our lives even if he did everything within the established rules and acted in good faith to serve the public,” she said.
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