Police Union Officials: “Don’t Change the law!”
Officials representing several Maryland police unions urged a legislative panel to uphold a law that protects the rights of accused officers, but the chiefs said they were willing to support weakening the law to improve “public perceptions.”
“The current law is fair and has been working well to protect the public and officers. It weeds out the bad police officers, the bad actors, and it serves to protect the good officers who are only doing their jobs.” – Frank Boston III, legislative counsel for the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police
According to the Baltimore Sun, the conflicting testimony from the chiefs and sheriffs and the groups representing cops and deputies was made at a hearing of the General Assembly’s Public Safety and Policing Workgroup on the state’s Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. The law, known as LEOBR, has been the target of critics of the criminal justice system who contend it protects “bad apples” on police forces from internal discipline.
Frank Boston III, legislative counsel for the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police, said the current law is fair and has been working well to protect the public and officers.
“It weeds out the bad police officers, the bad actors and it serves to protect the good officers who are only doing their jobs,” he said.
Boston acknowledged that in the current political climate, with the conduct of police officers a matter of national scrutiny, lawmakers may want to make changes. He said the union would work with the panel as it considers changes to recommend to the legislature.
“We’re not here to be adversarial,” Boston said.
Representatives of their superiors, the state’s police chiefs and sheriffs, testified that the 40-year-old law is in need of revision and signaled that they are sympathetic to some of the changes suggested by such groups as the NAACP and ACLU of Maryland.
Among those revisions is cutting the 10-day period in which an officer suspected of misconduct has to retain a lawyer before they must submit to a departmental disciplinary interrogation. Advocates say the officers don’t need nearly that long to find counsel and say the 10-day rule makes it easier for police to collude on a cover story. FOP representatives contended that collusion simply doesn’t occur and denied any need to change the rule.
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