TESTIMONY FOR HB 151

Bill Sponsor: Delegate Acevero

Committee: Judiciary

Organization Submitting: Lower Shore Progressive Caucus

Person Submitting: Sam Harvey

Position: FAVORABLE

I am submitting this testimony in favor of HB 151 on behalf of the Lower Shore Progressive Caucus. The Caucus is a political and activist organization on the Eastern Shore, unaffiliated with any political party, committed to empowering working people by building a Progressive Movement.

Caucus members consistently support legislation that speaks to the belief that a civil society cannot exist unless all its members are equally governed and protected by a system of laws. The task of refining these laws, toward a more perfect justice system, must never be set aside.

In some areas, Maryland may be admired by other states, in others... perhaps it better serves as a cautionary tale. Home to one of the most dangerous cities in the nation, in Baltimore, Maryland as a result has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation. A border state that only narrowly approved abolition, Maryland continues to languish near the bottom quarter on equality in jailing (non-Hispanic whites compared to other groups).

No system of justice will bring back Bethlehem Steel. However, it could well be argued that the hammer stroke fell harder on many of Baltimore's communities because residents there had only just begun to climb the rungs of the economic ladder. For many, those rungs have only continued to rust.

A sense of injustice – of inequity – pervades, a sense that a larger system charges ahead along its own path, heedless of damage it does to the blameless members of society trampled underfoot. That law enforcement officers have their own Bill of Rights, ostentatiously separate from the enshrined rights afforded to ordinary citizens, immediately chafes. It's quite possible its very existence roughly tears away at bandages over wounds that, in many communities, have never healed.

Meritorious in its conception, a Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), in many of its parts fairly safeguards the rights of law enforcement officers under investigation of wrongdoing. However, the very existence of an LEOBoR can't help but feed into the sense of inequity, when it appears to convey extra considerations – considerations not afforded to the average citizen.

Maryland law enforcement has come some way toward recognizing this grievance, modifying the LEOBoR in recent years – for instance, by expanding the statute of limitations on police brutality from 90 days to 366 days. However, current law may be deemed so deferential that interrogation protocol calls nothing so much to mind as an old home week. That the officer goes into interrogation having been introduced to everyone, having been given some background, some work history… that the interrogation will be conducted, whenever possible, at a reasonable hour, “preferably when the law enforcement officer is on duty” – nothing in this is definitively inappropriate, and yet everything in it strikes a sour note. It aggrieves, and in doing so the LEOBoR inadvertently undermines law enforcement’s core mission.

No dichotomous relationship will attain – all the charm of the chivalrous guard, all the honor of the selfless sheepdog notwithstanding – if it is to be done successfully, public safety must be done by especially, emphatically, normal members of the public. Surely the LEOBoR was created with the intention of giving law enforcement professionals a reasonable sense of security, recognizing that the work they do will not always win them popularity contests. Unfortunately, no amount of tweaking the LEOBoR will dispel the perception that it establishes a system that treats law enforcement officers differently – or worse, that it grants a certain superiority. Only a repeal of the LEOBoR can address this – and only thereby can the community’s trust be revived, and public safety most fully realized.

Therefore, the Lower Shore Progressive Caucus supports this bill and recommends a FAVORABLE report in committee.

TESTIMONY FOR SB0414

Bill Sponsor: Senator Pinsky

Committee: Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs

Organization Submitting:   Lower Shore Progressive Caucus

Person Submitting:  Sam Harvey

Position: FAVORABLE

I am submitting this testimony in favor of  SB 414 on behalf of the Lower Shore Progressive Caucus. The Caucus is a political and activist organization on the Eastern Shore, unaffiliated with any political party, committed to empowering working people by building a Progressive Movement.

Caucus members consistently support legislation that describes the courageousness of taking critically necessary action – including action that will require common sacrifice – in defiance of inertia and paralysis. The Climate Solutions Now Act is the kind of courageous, optimistic, sweeping policy that can encircle and address the monumental issue of climate change. 

We have a moral responsibility to our children, grandchildren, and future generations to address climate change. We must, at last, begin to provide responsible stewardship of the planet they will inherit. At a political impasse these past decades, evidence gathered in the scientific community has long since reached critical mass. An overwhelming majority of us can now accept that human activity is driving climate change. And while it does require courage at the beginning of a change, it has more and more become a matter of clear-eyed reason. Without question we all want to safeguard human civilization, preserve its wonders, and encourage its growth toward a more perfect and just society. There are extremely likely outcomes associated with doing nothing about climate change – that course of inaction can never lead to the realization of these objectives.

It's a matter of showing leadership when we consider a piece of legislation like the Climate Solutions Now Act here in Maryland. Every state has its splendors, but here perhaps more so than in other places our fortunes are tied to the natural world - the sea, the rivers, the Chesapeake Bay. Much of our local culture is defined by that attachment to the tidewater, and our local economies are dependent on it. For those reasons it's appropriate that we should take a lead role here – and then there's the fact that we're more exposed than most to sea level rise.

We've left it until late in the game, and so now we must act with some real ambition. The Climate Solutions Now Act seeks to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent (of 2006 levels) by 2030, and achieve net zero emissions by 2045. This was recommended by the community of climate scientists, as a way to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The seas will continue to rise for centuries to come, but by making a start now we can literally start to turn that tide.

This bill sets forth a broad, visionary approach to achieving this goal, through building green government buildings and public schools, supporting community solar, transitioning government fleets to alternative fuels, and planting five million trees (especially in under-served areas). And the Climate Solutions Now Act does it while considering how it will affect everyone caught up in the change. This is the hallmark of thoughtful, comprehensive, legislation.

The Lower Shore Progressive Caucus strongly supports this bill and recommends a FAVORABLE report in committee.

TESTIMONY FOR SB 178

Bill Sponsor: Senator Carter

Committee: Senate Judicial Proceedings

Organization Submitting: Lower Shore Progressive Caucus

Person Submitting: Sam Harvey

Position: FAVORABLE

I am submitting this testimony in favor of SB 178 on behalf of the Lower Shore Progressive Caucus. The Caucus is a political and activist organization on the Eastern Shore, unaffiliated with any political party, committed to empowering working people by building a Progressive Movement. 

Caucus members consistently support legislation that builds toward a more perfect justice system, and legislation that promotes the highest level of transparency possible, toward the greater ability of the people to review the ways its government operates.

Following the tragic death of Anton Black, on September 15, 2018, his family and friends sought for ways to change the system, to prevent tragedies like the one they and so many others had suffered, from befalling others. They sought a requirement that law enforcement should release information about any investigations into incidents like this, and that law enforcement should release information about any prior complaints against the involved officers. 

There is some risk that the release of prior complaints could lead to a diminution of the investigated officers' rights to due process, as these incidents could be “tried in the media” once their records are made public. SB 178 effectively safeguards against this risk, granting the custodian the ability to deny inspection if it would “deprive another person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.” This seems just – the civil rights of one party must not be sacrificed to advance the civil rights of another.

However, the degree of risk that the civil rights of law enforcement officers may be diminished, must be set against the absolute certainty that all of Anton Black's civil rights were entirely extinguished at age 19, and that is the most important issue and the one we must remain focused on.

That Anton Black's family and friends had to wait, and wait, for answers – that was cruel and unnecessary (and when those answers finally came, they only confirmed what many had pessimistically suspected).  The system that rehired an officer who'd been fired from a different department, who had a record of being physically abusive to a suspect in custody, is not likely to change unless the people are given these records in the very instants following the occurrence of these tragedies. Without this information, all arguments seem strictly emotional, and therefore carry less weight. It could be argued that the emotional pain of grieving families should provide sufficient pressure to affect changes in policy, but in this world it takes cold, hard facts.

These family members and friends should have this information immediately – not months and months later. It's already too much to ask that they should bear the responsibility for pressuring the system into changing, but we must face the harsh reality that the system hasn't changed, and it appears unlikely that it ever will, without that kind of public pressure. To apply this pressure in an effort to continually improve our justice system is in the best keeping with our democratic ideals, and this bill provides the necessary tools for that work. I urge you to support SB 178.

The Lower Shore Progressive Caucus supports this bill and recommends a FAVORABLE report in committee.