On Wednesday Colorado lawmakers passed Senate Bill 26-190 requiring law enforcement agencies to share recordings of deadly police shootings with the family members of the person killed before sharing them with the public.
The legislation also requires police departments to make every effort to notify the family of the person who died in a police shooting within 24-hours. It requires law enforcement agencies to proactively provide relevant unedited video and audio recordings when officers kill a person to their immediate family within 21 days of the incident.
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In addition, families would have to be notified of their right to view the footage at least 72 hours before it is released to the public and requires officers to refrain from using subjective statements about the person killed.
“We were able to create statutory language around police no longer being able to make subjective observations or extrajudicial statements when they are giving those public updates. Additionally they can no longer just simply pull prior criminal history and make that a part of the narrative. It wasn't relevant at the time of the incident, so it's not relevant in the time of the update. So we now have a law that requires police to give facts, the facts that they have at the time,” said MiDian Shofner, CEO of The Epitome of Black Excellence & Partnership.
Shofner helped draft the legislative proposal for the bill.
“We have multiple families in our own community that have suffered in agony because these systems have not shown compassion or care, and so, because of that, we were able to leverage the lived experiences of the family of Kilyn Lewis, Jalin Seabron people impacted by the Rajon Belt-Stubblefield killing, Kory Dillard,” Shofner said. “All of those families have lived their pain out loud in order to seek change, because they know what it means to not have answers, they know what it means to hear your loved one being criminalized, and you're trying to manage the grief that comes with the loss. So we were able to truly leverage real time lived experiences."
But there was some push back to the bill. In the first hearing for SB26-190, Republican lawmakers on the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee voted against advancing the legislation.
The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police has also shared concerns with portions of the bill they believe could "create legal ambiguity and unintentionally discourage timely, factual communication with the public during critical moments".
The bill still needs Governor Polis's signature before becoming law.
