Defunding the police is not the only tool Democrats have to weaken law enforcement. In Washington state, the Democratic legislature passed, and the Democratic governor signed, a law last May that forbids officers from using force to detain anyone at a crime scene.
The legislation, House Bill 1310, raises the evidentiary bar for police to use force to detain someone from “reasonable suspicion” to “probable cause.” Right now, anywhere else in the country, if the police see a man walking around with catalytic converters, they could arrest him on the “reasonable suspicion” that they were stolen.
But under Washington state law, now police must have actual evidence that there were catalytic converters recently stolen in the neighborhood, giving them the “probable cause” necessary to use force.
“I could ask that person to stay and say, ‘Hey, can I speak with you?’” former police chief Carol Cummings told a Washington radio station. “But if that person says, ‘No,’ or keeps running, I have to let them go. The opportunity to be able to freeze a scene and conduct an investigation is gone.”
And it is not just the police who are complaining. Even the author of the legislation admits it went too far. “The problem is many individuals who are stopped, they just walk away or run away. They don’t comply. And police at this point are not free to put hands-on or physically interact with them to prevent them from fleeing,” Democratic Rep. Roger Goodman said.
Liberal activists are having none of this rollback to their anti-police victory. “We don’t need to do a darn thing to last year’s reforms,” Washington Coalition for Police Accountability supporter Leslie Cushman told a local radio station.
“Somebody leaving the scene at that moment does not mean that the police won’t find them again, can’t find them again, doesn’t have information to find them again,” Black Lives Matter supporter DeRay McKesson added.
Goodman has introduced new legislation that would undo his original H.B. 1310. But until then, if you do commit a crime in Washington and the police try to stop you, run! Until H.B. 1310 is repealed, police can’t use force to stop you.
*story by The Washington Examiner