End ‘no-knock’ warrants? Fully fund body cameras? SC lawmakers tackle police reform
South Carolina has left police officers without the training or equipment needed to handle people dealing with the challenges of homelessness, drug addition, mental health, school discipline and more, experts told a S.C. House panel Tuesday.
“Yet, largely, that is what we rely on them to do,” testified Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, who before becoming an expert on better policing was a police officer and investigator in Florida.
“Most officers I know agree that they cannot solve these problems with a blunt instrument of their criminal justice powers,” Stoughton added. “They know that at the end of the day, they really have one option for arrest, but we also hear more and more that these are problems that we cannot arrest our way out of. We have collectively created a society that relies on that one instrument of criminal law to deal with these issues, because we have conflated policing and public safety.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s death — which sparked a nationwide movement protesting police brutality against Black people and calling for police accountability — House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, created a bipartisan panel to tackle four reforms: police training, tactics standards and accountability, civil asset forfeiture, the criminal process and procedure, and sentencing reform.
Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man, died in May while in police custody. A white police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, while Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, all of which was caught on camera. That officer and three others who watched have been charged in Floyd’s death.
From academic experts to solicitors, S.C. lawmakers on Tuesday were offered a range of suggestions that will become part of further debate, from ending so-called “no-knock” warrants, to better funding for police training and reforming civil asset forfeiture, when police seize suspects’ assets.
S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty this month ordered judges and magistrates to stop issuing “no-knock” search warrants to police.
Another suggestion? Fully fund the state’s body camera law passed in 2015, the experts said. Any officer handed a gun, should also be handed a body camera, said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone.
“It can be done and it should be done,” Stone testified.
Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson also recommended ensuring police agencies are diverse.
“The police forces need to look like the people we’re policing,” he said.
