Two long-awaited bills cast as first steps towards reforming Delaware’s approach to police oversight and misconduct investigations advanced out of the House Public Safety Committee despite firm pushback from civil liberties groups.
Delaware has long been an outlier for its opaque approach to police oversight: police misconduct records are entirely sealed from public view, with the exception of attorneys representing clients suing police departments for injuries or damages.
Calls to rework Delaware's Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) — the law protecting police records from disclosure — and improve accountability and oversight measures have been a perennial topic of discussion for years, but the mass protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020 prompted renewed attention from state lawmakers on the issue.
In the past three years, more ambitious attempts to overhaul LEOBOR have not gained traction in the General Assembly, but other measures — including mandating the recording of custodial interrogations and banning the use of deceptive interrogation tactics on juvenile detainees — have been signed into law.
Delaware's legislative Black Caucus — the driver of many of the ongoing discussions on police oversight — casts the latest pair of bills as an opportunity to push the needle on reforming LEOBOR itself.
The first bill, sponsored by state Rep. Kendra Johnson, would rename Council on Police Training and expand its authority to discipline officers for misconduct, including giving the council authority to discipline officers whether or not the officers' employing agency also took action against the officer. The bill would also require police departments to create public accountability commissions with at least some civilian members, including those who have been impacted by the adult or juvenile correctional system.
But organizations like the NAACP and Urban League urged lawmakers to table the bill, arguing the public accountability commissions would have little independence.
"The boards would not have mechanisms to investigate and hold police departments accountable," said ACLU of Delaware Policy Director Javonne Rich. "They could only provide advice to police departments on larger policy issues... The boards also would not have access to critical resources like [internal records]."
Johnson's bill did, however, draw support from police departments and the Delaware Council of Police Chiefs, who said the proposal reflected the consensus view of law enforcement leadership and would enable the Council on Police Training to exercise greater independence.
Public safety committee member Rep. Cyndie Romer expressed discomfort that a bill purported to expand police oversight drew backing from law enforcement and opposition from civil rights groups, introducing a motion to table the bill.
"When we see a law enforcement transparency bill with such a heavy level of support from police and so many community organizations feeling left out," she said, " I feel like something is wrong."
Johnson responded that after years of negotiation between lawmakers and law enforcement, moving forward with even minor improvements could set the stage for more substantial reforms.
“This is as close as we have gotten so far. What we have here is transformative," she said. "It may not be perfect, and I don’t expect that it will meet everyone’s needs... But let this be our foundation as we move forward."
The second bill, sponsored by state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, would require police departments to issue narrative reports on investigations into several types of officer misconduct, including perjury and domestic violence.
The bill would also "allow" a police department to provide either the victim of officer misconduct or a person who filed a complaint about officer misconduct with information about the outcome of their case, and it would require the Department of Justice to provide defense attorneys with "records pertaining to sustained findings" of dishonesty-related misconduct from any officers who participate in the investigation or prosecution of their client; the latter element of the bill is already required by federal case law.
Minor-Brown's bill faced similar criticism, including from Keandra McDoll, the sister of Jeremy McDoll — a disabled man killed by Wilmington police officers in 2015.
Chief Public Defender Kevin O’Connell also raised objections to the bill, arguing that it left law enforcement agencies with significant leeway to decide when to share internal investigation records, though he suggests passing the bills and amending them later.
“This bill is not good," he said. "This bill is not transparency. This bill is not accountability. But it’s a first step.”
But Delaware Fraternal Order of Police President Jamie Leonard contended that the bills before the Committee were reflective not of law enforcement's reluctance to accept oversight, but of a new willingness among law enforcement to accept greater transparency.
"My predecessor wouldn't be part of this," he said. "The generation of law enforcement I come from is ready to move the needle."
Both bills ultimately cleared the committee with broad support from lawmakers, though committee chair Rep. Frank Cooke assured frustrated critics that the General Assembly could make adjustments in future sessions.
