Leg­is­la­tion to pol­ish and per­fect De-Esca­late Wash­ing­ton’s Ini­tia­tive 940 received a resound­ing stamp of approval today in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. By a vote of nine­ty-eight to zero (yes, real­ly), rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed to send SHB 1064 to the State Sen­ate for its consideration.

Prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Roger Good­man, this bill cleans up pro­vi­sions in I‑940 “relat­ing to train­ing, the crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty stan­dard for use of dead­ly force, inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions of dead­ly force inci­dents, and ren­der­ing of first aid.” A sim­i­lar bill was passed last year dur­ing the short ses­sion, but the Supreme Court inval­i­dat­ed it after Tim Eyman filed a legal chal­lenge.

We don’t often see unan­i­mous roll calls on major bills, but today, we did. This is cer­tain­ly evi­dence that bipar­ti­san­ship is alive and well in our statehouse.

Roll Call
SHB 1064
Law enforcement
Final Passage
1/24/2019

Yeas: 98 (none opposed, none absent, none excused)

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Barkis, Bergquist, Blake, Boehnke, Caldier, Callan, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Cody, Cor­ry, Davis, DeBolt, Dent, Doglio, Dolan, Dufault, Dye, Enten­man, Eslick, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Gildon, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gra­ham, Gregerson, Grif­fey, Hansen, Har­ris, Hoff, Hud­gins, Irwin, Jenkin, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klip­pert, Klo­ba, Kraft, Kretz, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Lovick, MacEwen, Macri, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, Mead, Mor­gan, Mor­ris, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Rude, Ryu, San­tos, Schmick, Sells, Senn, Shea, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Smith, Springer, Stan­ford, Steele, Stokes­bary, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Suther­land, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walen, Walsh, Wilcox, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Young, Chopp

Even Repub­li­can hard­lin­ers like Matt Shea vot­ed aye, which is impressive.

“The ini­tia­tive [I‑940] is a great step for­ward in repair­ing the trust between the pub­lic and law enforce­ment,” said Good­man. “How­ev­er, the ini­tia­tive paint­ed the solu­tion in broad strokes and there are pro­vi­sions that need to be more explic­it­ly defined. The con­sen­sus lan­guage clar­i­fies those, while also strength­en­ing train­ing, first aid, and inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion require­ments in the law.”

“Trust between law enforce­ment and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve is essen­tial for pub­lic safe­ty,” Good­man added in his state­ment fol­low­ing pas­sage. “These mea­sures will begin to build that bridge, pro­vide bet­ter tools for law enforce­ment to car­ry out their dif­fi­cult jobs, and make it pos­si­ble for vic­tims to get justice.”

Togeth­er, I‑940 and Good­man’s SHB 1064 accom­plish the fol­low­ing, accord­ing to a sum­ma­ry pre­pared by the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucus:

• Require annu­al train­ing for law enforce­ment, includ­ing train­ing on implic­it bias, de-esca­la­tion tac­tics, men­tal health, and less lethal alternatives;
• Estab­lish that law enforce­ment offi­cers have a solemn duty to pre­serve life, includ­ing pro­vid­ing or sum­mon­ing first aid at the ear­li­est safe opportunity;
• Insti­tute process­es for inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions of dead­ly force incidents;
• Estab­lish stan­dards for fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty noti­fi­ca­tion, includ­ing a require­ment to noti­fy tribes if an officer’s use of force results in the death of a trib­al mem­ber; and
• Remove the require­ment that police “mal­ice” be proven in order to bring crim­i­nal charges and replace it with an objec­tive “good faith” or rea­son­able police offi­cer stan­dard by which pros­e­cu­tors can more fair­ly eval­u­ate dead­ly force incidents.

SHB 1064 enjoyed the sup­port of both the De-Esca­late Wash­ing­ton coali­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of orga­ni­za­tions that rep­re­sent law enforce­ment. Assum­ing the Sen­ate signs off, it will soon be before Gov­er­nor Inslee for his signature.