Arizona’s bill to postpone the release of names of officers involved in serious or deadly shootings was vetoed Monday.
Senate Bill 1445 would not allow officers’ names to be released for 60 days to protect officers and their families. The bill was derived from the recent shooting of two black males by white officers in Ferguson, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio. In the Ferguson shooting, Officer Daren Wilson was forced to flee his home after he was identified as the officer who shot a black teenager.
Supporters of the bill believed that 60 days would be a cooling-off period to prevent hostile actions to be taken against officers. Opponents believed that delaying the release in names would undermine confidence in the police departments.
Arkansas governor Doug Ducey, who vetoed the bill, stated, “Their concern, and mine, is that setting an arbitrary 60-day benchmark for release of names would limit their ability to best manage these often tenuous situations and result in unintended consequences.”
Ducey pointed out that departments have the authority under the public-records law to withhold officers’ names and that this could keep chiefs from correcting inaccurate information. There was also fear that the bill would have a reverse effect on people and instead of going after one police officer, they might attack multiple officers for the shootings.
Randy Atkinson, a civilian patrol officer for Public Safety at the University of Tennessee at Martin, says, “60 days wouldn’t be enough. It should be longer.” He also brought up the case of Officer Wilson and how people “automatically view the police as a bad guy and say they could have shot him in the leg or arm.” Many people have the opposite view of Atkinson, that this bill would sew suspicion among minorities.
The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposed the bill for fear it would take power away from local authorities. With so much controversy over the topic, this will not be the last time that a similar bill will pop up.
