Bill Requiring External Investigations Of Police-Involved Deaths To Go Before Assembly

The state Assembly will take up a bill on Tuesday that would require an outside agency to investigate any and all incidents in which someone dies at the hands of an on-duty police officer.

It is currently common practice for most police and sheriff’s departments in the state to call on either the state Department of Justice or a neighboring county sheriff’s department to carry out investigations when an officer kills someone in the line of duty. It’s not required by law, however, and in larger cities police departments investigate themselves.

Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, co-authored the bill that would change that.

“You could have very easily a colleague of the officer involved, or someone who worked with the officer quite closely, actually doing the investigation into whether the officer committed a crime – which, at its best, I think raises a perception of bias,” said Taylor.

Taylor said the bill is a response to recent deaths in Milwaukee and Madison that led to public outcry and a demand for mandatory independent investigations by an outside agency to remove that perception of bias.

The bill doesn’t do everything the families of the victims in such cases have called for. Amelia Royko Maurer, whose roommate Paulie Heenan was shot and killed by police in 2012, said reformers will continue to push for separate bills to require two things this bill does not.

“We asked for a review board made up of former law enforcement professionals and one professor, and we asked for proof of sobriety – basically sound mental state of mind to do their job,” said Royko Maurer. “But it’s not going away, and they’re aware of that.”

Police and sheriff’s departments and the statewide police union have been unwilling to agree to an independent review board, or for a police officer to submit to drug and alcohol tests following a death the officer was involved in.