New Haven police accountability activist Kerry Ellington: Our communities shoulder the burden of kind of this onslaught of significant harm by police, and then we have to pay out huge tax settlements to shield police from accountability.” The day before Tuesday’s primary election, gubernator ial challenger Josh Elliott told a group of police-accountability activists that he “failed the community” when he slept through a key vote six years ago — and he promised to work to end “qualified immunity” if elected governor. Elliott, a Democratic Hamden state representative who is challenging two-term incumbent Gov. Ned Lamont in Tuesday’s primary, made that promise at a campaign-hosted Zoom “police accountability conversation” on Monday. The webinar was moderated by Farron Harvey and featured questions from New Haven organizer Kerry Ellington and Jazmarie Melendez, a former Bridgeport councilperson whose brother Jayson Negron was killed by police in 2017 when he was 15 years old. “We are sick and tired of our communities being harmed by policing, tasked with serving and protecting, but all the while brutalizing and taking the lives of our community members,” Ellington said. “Our communities shoulder the burden of kind of this onslaught of significant harm by police, and then we have to pay out huge tax settlements to shield police from accountability.” Many organizers and families impacted by police violence, Ellington said, have identified “qualified immunity” as a barrier to justice. Broadly speaking, qualified immunity allows officers to claim that they acted in an objectively reasonable manner in the moment of an alleged civil rights violation. It widely protects public officials from civil lawsuits alleging they violated the plaintiff’s rights, unless it can be proven that those rights were “clearly established.” “What is your stance on banning qualified immunity, and would you work to end it?” Ellington asked Elliott. “The answer is yes. I would work to end it,” said Elliott, who once ran on a platform of defunding the police by redistributing those dollars to fund social services. He described qualified immunity as “a shield for people to be complicit in damaging Black and Brown communities.” “If you know that you have this as a backdrop, and you know that you’re going to be be able to act with a level of impunity, then you’re going to act with a level of impunity,” he said. The police force, Elliott said, is becoming more militarized and focused on “force” rather than community engagement and the socioeconomic factors that lead to crime. “This to me is a way to evade accountability, when you have this sort of qualified immunity, so yes, it is a commitment that that I continue to make.” The conversation had kicked off with a question from Melendez, who asked about Elliott missing a crucial vote in the summer of 2020, when the state legislature passed the Police Accountability Bill. Elliott missed a crucial vote the night the bill passed — one on qualified immunity. She asked him to address his absence. “Happily,” Elliott said. He explained that he had been at the state Capitol since 10 a.m., and at around 6 p.m., focus shifted to the bill, which Elliott had voted out of the Judiciary Committee. Debate continued throughout the night. At around 4 or 5 in the morning, Elliott left to feed his dog, as he didn’t have anyone living with him who could do it. He ended up falling asleep while at home. “It’s not a good excuse,” he said. “I’m just telling you what what happened.” The bill limits qualified immunity, allowing plaintiffs to sue officers in state court for deliberate, malicious, or bad-faith violations of their constitutional rights. While Elliott was away, Republicans introduced an amendment that would strip the bill of that language. Democrats won in the end, with a tied 72-72 vote. Elliott was back at the Capitol to vote on the full bill. “It was a very narrow miss,” Elliott said. “I failed the community in that moment.” Melendez asked Elliott if he would consider opening cases “that have still not had justice over the years” because of qualified immunity. “Absolutely,” he said. Ellington asked Elliott what steps he would take to end qualified immunity. On the functional side, Elliott said, he would work with members of the Judiciary Committee to pass laws, drawing on the relationships he has formed in the legislature. On the other side, he said that he can lead on the issue and move groups of people by emphasizing a vision of what he would like to see. “Moving away from a purely armed force at all times to being more walking the beat, making relationships, not always having a gun on you,” he said of his vision of policing. “If there’s just this knee-jerk reaction of fear that is justified and legitimate, and I understand it, then how are you ever going to build that trust?” He emphasized continuing to have conversations with impacted people, and continuing to build his vision from there. “I think that dismantling the system is only the first step,” he said. “There’s going to be some sort of system in place, and you can either be proactive about determining what you want that system to look like, or it’s just going to end up looking like whatever the status quo is.” Melendez said that, to vote for Elliott, she wants his commitment to continuing to work with families impacted by police violence, like her own. (Elliott said that she could reach out to him any time, and that he will continuously be responsive.) Ellington said that she wants to see his policing platform documented on paper and a timeline for making his goals happen. Bridgeport’s Jazmarie Melendez, whose brother was killed by police. The post Elliott Targets Qualified Immunity At Police-Accountability Convo appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less