Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Tuesday signed into law new restrictions on police use of chokeholds and other types of force, according to legislative records.
Lawmakers passed the bill three weeks ago in a one-day special session focused on rebalancing the state budget.
The expanded restrictions on chokeholds take effect immediately, while the broad use of force provisions will take effect in January 2021.
The governor never publicly questioned the bill, so it was not clear why she waited nearly a month to sign it. Part of the holdup could have been that Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, only signed it a week ago. After The Oregonian/OregonLive inquired about the reason on Monday, the governor’s deputy communications director Charles Boyle responded via email that the administration was “conducting our standard review of passed legislation and the governor will take action after that review has taken place.”
Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Clackamas Democrat and a chief sponsor of House Bill 4301, said on Monday that she was “eagerly waiting for the governor to sign (the bill).”
Bynum is co-chair of the Joint Committee On Transparent Policing and Use of Force Reform which has a virtual meeting scheduled Thursday afternoon to continue working on concepts for bills to improve policing and increase accountability. On Thursday, the group is set to discuss some of the ideas it has considered over the summer and introduce new proposals for the 2021 regular legislative session, including one on qualified immunity. The governor has not yet decided whether to call lawmakers back to Salem for a third special session.
“I’m going to continue acting with urgency as if they could call a third special (session) any day,” Bynum said Monday. “Nobody seems to feel the urgency except for the (People of Color) caucus.” She added that Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, “has been willing to march up that hill in a way that I have not seen her act in the past. So thank God for her and her openness.”
In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, the governor thanked the People of Color Caucus for “leading the way on this important bill.”
Bynum noted there was broad support for House Bill 4301, which contains use of force restrictions intended to bring Oregon law into alignment with a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner that held police must limit their use of deadly force to situations where it is “necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others.”
Protesters throughout Oregon and the nation in recent months objected to law enforcement’s use of deadly chokeholds, after a Minneapolis police officer killed a Black man named George Floyd by putting his knee on Floyd’s neck for approximately 8 minutes. The Oregon Legislature already passed a law to restrict the use of chokeholds during the first special session focused on police accountability bills in June, but that law had a broad exception allowing chokeholds in situations where deadly force was legal in Oregon.
The new law allows police and corrections officers in jails, prison and youth detention centers to use chokeholds only in situations where Oregonians broadly can use deadly force: in self-defense or to protect a third person whom they reasonably believe is at imminent risk of harm.
Oregon law currently allows law enforcement officers to use deadly force against a person in several situations, including when they believe the person committed or attempted a felony or a handful of other crimes including arson and burglary. Officers are also justified in using deadly force, the current law says, when “the officer’s ... personal safety is endangered in the particular circumstances involved.”
The general use-of-force portion of the new law that takes effect in January will only allow law enforcement officers to use deadly force when it is objectively reasonable for them to believe a person poses an imminent threat of physical injury, or that physical force is necessary to make an arrest or prevent an escape of someone they have probable cause to believe committed a crime. The law will require officers whenever possible to verbally warn people before using physical force and employ de-escalation techniques.
Police in Portland and a number of other communities around the state say they already follow use of force policies similar to the new law. For example in Portland, the use of force policy directs officers to consider “whether the individual poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others.”
In a newsletter to constituents Tuesday, Kotek urged police departments across the state “to adhere to the new use of force law we passed last month, and not wait until next year to implement it. Let’s get started with more responsible law enforcement now. The protests will end when we see more change.”
— Hillary Borrud
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