By JULIE CUNNINGHAM
(Boston, MA) Tomorrow the Senate will vote on the Reform, Shift, & Build Act, a police Reform Bill introduced to address policing in Massachusetts. Senator Jo Comerford provided a link on her website that summarizes the act and what it seeks to do. That link can be found here. The bill creates a statewide police authority, narrows legal authorization for use of force, addresses state police reform, creates a task force for body camera use, requires police departments to disclose military equipment acquisitions to local authorities and approval for such acquisitions for three cabinet secretaries, expands community based mental health interventions, eliminates mandatory school resources officers, bans racial profiling, requires data collection on measures of race and ethnicity for police stops, creates a Commission on the Status of African Americans, allows POSAC to order an investigation into a complaint of an officer misconduct. In addition, the bill does eliminate the legal defense of qualified immunity unless no reasonable defendant could have had reason to believe at the time such conduct would violate the law.