The Governor has signed the landmark Police Reform Bill into law. The new law, which was months in negotiation during the conference committee creates a police accountability and oversight system which will require police officers to be certified every three years. The reform law was born out of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Governor Baker said, “Police officers have enormously difficult jobs and we are grateful they put their lives on the line every time they go to work. Thanks to final negotiations on this bill, police officers will have a system they can trust and our communities will be safer for it."
The Massachusetts Coalition of Police and its 43 hundred members had opposed the measure. The group believes the Governor signing the bill “has changed the police profession forever.”
"This is a landmark decision that begins to address the inequities that we have seen in our police institutions for a long time," Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, who chairs the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and was one of the six conference committee members who negotiated the final product, said.
(Photo Credit: John Baibak/WHYN News)