Washington State Enacts Police Reform a Year After George Floydâs Death
Gov. Jay Inslee signed 12 bills into law that include bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, making Washington the latest state to pass sweeping police reforms.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington shaking hands with State Representative Jesse Johnson after signing legislation on police accountability.Credit.Tony Overman/The News Tribune, via Associated Press
May 19, 2021, 6:23 p.m. ET
Washington became the latest state to enact sweeping police reforms in response to the police killing of George Floyd with the adoption this week of 12 new laws that ban chokeholds, require officers to announce their presence before raiding a home and call for the use of exhaustive de-escalation techniques before resorting to force.
UpdatedWed, May 19, 2021 at 6:29 pm PT
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SPD officers block a street on July 1, 2020 in Seattle. (David Ryder/Getty Images)
OLYMPIA, WA Following the mass protests last summer and a national reckoning with police violence and systemic racism in America, Washington has now passed a dozen new bills aiming to increase police accountability in the Evergreen state.
Gov. Jay Inslee visited the Eastside Community Center in Tacoma Tuesday, where he signed all 12 pieces of legislation into law. The crises of the past year have unmasked long-standing inequities in our society. The consciousness of our state and nation has been raised against inequity in many forms, Inslee said. Our moral mandate to acknowledge these hard truths crystallized in the fallout from the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, and the killing of Manny Ellis in Tacoma. The bills I am signing today respect these truths and lay a solid foundation to halt inequity s pernicious influence in our systems of go
With 12 New Laws, Washington State Joins Movement To Overhaul Policing
By Austin Jenkins - N3
May 18, 2021
Calling it a “moral mandate,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a dozen bills into law on Tuesday that backers hope will improve policing in the state, reduce the use of deadly force and ensure that when deadly encounters do occur, the investigations are thorough and independent.
“These bills are all going to work in coordination with one another to create a system of accountability and integrity stronger than anywhere else in the nation,” Inslee said in remarks before he signed the bills.
Noah Riffe/Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
Calling it a moral mandate, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a dozen bills into law on Tuesday that backers hope will improve policing in the state, reduce the use of deadly force and ensure that when deadly encounters do occur, the investigations are thorough and independent. These bills are all going to work in coordination with one another to create a system of accountability and integrity stronger than anywhere else in the nation, Inslee said in remarks before he signed the bills.
The legislature passed the police accountability measures in response to sweeping calls, nationally and locally, to reform policing following the killings of Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In Washington, the death of Manuel Ellis at the hands of Tacoma police in March 2020 also galvanized reform efforts.
Calling it a "moral mandate," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a dozen bills into law on Tuesday that backers hope will improve