Talk about not learning from history. Tizzy Lockman chose the same failed path that Val Longhurst, for example, tried with the NRA and the Delaware Sportsmen’s Association. You know, involve ‘all the stakeholders’ in the conversation. As if you can negotiate with legislative hostage takers.
Riddle me this, Batman. How many ‘stakeholders’, including community activists, impacted residents, and minorities who had traditionally been singled out by police, do you suppose took part in the creation of LEOBOR? The answer is none. This was a bill crafted by law enforcement, for law enforcement, and passed by the gaggle of law enforcement legislators/groupies who ruled the roost when the bill was passed. The bill, and the people who crafted it, are/were the problem. Given these circumstances, whatever possessed Sen. Lockman to decide that she needed sign-off from the police leadership in order to get a bill passed? Their entire mission was to whittle the bill down to nothing, which is exactly what they accomplished. This is one of the worst examples of bill management that I can ever recall. Lockman should never be allowed anywhere near a police reform bill again.
Those of us who participated in her town halls where, despite the almost unanimous consensus that SB 149 be passed unamended, she made it clear that she wasn’t even listening to us. She almost certainly had the votes in the Senate to pass the unamended version. But her obsession to get even the slightest bit of buy-in from the cops overrode her common sense. Hey, the House was gonna destroy the bill anyway. Couldn’t she at least have gotten something respectable through the Senate? No. No, she couldn’t. Nor wouldn’t. Just–this. Utterly pathetic.
I’m to the point where I’d welcome a primary challenger to her who has a genuine commitment to police reform. I think she played us.
All this work, all this lobbying. For what? Nothing. Great work, Senator.