South: Police Honesty Act of 2015

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Sponsor: Leinad

Sponsor has 24 hours to present argument in favor of bill's passage.

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My Commentary:

The overall gist of the bill is good. Section 1 is fine, but the words "even in order to get a confession" are unnecessary because the statement "police officers are no longer allowed to lie to suspects" is a blanket statement and already covers that.

Section 2 seems good, but it should probably reset every five years or so because a lot of officers do their job for their whole lives and shouldn't be fired just for lying three times.

Even though the overall concept of police honesty is good, lying is necessary in some situations. Hence, we should add a third section saying that the county sheriff should be able to both give permission to officer(s) to lie if absolutely necessary or pardon officer(s) after they are discovered lying if the lying was deemed absolutely necessary.

If Leinad and Spiral agree, I will move to amend the bill in order to include the above revisions.

P.S. And just saying, most suspect interrogation is actually done by detectives, not officers, so the effects of this bill are extremely limited and lying will still be omnipresent in the criminal justice system. But whatevs.

[Leinad]

I think this is important because the law enforcement needs to be a force for good. How can that happen if the people don't trust them?

Thanks for the input, Dar! I move to amend the bill as follows:

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Sections 4 and 5 are there to make sure county sheriffs don't just pardon the people they like, perhaps even allowing the practice to continue by simply pardoning everyone.

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This is better, but I would still make a few minor changes. First, we should specify that the county sheriff can pardon a fired officer specifically for lying; the sheriff can't just pardon officers in general for whatever reason. I would also change the term 'police detectives' to 'government detectives', as not all public detectives are in the police. Third, I would change Section 4 to make it more specific, as there is a loophole in saying 'there will be a director of police honesty' because one could argue that the director can be appointed at some indefinite point in the future instead of immediately after the law's passage. Fourth (and this is grammatical) I would change 'they' and 'their' to 'his/her' (sorry for being a Grammar Nazi). I have also changed a few more semantic things but it's essentially the same except for the above changes.

So the re-amended version is as follows:

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Does the sponsor accept the re-amended version?

[Leinad]

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Does the sponsor accept the re-amended version?

Yes, I accept that version.

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Representatives have 48 hours to vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain on this bill.

AYE

[PPT Spiral]

Darth's amended version is acceptable to me.

Aye

[Leinad]

AYE!

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As all legislators have voted, voting is over and the bill has passed 3-0.

To the Governor's Desk!

[Leinad]

To the Governor's Desk!

At the Governor's Desk:

    X Leinad