Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. We are live. Thank you, sir. Alright. Welcome back, everyone, at 11:15 ish. We are going to have an introduction walk through witness testimony on h six nine seven, an act relating to first responders' offers during ongoing public emergency.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: We'll start off with representative Oliver, who is the sponsor of the bill. Then we will speak with counsel, and and we have, representative, yeah, one across the street, for general order of police.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Senator Oliver, good to see you, sir. The table is yours. Sure.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver]: And thanks for having us and introducing our bill. It's a bill that I think has had a sort of a need for quite a long time. I came up with it this summer after seeing some more incidents in the Chittenden County area. I go back almost forty years in law enforcement. I think the first time I've had an incident where this could have been useful was maybe my first five years, you know, somebody jumps on my back when I was arresting somebody else, and they were not involved in the situation. It's not just germane to law enforcement, it's germane to firefighters, EMS, it's just something that officers, EMS, first responders can deliver, I believe, a better quality of work when they're not distracted by other things. And as you know, whenever we're involved in something, it can draw a crowd, and that crowd can be nice. It can be not nice, adversarial, and there could be people there just wanting to film. But it's very important for us to have space, a curtilage or perimeter, if you will, that we can do our job. And I brought I'm gonna hand it off right now actually to mister Carl, part of the FOP, to go over the bill or talk about it or after the introduction, whichever he's gonna be the go to witness. Understood. Thank you very much.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. I think I wanna go with Tim first. It's, you know, really just two pages of, language to run through, so we should be able to do that risk riskly. Council, how are you today, sir?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Doing well. Thank you very much for having me, chair of the committee members. The record, my name is Tim Devlin, legislative council. We have before you, as introduced, h six nine seven, the act relating to first responders buffers during ongoing public safety emergencies. And you're correct. It is indeed a pretty brief bill. Substance is in b two. The definitions are in a, and I figure maybe it'd just be helpful to run through the kind of mechanic part of it first and then kind of get back into the definitions as we can. So let's see. I'll just quickly read through this and then go back through it again, detailing various items towards the committee's particular attention, if that's okay. So subdivision b halfway through page two. It is unlawful for a person to intentionally remain or come within 25 feet of first responder during a public safety emergency. A, after the first responder verbally identifies as a first responder, b, after receiving a verbal warning from first responder not to approach the first responder, and c, with the intent to, one, obstruct or impede the first responders ability to perform the first responder's duties. Two, threaten the first responder with physical harm. Four, three, harass the first responder. Then we move on to the, penalties in subdivision b two. Person who is convicted of a violation of this section shall be imprisoned not more in sixty days or fined not more than $500 or both. And then this will be effective January 1. So let's go through that language again with a fine tooth comb, and we'll bounce back to the definitions. It is unlawful for a person to intentionally remain or come within 25 feet of first responder during a public safety emergency. First responder is defined in a two, and this is at the bottom of page one breaking across page two. That will include law enforcement officers, certified by the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, firefighters as defined in the statute, and emergency medical personnel as defined in the statute. A public safety emergency is an a four right above b one halfway through page two and means an acute event in which first responder must engage in the lawful performance of a legal duty to address an immediate threat to public health or safety. So just to note, this is not the same definition as we select at all hazards events. This is very particular anomaly to be confused with what we see in emergency response measures typically throughout. That'll explain for the most part.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: So there's been isolated more?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Yes. It's not as broad as we typically see. Yeah. Public emergencies kinda and but it is still a broad term, and, you know, accounts for immediate threats to public health or safety. So that could be prime. It could be indeed, you know, some sort of natural disaster, band aid disaster, something like that. But importantly, it's note should be noted that the first responders engaging in the lawful performance of their legal duty doing it. So two kind of qualifiers there.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: When the like a vehicle accident or some other type of, you know Yep. Scenarios such as that, like, I'm just I can just say, like, a a construction claim falls off a billboard. Okay. Reps down and rep wires.

[Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone]: I I hear you saying it's broad. I just wonder if there's any definition on statute of what a public, like, safety emergency situation is? Because it seems rather subjective and, like, it would be left up to the discretion of the individual, like, responder. Am I correct in that?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Yes, there's a few things in there. There is the Title 20 has a general all hazards event definition, which covers largely large large events, everything from a, you know, a bomb to a flood to radiation, things like that. So if it's I wanted to be grant itself to kind of replicated here too easily. It's kind of a different context that so it was deemed appropriate to kind of create a new definition for Polkloff for the most part rather than cross referencing something already in statute. As far as who interprets it, like any other law, there's kind of a series of decision makers kind of been here, both, before, during, and after. So before, you know, what constitutes, you know, that immediate threat to public health or safety that would presumably be entailed training of law enforcement officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel as to when this would apply. There's an element of does it apply in the moment as interpreted by the first responders. And then if there is the idea is to be contested after the fact, we see it being interpreted by the judiciary in litigation possible, like any other law. Does that answer your question, Stone?

[Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone]: Yes. Yeah.

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Okay.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: So I think I had another question. Sure. Hi.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Okay, so I am looking while you're talking and it says, so it's anyone who's certified or under the recognized by the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. Does this this include sheriffs?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: If the sheriff is certified, yes. If anybody responding in an official law enforcement capacity. Sheriffs, just a part of our state government or constitutional officers, and they don't have qualifications for office written into the constitution. So you don't actually have to be, holding a law enforcement officer certificate to be a, sheriff. That case would presumably just be doing the administrative portions of the job. We don't have to be. So, this would apply to sheriffs who do have law enforcement officer certification, their deputies who do as well.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Okay. And would it apply to, like, ICE agents and border patrol agents?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: This is contemplates state law enforcement officers only.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Okay. And then on the other side of people who are subject to this, would reporters and journalists be included in people who can't get within that 25 foot barrier?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: It is let's see. Looking at revisiting language here is unlawful for a person. So that's anybody regardless of profession or any sort of occasional qualifier. But then it's conduct dependent after that. So it's a broad. It's any person, but that person has to see first be warned or. Receive a verbal warning that's b one b, the first responder has to first identify themselves as a first responder and then with intent, they have to either be obstructing or impeding the performance of the duties or threatening, or the physical harm or harassing. And harassing is defined in here as well. I can turn to that if you want. So it can be applies to anybody so long as they are conducting themselves in one of those categories as defined here.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Okay, so in theory, law enforcement or a first responder could say that a reporter is causing them substantial emotional distress by taking pictures of an incident or recording an incident. And then that would apply under harassment.

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Let's see. So harassment, we see defined in three here. Sorry, A3, just for the committee's edification, we'll just read out loud. Means to engage purposefully in the course of conduct directed at the first responder that would cause a reasonable person substantial emotional distress and that is not otherwise legally permitted. So let's flip over to emotional distress quickly, which is A1, which will mean significant mental suffering or distress that may, but does not necessarily require medical or otherwise professional treatment or counseling. So, significant mental suffering or distress that is not otherwise legally permitted and then is qualified by a reasonable person standard. This would be, you know, up to litigation, you know, and the court would decide, okay. Is does a reasonable person think that agent photos of this officer, I think it was in your scenario, would that cause the officer significant emotional distress, meaning significant mental suffering or distress? Would be act dependent, and as written, we leave it up to ultimately the courts to decide if that's really the case.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I'm sorry, it looked like representative Oliver might want to say something here.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver]: Just regarding that, we put some thought into that. Attorney Devlin picked up on it and automatically put in that rule. Obviously, nobody's going to be bigger than anything here. It's going to be more on a reasonable basis. We did think that you have to, you know, there's people source amendment rights out in public, and we were thinking about reporters when considering this. 25 feet with a camera and a microphone usually still is pretty effective. We do have instances, though, where there are folks that come up and try to get into the middle and film an interaction, a very personal interaction, that we would like to discourage, but not prevent it by putting deficiency.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Thank you for that, representative.

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: And let's see. Okay. So just returning to this, just like to point out, in b one, it is unlawful for a person to intentionally remain or come, etcetera, etcetera. The intentional part is the mens rea or the mindset that is the conduct, that so we have various standards, or levels, I should say, of the person's mental state. So we it'd be intentionally or willfully. It could be something like, knowingly. It could be, recklessly. It could be negligently. And so we go with the highest standard of the person had to know exactly what they were doing, rather than just kind of they should have known better. Also, I'd like to point out that in b one, so the person has to potentially remain or come within 25 feet of the first responder during a public emergency. We skip down to c with the intent to either obstruct or impede threat or, or rest. And so the second intent is kind of reading it again. Actually, I guess maybe the first one there's a choice for the committee to be made whether they consider that redundant or not, or, I guess there's a world where strictly reading it, to intentionally come within 25 feet, there's, I guess, possibility that you could unintentionally come within 25 feet if you're corralled or somehow pushed into it. I don't know exactly, the likeliness of that or, but I would defer to the witnesses to really kinda speak to if there's any other situational or meaning there to be granted that. Or if it is truly redundant, we just kind of leave it in c and remove it from p one. Or if there's, you know, harm in the opinion of the committee, leave it as is too. It's up to your discretion. Let's see. One other definition that's spoken to. I think that's everything, actually. And then I would just note there's typo and the well, the commas and the definition of emotional distress. Thanks. Later point. Any questions?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Reporter 70 is then represented.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, so going back to where it says it's page two line six. Defining a public safety emergency. Is this an event or is this definition something that appears elsewhere in statute or is it created specifically for this?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Pretty specifically for this. There are similar definitions elsewhere, mostly in the context of disaster response. 20, that's what I was speaking to earlier with the all hazards events. I can go through other parts of Title 20, chapter 155, where we have the law enforcement officer certification, the provisions for criminal justice counsel, see if anything comes up there. But I'd have to double check if there's like, or is everybody interested in cross referencing something? Or

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: What I was interested in is it says, an acute event in which a first responder must engage in the lawful performance of a legal duty to address an immediate threat to public health or safety. So I was wondering if would like someone standing in the street with a gun. Yes, that would apply if they were aiming it at a crowd. But would that also apply to someone being pulled over to get a speeding ticket? Does that also account as an acute event where they're performing their legal duty? Like, wondering where the line is or what that means?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Interesting hypothetical. So stop. I'm pulling over something. See, like everything else, you'll hear me always say very fact dependent. But applying that here, the law to the hypothetical, would have acute event. Yep, that would qualify and then where the first responder is engaging in lawful performance and legal duty if the pullover likely for law enforcement purposes, but also let's see if it's cars on fire or something like that. You can fall some of the other first responders. It's a wreck. Right. And then the legal duties, box be checked there. And then to address an immediate threat to public health or safety, that would depend on the nature of the pullover. Was it reckless and drunk driving? You know, that would qualify versus a, something more mundane and pedestrian where there wasn't really, you know, up the risk of flight or something like that. Probably wouldn't qualify for that, know, somebody rolling through a stop sign and then immediately pulling over. Probably not. But fact dependent.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: Thank you.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. Nugent, Pinsonault, Stone, and then I would like to get to detective Crow.

[Rep. Kate Nugent]: I was just wondering, what recourse, law enforcement has right now in these types of situations or what protections they have?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Recourse protections? Yeah, either or. Let's Let's see. See. Well, we can kinda take a look at b one c. So for there's obstruction of justice, or impeding a first responders ability. Again, depending on the nature of obstruction, there are certain laws already on the books about that. Let's see. We have threatening first responder with physical harm that would fall into general threats. Like any other person, can't commit a threat against them. The target of the threat is largely immaterial. And then harassing isn't really you know, in itself a crime on the books. We have things like stalking. We have things like criminal threatening again, which could be harassing depending on, you know, exactly how it rolls out. Let me think. For the we have certain civil and tort, that that's somewhat similar or potential infliction of emotional distress, for example, things of that nature, which are not necessarily criminal, but do crop up in other either common law, actions or provide for elsewhere in the Vermont statutes annotated. And then then similarly, if you're inflicting any sort of harm, emotional or physical, that does result in medical treatment or media, whether that be psychological or physical, yeah, that can be, individuals could be held accountable for that as well under existing law. So I would say just to kind of go on a little bit further, largely the new elements of this are the perimeter feature.

[Rep. Kate Nugent]: Professor Hall? As a sister of a fire chief, I cannot tell you how many times he's explained to me how many times he's had to use force, or get away from the scene, know, this bad car accident, cars on fire, people in trap, and those, what do you call those, ambulance chasers, are in the way. And he's like, Get back! Because he always wanted to be very close to work. I can see this not only for police protection, but also for fire. He said he spends more time as the fire chief, instead of directing his firemen to do something. He's doing crowd control, because people just want to keep pictures that in the way. So I can see where this would help in that kind of thing. And to me, a public safety emergency, when you see sirens and red lights and blue lights or whatever, that's an emergency. So, I can see where a lot of this would take place and I get your 25 feet, I'm trying to visualize it's like that wall to that post, probably 25 feet. That's pretty close. And I don't believe there's any protection at this point to stop anybody. Am I right? There's no law that says

[Chair Matthew Birong]: It would be a question from counsel.

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: And I apologize, I'm looking into what is obstruction of justice versus other things that kind of I don't know if that actually would be the exact one. That seems to be more relevant to interfering with kind of ongoing contested cases in the state of Vermont. Although, I'd have to get back to you. That's good to see. Yeah. I could check with the judiciary attorney. And, Rutland, do

[Chair Matthew Birong]: you have a question? I don't know why you're seeing it.

[Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone]: I do. So back to the public safety emergency. This is the original question I asked. I just looking at it, it's an acute event which your responder must engage in. It still seems pretty subjective. I'm wondering if there are other states who have passed laws like this or I just, I'm still concerned that that's pretty vague and subjective. And it seems like, want you to clarify like your answer from before that it's up like it would have to go through litigation like after the fact if there was concern that it wasn't in fact, like it wasn't in response to like a legal duty to address immediate threat to public health or safety. Am I right in that? Was I hearing what you said correctly? It just seems like it's subjective in the moment and the only way to like do anything would be after the fact in a court.

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Well, there's a few things there. I know there are other halo laws in other states. You know, Florida has one off the top of my head. Have to look into to see exactly what the exact language of that is or what other states may have and what their exact terminology is. The other option if, is to breathe, sorry, breathe more detail into the definition here. If the committee believes that it's too vague or doesn't offer up an immediate understanding by either law enforcement officers, member of the public, or really any reader. That's an option for the committee to take. If the words on the page are are enacted, Yes. Any question as to, you know, whatever sort of conduct does fall into this or really, sorry, not conduct, but whether the circumstances surrounding, you know, somebody being prosecuted under this statute, truly are a public safety emergency, yes, that would be discussed in court and I'm sure probably one of the issues debated over by prosecutors and defense counsel.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. Thank you, counsel. Yes. Detective, how are you, sir? Good. Thank you. Good to see you. Just introduce yourself for the record, please. And I know you had testimony or a written statement. If you did you share that with our meetings? I have not yet. I can. Whenever we wrap up, just so we have it. So Yeah. Table is yours, sir.

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for your time. My name is Joe Coroille. I'm the president of Vermont Fraternal Order of Police State Lodge. I represent 322 law enforcement officers across the state of Vermont. We're part of the Fraternal Order of Police, about a 400,000 member organization. I've been a police officer of the Broad Police Department for nearly twelve years. I spent my first nine years assigned to patrol, where I served as a field training officer, continuing to instruct patrol procedures with an emphasis on officer safety tactics. Currently assigned to the Detective Services Bureau, specifically in the drug unit. I serve as a team leader on our emergency response unit. I'm also the immediate past president of the Burlington Police Officers Association FOP Lodge twenty one. For the majority of my patrol career, I worked the evening shift, 04:45PM to 02:45AM. So most of my shifts included with bar closing details, in the Church Street area, where we manage large crowds and frequent and frequent fights from Thursday through through Saturday nights. There'd be other nights where we'd have them, but generally Thursday through Saturday, you could expect to be in multiple bar fights, throughout the night. Spent many nights breaking up all locations and making arrests in that downtown district. When the police department was fully staffed, about 95 to a 105 officers, They were really well managed in a sense, in the sense that we had enough officers to affect the arrest, deal with, subjects witnesses, and then on top of that, have a good amount of police officers who would create a barrier for us to do our job. So in the past five years, what I've seen both, in practice and, seeing my other officers actually go through and deal with this stuff, it's way more chaotic than that. We don't we obviously if you know, we were we were refunded, refunded. In that time, we had a lot of attrition. We lost 40 officers. We still haven't covered those 40 officers. So you get a lot of times where you have a police officer attempting to deal with subjects or witnesses, and at the same time, they have a crowd starting to close in on them who are frustrated. Either they don't agree with the process that's occurring, they don't understand, something is happening and they want to be involved. To try to deal with that person and deal with those people at the same time is very, very difficult and very dangerous because it causes it to go from a simple encounter where there may be a use of force that has to occur to place somebody in custody, but now you're talking about dealing with that use of force, possibly another use of force starting, which then heightens that level of force that can occur. And, you know, we could end up in a very tragic situation where you end up with a lethal force situation and a fatality. And we don't wanna see that. Just increases the tension, the likelihood that force is gonna be used, and create significant risk for both the public and the officers. And if we can get through every bar close with, you know, minimal uses of force as well as, you know, people getting hurt, assaulted, so on and so forth, that's our goal. And you asked a good question earlier related to previous laws we have in the books that we can use and that we do use. The one I'll put out there is impeding public officers. It's 13 VSA 3,001. Statute criminalizes hindering an officer acting under authority and includes serious conduct such as removing or depriving an officer of their weapon. Carries a potential penalty of up to three years imprisonment, making it a felony. However, in practice, it's often applied to more direct or clearly obstructive conduct and simply typically after interference has crossed a certain substantial threshold. It does not always provide a clear narrowly tailored mechanism to address cap crowd based interference before it escalates in a physical confrontation or an attempt to disarm an officer. I'll go even further with that. In Chittenden County, generally, if we charge impeding, it's it's it will charge it, personally arrested. Generally, it will be thrown out because it's felt that it is not quite there. So that's an issue we see a lot. So I don't believe that impeding impeding is gonna fall in a lot of these categories that we need it to fall into, whereas, this actually does. So it defines boundaries around interference with first responders and active scenes classifying violations as a misdemeanor. It's a proportional and enforceable deterrent. It gives officers and prosecutors an additional practical tool to intervene earlier before a volatile situation turns into an assault, a weapon grab, or a deadly force encounter. This is not about expanding authority without limits. It's about providing clarity and a measured response in circumstances that are increasingly common. I'll go back to, what representative said earlier when he was talking about his beginning of his career. The first time I had to push a crowd back was, I think, three weeks into my field training process. So I had academy, which is a four month process. I entered field training and immediately was doing this stuff. And then it just goes and goes and goes, and we did it every weekend till I stepped off patrol working evening shift. And it doesn't just occur at night. That's just the majority of my career initially was worked at night on patrol. We do it during the daytime. We do it during, like, domestic disturbances and all types of situations like that. If there's a group of people that are around you while you're trying to affect the rest, generally, they get involved in some way, shape, or form, whether that's just trying to figure out what's going on or it's a little more volatile than that. What I like about this bill is it applies to I think I have a question. Oh, sorry.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: I just wanted to pick up on that. These aren't isolated incidences. These are things that happen part of the time?

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: Yes. This is not like we deal with this once in a while. Especially in Burlington in the last five years, these are very, very common. I've been dealing with them through my entire career. And like I said earlier, we had a better ability to deal with it. But I I also pictured I represent 322 members across the state, not just in Burlington. I know in other towns, when you have two or three police officers working and two are called to the scene and all of a sudden there's a crowd and they're also trying to arrest somebody, you have nobody to come and step in and separate. It is you, that other officer, to handle all of that at one time. But like I said, as the bill this bill applies to first responders more broadly, which is what I like, because the same challenges arise for firefighters and paramedics. Burlington Fire Department, people that I work with every single day, constantly. We show up on scenes. They call us all the time to come to scenes to help them with this all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've ran lights and sirens to a call from the fire department, because they are dealing with a crowd that's getting unruly, or while they're dealing with the person they're trying to give care to, somebody else is trying to interject, and they aren't listening to the firefighter or the paramedic to back up.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Oh, so it's actually, like, disruptive to, like, EMTs and fire engaging with medical services on Yes. The

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: Like I said, we routinely see this. It's just rendering care, and then there's interference going on. This gives that deterrence, and it gives that authority to that firefighter to be like or paramedic to be like, I need you to back up. You're violating this law. Please back up, so on and so forth. They give that clear, that clear command, and then we can do do what we need to do if it's necessary. Hopefully, we don't have to use this that much. Hopefully, this law comes out and it's clearly laid out, and those that see it are like, alright. Well, I know where I can be and where I can't be. I think that's also important is knowing where that line is, and people don't sometimes know where that line is or what if there is a line at all. So they kind of try to interject the places they probably shouldn't. So last year, I'll give you a more recent one. And there's been stuff since, but this one sticks out to me because it almost ended incredibly, incredibly bad. We had two officers attempt to detain an individual in the alleyway between Church Street and City Hall Park. So there's a small alleyway there. During the incident, a large crowd formed and began trying to, pull the officers away from the suspect. While this is happening, both officers are actively preventing the individual that they're dealing with, who they're attempting to detain, from retrieving a firearm from his waistband, which he is actively trying to get. And at one point, he has his hands on the firearm, and the officers are peeling his fingers back from the firearm, and they're fighting back and forth over this firearm while this crowd is continually coming in and getting right on top

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: of them.

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: That could have gone a lot of different ways. And, thankfully, those two officers were able to, get control and prevent him from accessing the firearm. And, thankfully, they didn't have to go to the police force, but they were this close. This close. There was there was could have gone either way at any point in time. But like I said before, these aren't unique to Burlington. This is happening across Vermont, and it especially happens in smaller agencies because they have less officers to do anything with that. I think going back to when you were talking about public safety emergency and all that, I think it's important that we think of a definition that like, that definition is good. I actually like that definition. I think the I think the actual definition pretty well lays it out, but a different word instead of public safety emergency could just be call for service because that's what this is. These are calls for service. Whether it's an initiated call for service, proactive, or you're responding to a call for service, that is what we are dealing with on a daily basis, and that's what this would really encompass. So that would be one recommendation I'd have for that. I think this represents a measure measured and practical addition to existing law. It reinforces clear boundaries at active emergency scenes, support accountability through proportionate consequences, helps reduce the likelihood that routine enforcement actions escalate into serious or deadly outcomes. I can't say that it's gonna stop it because we all know it. You know, we live in a a volatile world and things happen, and we can't stop everything. But this will give a clear difference, and it gives, clear guidelines to people when they're actually on these scenes. I don't foresee this ever being used. Won't say ever. I don't see this being used in a situation where there's reporters coming in and view and videoing. They're very good at understanding to give us space to work. There are people that generally will you know, not so much First Amendment auditors, there are people that will come in and start to we had one group was Burlington Top Watch, and they would get a little too close at times. But, usually, they would listen when we tell them to back up. A couple did not, and, we dealt with that as it came. But that's the only time I really see this law applying to somebody recording us. We're recording ourselves the entire time with our axons and with our dashcams. We expect to be recorded on top of that. That's not a hindrance as long as we have the space to do our job, and I'm not concerned about that person or those people interfering and impeding our ability to do that job.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. No. I think it's safe to say that, like, media professionals, speaking, understand what you're trying to go through and where these sort of, like, boundaries and space for safety exist. Yes.

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: Correct. That's not.

[Rep. Kate Nugent]: What was the word terminology you said emergency safety call?

[Detective Joseph Corrow, Vermont FOP State Lodge President]: Call for service. Call for service. Yeah. Generally, that's what we we call anything that we go to a call for service.

[Rep. Michael Morgan]: Brett Morgan? Yeah. Just listening to all this and reading the full I've read the bill fully, and I'm I'm in support of it. Mhmm. Also, selectman in my town, so I deal with our police force through our town manager. And I and in my district, I also talk with the sheriff's department, major county that I represent. And what you all are expected to do on top of your jobs of trying to protect yourselves while doing that, have a great appreciation for. And I think a lot of it does at part on first people's first amendments rights versus being able to get your job done and be done safely and be able to go home. You're usually at the end of the night. And similar to what we're seeing on the news, it's been in the last couple of days down in New York City, pieces of ice snow dropped on its snowballs from police officers. That's lawlessness. And this, I think, will help protect some of that. And I think it's needed because you already have a tough job and be able to have him to play part of the expression of track a cop in addition to dealing with the imminent situation, have a great appreciation for it. So, I think this is good, like it. Thank you.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any other questions for the detective? Thank you so much for your time, sir. Thank you very much. Anything else we focus while we got three more minutes?

[Tim Devlin, Legislative Counsel]: Have a

[Rep. Kate Nugent]: question. Why would you not want it to take effect till January 2027 when most stuff passes like July 1? I'm just wondering why it's That's a good question. Being passed off till next June.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver]: I can't answer that. I missed that.

[Rep. Kate Nugent]: July 1 or whatever.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: So, before we wrap speaking to this, and the reason I wanted to schedule this in conjunction with the previous testimony on the emergency response public safety bill that we're working, I wanted to hear this testimony. Do the run through the witnesses to consider that for possible inclusion in our bigger bill. So that was the the reason that it dovetailed off of that previous testimony.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver]: Rep. Coffin.

[Rep. VL Coffin IV]: I do like in this that going through chapter 13 or VSA, 13 VSA. The the fines and penalties in this are not nearly as steep as a lot of the laws that are on on the books right now for interfering with hindering obstruction. Though some of those carry between three year to $505,100 dollars, two years to $500. When you this is this, you know, it's a lesser penalty, which it's still there's a penalty, but it's not locking you up for up to three years, two years

[Chair Matthew Birong]: based on Yeah. Yeah. What else

[Rep. VL Coffin IV]: you could be charged with instead. Mhmm. But it still offers the first responders some protection from harassment. Robert Hooper.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: I just want to bring up quickly because there was a question. Florida's halo law is somewhat similar to this, including the mandatory 25 foot. And it includes all first responders. So, you can take a look at that.

[Rep. Michael Morgan]: Anything else before we break for lunch? All

[Chair Matthew Birong]: right. Thank you everyone. We will be back at 1PM for, more work on H67, our legislative operations and government accountability.