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Not everyone in Connecticut is content with a new bill -- HB 5001, signed into law by Governor Ned Lamont last May -- that prohibits, according to Livi Stanford of the Hartford Courant, “law enforcement from being within 250 feet of an election site without permission from state election officials, except in specific narrow exceptions.”
The new law, we are told, “is causing frustration among some police chiefs and lawmakers. Non-compliance with the law is now classified as a Class C felony.” The bill was approved, according to Stanford, “in a straight party line vote with no Republicans voting for the bill.”
Rep. Greg Howard, a Stonington Republican who opposed the bill said, “This is a direct shot at law enforcement officers. It’s a direct effect on the municipality because it creates a real problem for police officers to do their job in these locations. Departments across Connecticut can’t fill their ranks, and some police officials strenuously objected to the bill because non-compliance with its perceived ambiguous restrictions triggers a felony charge.”
Farmington Police Chief Paul Melanson said, according to Sanford, “that law enforcement being threatened with a felony charge is concerning, saying it has a ‘chilling effect. There is no intention to disrupt the election process,’ he said. ‘I know in the municipalities I have worked in they actually like the police close by these election sites.’”
A previous bill, the “Police Accountability Act,” withdrew partial immunity from police officers making arrests. Partial impunity protected police officers and municipalities from sometimes frivolous and expensive suits. The withdrawal of partial immunity allows anyone alleging arrests that may contravene provisions in the bill to sue errant police officers. Some police chiefs at the time pointed out that the bill – unnecessary and unnecessarily confusing, many police chiefs noted -- would adversely affect police recruitment where police were most needed, in Connecticut urban areas. Some political analysis pointed to a perceived direct connection between the bill’s provisions and a serious dip in recruitment in urban areas. What recruit considering joining a city police force would not rather join a force in some sleepy rural environment where the possibility of a legal attack on the personal assets of police officers was more remote and less tempting?
Under the terms of the then new “Police Accountability Act,” qualified immunity was changed to provide a civil cause of action – meaning to legally justify someone to file a civil lawsuit – for individuals who claim that their constitutional rights were violated by the police.
An attempt made in 2025 to restore partial immunity to police officers was rebuffed by majority Democrats. A relatively new legislator, State Rep. Mark DeCaprio of Lebanon, said at the time that he had offered the remediating legislation because “There is a concern with law enforcement. I’ve run into several officers over the last two years and it’s always in the back of their minds …. I’d like to have a discussion on this.”
DeCaprio was reminded by Judiciary Committee Co-Chair State Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, “there have been no lawsuits since the Police Accountability Act; this is nothing more than fear mongering.”
Perhaps the absence of lawsuits should have been taken by proponents of the new law as an indication that the Police Accountability Act was unnecessary, little more than a campaign showpiece for Democrats.
State Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington -- a member of the Judiciary Committee and a detective with the Stonington Police Department, where he worked for 23 years – characterized the 2020 Act as a way for Hartford Democrats “to systematically defund the police without actually saying that’s what they were doing.” Howard said he had spoken with seven police chiefs in the state who told him that “we are in crisis mode for recruitment and retention” and that part of the issue is the Police Accountability Act qualified immunity provision. “I have two [teenage] sons and I would do everything in my power to prohibit them from following in my footsteps because of what Connecticut has done to the profession the last five years.”
The new law restricting police presence at polling stations is a revisitation of arguments for and against the earlier Police Accountability Act, and the two groups pitted against each other are strikingly similar.
Matt Blumenthal, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from the 147th district in Fairfield County and the son of the ubiquitous U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, presents an argument in favor of the new police restriction bill by pointing to the bill’s intent. Lamont, who signed the new bill into law, the Democrat dominated General Assembly and Matt Blumenthal all agree that the new law is well intended. Police chiefs and the Republican Minority in the General Assembly, intensely practical, are focused on the likely consequences of the new legislation.
The Courant tells us Matt Blumenthal, “a Stamford Democrat and co-author of the bill, said the intent of the law is to prevent any attempt at election interference by any agency or department that has not earned the trust of state and local elections officials.”
Blumenthal told the paper, “’We have no reason to believe that state and local law enforcement would engage in any misconduct like that [i.e. prohibited by the bill]. However, the current (federal) administration has stated and its allies have threatened to engage in activities around elections that could threaten their integrity or intimidate voters. We want to send a message here in Connecticut that this sort of conduct will not be tolerated. Blumenthal said there is no intent to keep state or local police from engaging in their normal law enforcement activities. ‘The catch-all exception to the law is if they get permission from the moderator they can engage in whatever normal otherwise lawful activities they wish,’ Blumenthal said.”
Unintentionally perhaps, Matt Blumenthal has let a snarling cat out of the bag. In Connecticut’s sanctuary state, the federal agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) are prohibited by state law from operating freely in restricted areas – courthouses, for instance – but the targets of the new legislation are Connecticut police, far less culpable, Blumenthal may agree, than ICE agents. The new law does indeed, according to police officials, prevent Connecticut police from operating in polling places as usual. The new law intends “to keep state or local police from engaging in their normal law enforcement activities.” That is the expressed intent of the legislation.
And the snarling cat has, Blumenthal tells us, an intended purpose: “We want to send a message here in Connecticut that this sort of conduct” – the Nazi-like conduct imputed to ICE agents -- will not be tolerated.”
Blumenthal’s mission-creep has in the present law made its way into Connecticut’s law enforcement sanctum sanctorum. Connecticut cops should not mind a little political spittle.
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