A New York legislative proposal would ban the hiring of police officers who were fired from other departments, ABC News reports.
Assembly Bill A7284, or the Wandering Officers Act, would ban the hiring of police officers who were terminated for cause at other departments, including those not in New York.
The bill would also ban the hiring of police officers who resigned while they were the subject of disciplinary action that would have led to their termination.
A similar bill is already pending in New Jersey.
Connecticut and Pennsylvania have already approved similar bills.
Zero-tolerance policy:
"What this bill basically says is any cop that has been fired, either within state and within police jurisdiction, or from a police jurisdiction out of state, you can not be hired in New York state," state Sen. Brian Benjamin, who is sponsoring the legislation, told WABC.
Though New York’s police unions have fought against efforts to reform policing, they are not opposing this bill.
NYPD officers "aren't interested in serving alongside a cop whose conduct got him fired someplace else," Pat Lynch, the president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, told ABC.
"In fact, this bill should apply to every public employee in the statement," the union said. "But the bill sponsors should also make it clear that this is not a rampant problem with police officers in New York."
Calls for bigger reform:
The bill alone is "not gonna solve all the problems" with the state’s policing, civil rights attorney Joel Berger told WABC.
Berger called for legislation to amend state law to require any police disciplinary cases to be tried by an independent third-party body instead of police departments themselves.
"If the disciplinary body was truly objective, you would find a lot of folks who currently get ... slapped on the wrist would actually be suspended for long periods of time or even fired," he said.
