Montgomery County councilmembers are set to introduce three new police reform measures Tuesday, adding to a number of bills that passed in the county and state last summer amid protests against police brutality.

Council President Tom Hucker and Councilmember Will Jawando will introduce the bills at Tuesday’s council meeting; they are slated for a public hearing on June 22. The legislation is part of a broader initiative by the county to improve police-community relations following last summer’s protest locally and nationwide against police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Councilmembers say the impetus for these bills follows a number of incidents involving police use of force and fatalities in the county over the past few years.

The first bill would require the county police department provide continuing education to officers at Montgomery College and improve recruitment and training that is in line with community-informed policing standards. This includes recruiting cadets from diverse backgrounds, requiring community service and social justice training for cadets, and “providing socially just and community engagement” training to all officers. Police would work with local educational institutions to develop continuing education courses.

“The issue of training is very important. This is a continuum of how we reimagine public safety,” Jawando said. “[This bill] would train [officers] in areas that they’re not currently getting: racial equity, social justice, history of policing, and communication skills.”

But, Lee Holland, vice president of the county’s police union, says while community police training is necessary, it’s going to take a lot of work to implement the bill and it could lower recruitment numbers.

“Tacking on additional classes is going to deter people from our department to Howard County Police or others in the area,” Holland told DCist/WAMU. “We no longer have the highest pay or the best benefits.”

As for officers receiving continued training, Holland says it’s going to be difficult to find time for officers who already do two days of in-service training at the police academy, numerous hours of online training, and shooting training.

“We don’t really have the manpower to do additional training,” Holland says. “We have six full time instructors at the academy.”

The second piece of legislation would create a process within the department to review body-worn camera footage. The bill aligns with a measure passed out of the state legislature which requires all state law enforcement agencies to develop a process to review and investigate body-worn camera footage by June 2023. Hucker says the council is still receiving information about how the state legislation would be implemented, adding that the council would work to align its bill with the state’s.

The council bill would require the department’s internal affairs division to conduct random reviews of body camera footage and to report to the police chief any incidents including use of force, cases involving a child under the age of 18, or cases involving a fatality or serious bodily injury. The police chief is then required to inform the county executive and the council within 24 hours of having received a report.

The measure aims to alert councilmembers and the public sooner to violent incidents or those involving minors. Hucker said the bill, in part, came after an incident in January 2020 in which officers were seen in footage berating and threatening a 5-year-old Black boy who left the grounds of East Silver Elementary School. That body-camera footage wasn’t released to the public until April 2021, more than a year after the incident took place.

“The incident revealed many flaws within our police department and the body-worn camera program,” Hucker said.

Holland, who helped write the legislation, agrees and says it has a lot of pros for officers.

“Right now we don’t have enough body cameras for all our officers…this bill requires them to have body-worn cameras,” Holland said. Out of the 1200-member force, 800 patrol officers have cameras, but roughly 400 detectives and undercover police officers do not have cameras.”

Holland says the bill would also require that investigations by the department’s internal affairs division be completed within 90 days, rather than the current almost 200 days.

The third measure would require the county attorney to report periodically to the county executive and the council about any settlement agreements the county has entered into. These settlement agreements would apply to all county agencies including the police department. The county attorney would need to identify those making the claim, the dollar amount of the settlement, the nature of the claim, and the department involved in the claim. Payouts for claims are funded by county taxpayer dollars.

“As a councilmember I know very little about what has happened in these cases and what the settlements have been and the cost to taxpayers,” Jawando said.

The legislation comes after a number of lawsuits filed against county police for incidents in which Hernan and Lilian Palma, a Silver Spring family, alleged that county police violated the county’s current body-worn camera policy while conducting a no-knock warrant at their home in September 2019. The Palmas are suing the county for $1 million in emotional pain and distress and at least another $1 million in punitive damages. At least 20 officers were named in the Palmas’ complaint, but Holland says many of them were not even in the house the morning of the warrant.

“As a county taxpayer I’m in favor of transparency from all departments,” Holland told DCist/WAMU. “But [the bill] singles out individual officers by name.”

Holland says he’d prefer the bill to replace the word ‘officers’ for ’employees’ as to not single out police.

This story has been updated with comments from the police union.