Three large bills that would enact a litany of changes to the city’s policing and criminal justice systems advanced in the D.C. Council on Wednesday.

Many of the changes were spurred more than two years ago in the wake of the policing killing of George Floyd and a summer of racial justice protests in D.C. The bills advance a number of demands from advocates that reached a fever pitch in 2020, though they’re sure to receive pushback from several directions, including the police union, D.C. corrections officials, and advocates who feel key provisions were ultimately left out of the final versions.

As the end of the legislative session nears, the council is crunched for time to follow through on its 2020 promises. Any bills the D.C. Council does not pass by the end of this year must be reintroduced next session — and go through the entire legislative process again — in order to become law.

The bills advanced this week — a group of police reforms, a group of provisions strengthening oversight of the D.C. Department of Corrections, and a bill expanding people’s abilities to get criminal records sealed or expunged — will next head to a vote from the full council.

But what exactly is in them? Here’s a breakdown:

Police chases, police disciplinary files, and more

The D.C. Council’s judiciary committee approved a permanent version of a comprehensive police reform measure that the council first passed in the wake of the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.

That bill implemented a number of significant changes, including:

• requiring that body-camera footage be released within five days of a police shooting or serious use of force,
• prohibiting the use of neck restraints,
• limiting consent searches (when police request someone’s consent to search them),
• restricting the use of tear gas and other chemical weapons during peaceful protests,
•  increasing training requirements for police officers
• removing disciplinary matters from any contract negotiations with the police union. (The union unsuccessfully sued to overturn that provision; they have now appealed to the Supreme Court.)

But the permanent version of the legislation the committee approved also includes significant provisions from other police-related bills that were introduced over the last two years.

One provision draws from legislation introduced by Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) in April 2021 that would largely prohibit most types of police car chases. Lewis George introduced the bill after the death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, who died in a moped collision after being chased by police (an MPD officer and lieutenant are now on trial in District Court for a combination of charges related to Hylton-Brown’s death). The bill approved by the committee doesn’t go as far as Lewis George’s version, but instead classifies certain police car maneuvers as serious or deadly uses of force, thus subjecting them to standard after-the-fact review by the department.

Another provision takes after a bill from Council Chairman Phil Mendelson requiring that D.C. create a database of police disciplinary files and generally make those files eligible for open-records requests. These would both represent significant changes, as police discipline files are currently exempted from public disclosure. Union officials did win a small victory, though, convincing Allen to limit the files available for disclosure to those including sustained allegations involving interactions with the public or the integrity of the officer.

The overall bill will also include provisions asking the D.C. Auditor to conduct a study of whether D.C. police officers have any links to white supremacist groups, requiring MPD to regularly submit data to the council on overtime spending, and expanding the MPD Cadet program.

The D.C. police union and D.C. police chief Robert Contee have already expressed concern about some aspects of the police reform bills. For example, Contee has opposed making disciplinary records public, and the police union has fought against efforts to reform MPD’s disciplinary process for officers.

In addition, some advocates think essential reform provisions have been left out of the package. In letters to the council this week, representatives from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee and DC Justice Lab both urged the inclusion of several recommendations of the Police Reform Commission, which the council created in 2020 to propose policing changes. They want the council to require stricter protections for youth in police interrogations, and they want the bill to require the release of more body camera footage in the aftermath of fatal or serious police uses of force. Advocates also noted that provisions related to other police reform commission recommendations — including ending qualified immunity protections for officers who commit wrongdoing and limiting the power of special police — did not make it into the reform package that passed committee on Wednesday.

Beverly Smith, whose son Alonzo Smith died in 2015 after a confrontation with D.C. special police officers, said in a statement that she was “shocked and saddened” to see her son’s named mentioned in judiciary committee documents, even though the provision does not ban the “compression of the torso tactic” that special police used on her son.

Increased oversight of the D.C. Jail

A separate bill approved by the judiciary committee, called the Corrections Oversight Improvement Omnibus Amendment Act of 2022, expands oversight over D.C.’s Department of Corrections and its facilities. The pandemic exposed and exacerbated serious and longstanding problems at the D.C. Jail, where for more than a year, people detained there were forced to endure a brutal 23-hour lockdown. And last year, a scathing memo from the U.S. Marshals service found “systemic” problems with the facility, including staff abuse of residents, evidence of pervasive drug use in the facility, inadequate food, and unsanitary conditions.

One goal of the legislation is to strengthen the city’s Corrections Information Council (CIC), which conducts inspections of the facilities in D.C. (and across the country) where residents are incarcerated or detained. The agency has been criticized for being toothless and slow to respond to the poor conditions of confinement D.C. residents face.

The bill would require the CIC to issue more frequent reports on conditions at the D.C. Jail and central cell block, for example.

It would also require DOC to let the CIC, as well as the chair of the judiciary committee, to visit the jail and inspect it unannounced.

The legislation also requires DOC to be more transparent about deaths in its facilities and disclose more information to the D.C. Council and the public when someone dies in their custody. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs the judiciary committee, says the provision is a direct response to the agency’s lack of transparency about deaths at the jail in recent months. As DCist/WAMU has previously reported, eight people have died in DOC custody this year — and Allen says DOC officials only notified his office of some of those deaths.

“There was and is no mechanism in place that requires DOC to report the death of a resident in its care and custody to the Council, the public, or the Corrections Information Council, and oftentimes the Council learns of such a death through media reporting or social media posts,” reads the committee report on the bill.

In response to questions about whether it disagreed with any parts of the legislation, a DOC spokesperson said that “although there are aspects of the bill that concern DOC, we look forward to working with the D.C. Council to address these concerns.” The spokesperson declined to further elaborate on which specific aspects of the bill DOC opposes.

Another key reform in the package would create a panel of attorneys specifically to help young justice-involved adults access the special education they’re entitled to by law. During the pandemic, students in both the D.C. Jail and the city’s Youth Services Center said they went long stretches without a proper education, at times being given only paper packets and no live instruction from teachers.

Expanding record sealing and expungement

The third bill focuses on expanding opportunities for record sealing and expungement. (Sealing eliminates the public’s ability to access a record, while prosecutors and law enforcement will still be able to access it. Expungement eliminates even law enforcement’s access to a record, which essentially erases the record entirely).

The legislation could affect a large percentage of the city’s residents; Approximately one out of every eight adult D.C. residents has had a criminal conviction, according to the Council for Court Excellence — and that number doesn’t include the large number of people who have been arrested or charged with a crime but not ultimately convicted.

The bill the committee passed on Wednesday combines provisions from several record sealing and expungement-related bills that have already been introduced this session. In general, it expands the number of people eligible for getting their criminal records sealed or expunged — and streamlines the process for doing so. Under the new bill, people who were arrested but not convicted of a crime would automatically have that record sealed – except in certain cases, including crimes categorized as violent and crimes that advocates have argued are important to keep on record to protect survivors of domestic violence. The bill would also allow people charged with crimes excluded from automatic sealing to argue before a judge for the record to be sealed. In addition, the bill automatically expunges records of citations, arrests, charges, and convictions for activities that have since been decriminalized or legalized.