By Matt Stout
Boston Herald
BOSTON — Gov. Charlie Baker is renewing his push to up the penalty for attacking and injuring cops with a bill his top public safety aide is touting as a “foolproof” measure to protect police officers in the line of duty.
The legislation, which Baker aides say he’ll file today, mirrors a bill he pushed last spring in the wake of a murder of an Auburn cop. That bill never came to a vote in the Legislature.
Baker wants to boost the charge of assault and battery on a police officer to a felony in cases where the cop sustains a “serious bodily injury.” The change would impose a mandatory minimum sentence of a year, with the potential for up to 10 years — well above the current maximum of 2?1/2 years.
“Under the law right now, technically it’s only a misdemeanor,” said Chelsea police Chief Brian Kyes. “You might push me, you might punch me in the face.”
Under Baker’s bill, Kyes said, “It would only rise to the level of felony if you beat someone to the point where you broke my arm, broke my jaw. Having that currently as only a misdemeanor, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
The bill joins others already filed by lawmakers on Beacon Hill, and was prompted in part by the high-profile death last May of Auburn police officer Ronald Tarentino during an early morning traffic stop.
Suspect Jorge Zambrano, who was later shot and killed by police, had a history of arrests and assaults on cops beforehand, including a charge just months earlier when he pulled a cop into a car. He had been given probation on that charge.
But the legislation faced headwinds. Civil libertarians objected that it would do little to deter such attacks and could give police a heavy-handed charge to hold over defendants who may inadvertently strike an officer during a tussle.
Rahsaan Hall, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ racial justice program, noted at the time that even if the bill was on the books, it would not have prevented Tarentino’s death.
“There are adequate protections already,” Hall told lawmakers last July. “There’s already a penalty for assault and battery with serious bodily injury.”
Baker did not make any substantive changes to the new bill, but Public Safety Secretary Dan Bennett said his administration would emphasize the mandate of “serious bodily injury,” which under state law generally includes permanent disfigurement or “substantial risk of death.”
“(We’re) trying to do a better job convincing them, legislative members, that this is the right bill at the right time,” Bennett said. “Is it a bill that’s foolproof in making sure it’s not abused? That ‘serious bodily injury’ is what makes it foolproof to that. ... It’s going to get knocked out by a court if they can’t produce medical records showing that.”
State Rep. Paul K. Frost, an Auburn Republican who is co-sponsoring a similar bill, said the timing of last year’s push near the end of the legislative session contributed to its demise.
“Now we’re going to have to do more education on it,” he said.
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