2016 Bills

HB 390: Augmenting Utah’s Unique Law Enforcement Transparency

This bill passed the House unanimously but was not considered in the Senate for lack of time.

Libertas Institute supports this bill.

Legislation proposed by our organization two years ago resulted in the nation’s only law enforcement transparency law being enacted into law. The first report, containing data from forcible entry warrants served in 2014, resulted in some interesting data and analysis.

House Bill 390, sponsored by Representative Eric Hutchings, is an effort to expand this law to include the deployment of armored vehicles to the list of instances required to be reported. The bill would also require the raw data from the report to be posted online for open access.

An additional amendment will soon be made to the bill to also require reporting of use of force incidents (outside a home) or a discharge of an officer’s service weapon.