Opinion: Testimony at the County Council: The Consequences of Restricting Police Searches and Bill 2-24

March 8, 2024

This was sent in as a follow up to Opinion: Defending Effective Policing: The Case Against Restricting Consent Searches and Bill 2-24 – Moderately MOCO following the County Council Public Hearing on the bill.

Any councilmember who is for Councilmember Jawando’s Bill 2-24 must be prepared to support their position vis a vis the testimony of John McCarthy, State’s Attorney for Montgomery County. Among his remarks:

• “The title of the act is freedom to leave. You actually have freedom to leave under Ferris vs.
State already.”

• “My objective here is to try to make sure that we are intelligent about the way we adopt policies and talk about the ways in which they make us safe or less safe. It’s a pretty simple equation for me. We are less safe when we allow consent searches not to take place.”

• “We know that some of the things that we have done with the law recently have really affected our ability to remove guns off the street. This consent issue has worked its way into the marijuana bill at the state level and we have had an 80% reduction in guns being seized out of cars. Those guns primarily were in the hands of people under the age of 21 who are convicted felons who are prohibited from having guns.”

• “As I see gun crimes on the rise at the rate of 220% in the last year, many times in the hands of children, I’m concerned about safety and about other mechanisms that would prevent the removal of guns that cause violence to all members of our community and maybe disproportionately younger kids. We finished a sentencing today where a 15- and 16-year-old shot and killed another kid. They both were armed. It’s guns that are doing harm to people in our community.”

• “We began looking at these issues maybe a decade ago, and we put cameras on every police officer in Montgomery County who conducts a motor vehicle stop – go to the video tape. People can tell stories; we have video. The cameras are there. We can see the individual incidents. We can see what is said. We can see what is not said. We’ve already documented that.”

Provide input to county council:

You can click here to email all county council members at once or use this form to contact them on the official website about Bill 2-24 – the Freedom to Leave Act.

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