Massachusetts Libertarians welcome the police reform bill, but it’s just the first step. Government overreach is the underlying cause and needs to be addressed.

This Monday, the Massachusetts State Senate published a police reform and racial equity omnibus bill (Bill S.2800 / 191st General Court). Based on an initial review, the proposed bill includes legislative measures supported by the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts: Changes that would reasonably limit qualified immunity, certify police officers and improve their training, create a duty to intervene when witnessing other officers use of excessive force, prevent problem-officers from being promoted, offer more clarity for limits on use of force, improve handling of mental-health related situations, and at least suspend the government use of remote biometric surveillance technology such as facial recognition software. This is a positive development for the citizens of the Commonwealth.

However, this bill also has some important short-comings: While increasing the control on the acquisition of military grade equipment by the police, the bill appears to fall short of any significant roll back of the existing militarization of the law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts. Also it does not seem to include any measure to curtail the use of asset forfeiture or other ‘policing for profit’ practices that haunt the state. Another major gap is the apparent failure to address prosecutorial misconduct along with the policing issues - the two of them usually go hand-in-hand. 

The vast majority of police officers already fulfill their duties beyond the standards established in this bill. And while it is important and long overdue to create a set of rules that incentivises these good officers instead of allowing the bad ones to thrive. And while this bill is generally an important step in the right direction, improving law enforcement accountability and training, it is only scratching the surface of the underlying problem of a broken criminal ‘justice’ system that has become much too intrusive into our lives, criminalizing everyday behavior.

Libertarians in Massachusetts think that we need to take this one step further and change not only how we are being policed, but also what is being policed: the best trained and most honorable police officers will fail to sustain justice, if we require them to enforce unjust laws. Calling the violence against citizens that we have witnessed over and over again just ‘police violence’ misses the underlying problem: it is ‘government violence’ created by laws we allow to be made and rooted in government overreach. The long-term solution to this problem is to remove the constant government intervention from people's everyday lives - as long as they are not  violating the rights of others. This means first of all, abolishing laws that fabricate ‘victimless crimes’ - illegal acts that directly involve only the perpetrator or occur between consenting adults and ending the racist war on drugs.

To fix the system of governance in Massachusetts, we need local action and visibility for principles of Liberty in Massachusetts. Change will start locally. Join the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts. Volunteer in a campaign. Create a local group in your town. Reach out to the LAMA State Committee.
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If you are in the 5th district, please sign here to get Walter Ziobro on the ballot.

Walter Ziobro is running for Congress in Massachusetts' 5th district and needs your help with signatures to get him on the ballot. The Libertarian Party of Massachusetts has decided to put our support behind his campaign. 

Walter lives in Watertown with his wife and children, and works in Boston as an accountant for a small company. Walter is running as an unenrolled candidate under the generic "Liberty" label because that is the only way that he can get on the ballot now, as the current Covad-19 crisis has made petitioning very difficult. Walter needs you to sign his e-petiton. He needs at least 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot.

Walter is a long-time libertarian activist. He agrees with the positions of the Libertarian Party. He describes himself as a Millian liberal, and a Madisonian conservative. By that he means, he favors as much freedom for the individual as possible, and a constitutionally restrained minimal government. A few issues that he would like to advocate in his campaign are:

1. Adopt the Wyoming Rule to increase the size of the House of Representatives. The completion of the 2020 census makes this the best time to do this.
2. Encourage the development of Covid-19 tests and vaccines to speed the day that we can target carriers, and minimize the restrictions on our personal freedom.
3. Make police more accountable by abolishing qualified immunity, asset forfeiture, and no-knock warrants.
4. Encourage freer trade to improve the economies of all countries, keep people employed in their own countries, and minimize their need to emigrate.
5. Abolishing the personal income tax, as its filing requirments are a massive invasion of personal privacy.

You can find your congressional district here.
 
If you are in the 5th district, please sign his petition here.

You can follow Walter's campaign on Facebook. Please share his page.