Senate committee punts on Moua’s gang data bill

Sen. Mee Moua’s controversial proposal to prohibit law-enforcement agencies from maintaining gang databases came before the Senate’s State and Local Government Operation and Oversight Committee on Friday afternoon. Supporters and detractors of the measure were primed for a debate. Deputies from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office and community activists concerned about police misconduct filled the committee room.

But Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, the committee’s chair, tried to quell the debate by ruling that the controversial section of the legislation was beyond the committee’s purview. A motion was then made to pass the bill through to the Public Safety Budget Division without recommending either passage or defeat.

But Republicans on the committee clearly wanted to air out the issue. Sen. Chris Gerlach, GOP-Apple Valley, put forth a counter motion to remove the section of the bill that contains the prohibition on gang databases.

“This is a really, really big issue,” Gerlach said.

That opened the gates for testimony from those present. First up to the table was Nekima Levy-Pounds, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas. She helped author a report released in December that found substantial problems with gang databases maintained by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. In particular, the study concluded that the databases had lax accountability safeguards and unfairly targeted minority populations.

“I don’t think we can just build upon the systems that are already in place,” Levy-Pounds told legislators. “I think we need to start over.”

She was followed by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who’s been the fiercest critic of Moua’s proposal. He believes it would severely handicap police officers in seeking to combat criminal gang activity and roll back more than two decades of progress.

“Quite simply the result of these databases is a safer community,” Fletcher said, dismissing Moua’s offer to push back the enactment of the ban by one year. “Putting a date in the future doesn’t make a bad idea a good idea. It’s just a bad idea being implemented further in the future.”

Following the testimony, Gerlach’s motion to strip out the controversial section of the bill came up for a vote. It was shot down by an 8-5 margin, largely along party lines. The lone Democrat to join Republicans in seeking to eliminate the gang database prohibition: Sen. Rick Olseen, DFL-Harris.

After that motion was scuttled, a vote was held on the proposal to push the bill through without recommendation. It passed on a voice vote, with a couple of audible dissents. It’s almost certainly not the last debate on the issue.