Common Council expected to pass Cariol's Law next week

The legislation, dubbed Cariol's Law, would require officers to intercede when another officer is using excessive force and would hold officers who fail to do so accountable and protect whistleblowers.

The Council's Legislation Committee sent the proposal to the full Council for a vote that would make it a local law. All nine Council members have said they support the concept of the legislation.

Assistant Corporation Counsel Carin S. Gordon drafted the proposed law with “a great deal of community input,” Council President Darius G. Pridgen said during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

“We’re reacting to the reality of the day,” said Pridgen, who introduced the legislation. “This is something that many people, including myself, felt was very important to happen. I think all of my colleagues felt that a duty-to-intervene law was the right thing to do.”

The Buffalo Police Department has a duty to intervene policy – not a law – that went into effect last year as part of the department's updated use-of-force policy for accreditation and updated guidelines from the state.

But in the wake of protests this year in Buffalo over the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police and over alleged police brutality and institutional racism in Buffalo, community members have asked that the policy be made into law.

The proposed legislation is named for former officer Cariol Holloman-Horne, who was fired 14 years ago after an incident that she describes as stopping a fellow officer from using a chokehold on a handcuffed suspect.

The hearing officer who recommended she be fired in 2008 said Holloman-Horne “created a substantial danger to the lives of all involved in the incident" and displayed "unwarranted use of physical force to intervene" and "extreme lack of professionalism."

Holloman-Horne, who lost her full pension when she lost her job, emerged as a vocal advocate for police reforms during the protests in Buffalo.