“Shoveling while black” incident prompts new law

 

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH)–It’s been called a case of “shoveling while black” an incident involving a former pro baseball star who claims he was racially profiled in his own driveway.

 

ESPN Sports analyst Doug Glanville took his encounter with a West Hartford police officer to a national forum on race and the police and tonight there’s a new law on the books because of it.

 

Cool heads prevailed in this incident but everyone believes a lesson was learned.

Glanville now has a Connecticut law on the books named after him.

 

It passed the Assembly in June and was signed into law by the Governor today, “Simply put; people shouldn’t be hassled in their daily lives,” said Governor Malloy at the signing ceremony today.

 

Glanville said he was racially profiled in his own driveway in February of ’14 when a West Hartford cop came over the town line into Hartford and asked him if he was ‘trying to make a few extra bucks shoveling people’s driveways.’ His white neighbors that were shoveling were not asked. He told the cop it was his house and the cop drove away.

 

Glanville used the megaphone of an Atlantic Magazine story titled; “I was Racially

Profiled in My Own Driveway” about the incident and it went viral.

 

West Hartford Police initially said they were trying to enforce a town ordinance that requires a permit to solicit work, like snow shoveling and they had had a complaint. The problem is Glanville’s home and driveway are in Hartford where there is no such ordinance. The new law says the cops can’t cross town lines to enforce an ordinance.

 

Said Glanville, “The key component is to sort of wrap our minds around the rules of engagement when it comes to cross or extra jurisdictional stops and certainly between police and law enforcement and the citizens they serve.”

 

“This law sends a message that it’s inappropriate for police to cross over into another jurisdiction to enforce a municipal ordinance,” added David McGuire of the A.C.L.U. of Connecticut.

 

Glenn Cassis of the African-American Affairs Commission said, “Tells law enforcement about certain ways they need to behave and better community policing.”

 

Representative Matt Ritter is Glanville’s neighbor and helped to write the law, “We want to reduce interactions that lead to further escalation.”

 

So does this mean the bad guys can get away just by going across the town line? No, as the Governor put it at the signing ceremony today; “If a crime has been comitted then a police office has the right to extend jurisdiction but not an infraction, not hassling somebody.”