By Brent Addleman | The Center Square
More than half a dozen bills surrounding criminal behavior were signed into law by Vermont’s governor.
On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Phil Scott inked seven bills pertaining to juvenile crime and weapons, crimes against health care workers, and school safety.
Gov. Phil Scott
“Today, I am proud to sign a suite of bills that will enhance public safety, support victims of crime, keep our kids safer in school, and more,” Scott said in a statement.
Senate Bill 4 relates to reducing violent crimes associated with juveniles and dangerous weapons. The new law calls for any proceedings involving people between the ages of 14 and 21 to be started in the Criminal Division of the Superior Court for crimes involving human trafficking, trafficking a related drug, or carrying a dangerous weapon while committing a felony-level crime.
Senate Bill 36 will allow law enforcement officers to arrest a person without a warrant if the officer believes there is probable cause to believe that person assaulted a health care worker at a health care facility or disorderly conduct having interfered with medical care being provided.
Senate Bill 47 repeals the authority granted to mental health professionals transporting patients for emergency examinations to use soft restraints rather than mechanical restraints.
Senate Bill 73 adds breast cancer, thyroid cancer, and cancers originating from the reproductive system for firefighters who may be eligible for workers’ compensation.
“These bills take important steps,” Scott said in a statement. “They work to provide local officials the ability to hold offenders accountable for straw purchases of guns; hold justice-involved youth accountable for violent offenses and provide them with support services in a more timely manner; provide communities access to resources for violence prevention efforts in their towns; help better protect health care workers from violent incidents; lays the groundwork for a facility to fill a gap in our human services system for justice-involved individuals who are incompetent to stand trial; separate competency and insanity evaluations to provide swifter justice and ease the backlog of evaluations; and increase school safety by standardizing basic measures in every school district across the state, such as high-quality emergency operations plans, centralized visitor management, and behavioral threat assessment teams, a tool for schools to identify concerning behaviors and get kids the help they need before something goes wrong.”
Senate Bill 89 calls for creating a forensic facility in the state for individuals with intellectual disabilities to receive programming or be placed in a forensic facility.
The governor also signed Senate Bill 91, which calls for a competency hearing to determine if a person who committed a crime can stand trial.
Senate Bill 138 relates to school safety requiring public and approved independent schools to adopt policies mandating biannual options-based response drills, in addition to access control to visitors and submit data to the Agency of Education if schools use behavioral threat assessment teams.
