Opinion: I was Detroit's police chief. The Legislature must pass police reform bills.

As the former Detroit Police Chief, I saw firsthand that the lethal power invested in our police officers must be balanced with considerable regulation and accountability. Without safeguards, innocent people get injured or killed. Happily, our state Legislature is considering three critical measures that would reduce excessive force: a duty for officers to intervene to stop abusive conduct by other officers, restrictions on no-knock raids, and a ban on “wandering” police who act abusively at one department only to get a job at another.

Duty to intervene

As the director of the Michigan State Police said after three troopers were charged for excessive force in March, “It is incumbent on every officer, and those who lead police officers, to hold themselves and those around them accountable for their conduct.”

One bill introduced this summer would do just that. Police officers who witness colleagues using excessive force should be legally required to intervene to end it as soon as it is safe to do so. This responsibility, adopted officially by nearly one in every five states, would also require officers to report excessive force and illegal behavior to supervisors. Those who fail to do so would face termination, demotion in rank, or suspension for their failure to protect the public.

This is crucial because there is an unspoken code in policing that officers stay silent in the face of bad behavior by others, or face shunning from their fellow officers. This Blue Wall of Silence can make even good officers complicit in bad deeds when they can and fail to stop their fellow officers from violating others’ rights, especially because they are often the only people with the training, strength, and authority needed to do so. This code allows bad officers not only to continue their abuse, but to poison the culture of departments that condone such behavior. Legally requiring officers to intervene is critical to protect public safety by rooting out these officers and the culture of retribution they rely upon.

Restrict no-knock raids

No-knock raids are a tactic in which officers who have obtained a search warrant enter a property without giving notice to the people inside, many of whom don’t realize that it’s police entering their homes, especially when officers are in plainclothes. This can lead to horrible accidents, such as the one that killed Breonna Taylor, an EMT whose boyfriend police wrongly suspected of selling cannabis. When the police entered the premises, the couple believed it was a home invasion and her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at the intruders. The police responded with gunfire that killed Ms. Taylor.

Draft legislation would drastically limit the use of no-knock raids and require officers to be in uniform so they are easily and immediately identifiable as police. Crucially, Michigan would allow no-knock raids in circumstances where advance notice would endanger officer lives or those of other individuals.

Michigan is no stranger to botched no-knock raids. Several years ago in Flint, Michigan State Police and a local SWAT team executed a raid and held an innocent family at gunpoint because a confidential informant gave them the wrong address. Failing to investigate who actually lived in the home or who owned the cars parked outside, police could have mistakenly shot a resident in the heat of a moment (the family continues struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder).

Decertification of “wandering” police

It is not only extremely difficult to fire a police officer for misconduct: Michigan is also one of just five states without a process to permanently decertify officers who have been fired from a previous police department for excessive force and misconduct. This means that when an officer is fired from one department, they can simply get hired somewhere else. And it happens all the time, including with one of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor.

A recent study by Duke Law School found that three in every one hundred officers who have been fired for misconduct were rehired by a different law enforcement agency. These so-called “wandering” officers are far more likely than new recruits to be fired and commit misconduct again. For instance, Oregon police officer Sean Sullivan, who was caught kissing a 10-year-old on the mouth. After being sentenced, he simply took a job as a police chief in another town, where he was again investigated for a sexual relationship with a young girl.

Past is prologue: These individuals need to leave the profession forever. For the sake of our communities and for my fellow officers, who themselves suffer when communities often fear and distrust us, I urge our legislators to adopt these crucial reform bills.

Isaiah "Ike" McKinnon is the retired chief of police for the Detroit Police Department, former deputy mayor of Detroit and a current professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: Michigan Legislature must pass police reform bills