A handful of New England state lawmakers want to take away police officers' ability to use lethal force when making an arrest.
The four libertarians from New Hampshire insist they don't want to tie the hands of cops, but save lives in the wake of deadly police shootings.
"I've seen and heard and read horrible ideas in 21 years as a criminologist, but this is by far one of the worst ones," says Dr. Alex del Carmen at Tarleton State University.
He says a law like this would make it impossible for police to do their job.
“We have 19 police officers dead already and we’re only halfway through the first month of the year, it’s a nationwide trend that continues to increase,” says Del Carmen. “So the bottom line is what’s going to stop a bad guy from shooting an officer or shooting a citizen?”
Del Carmen says unfortunately, proposals like this tend to spread once introduced.
“Politicians borrow horrible ideas from each other, so at the end of the day, when you have a jurisdiction trying this our and trying figure out how people are going to respond to it, I’m afraid others are going to pick it up and be able to do the same.”