W E L C O M E
To my Friends and Neighbors,
People often ask me what worries me most. I tell them that’s easy -- my daughter’s safety. To be honest, personal safety was not a huge priority for me as a young man. Things changed when I got married. And when my daughter was born. And when my mother was violently attacked in 2003. And things changed when I learned about the horrific Petit Family tragedy in Cheshire this year.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, we recently conducted hearings into what went wrong in Cheshire and why the criminal justice system failed us. We asked the state’s leading criminal justice officials why key documents—including critical sentencing transcripts—were not provided to and considered by the parole board before the two attackers were paroled. What we found was shocking; in the electronic age, our state’s criminal justice agencies and officials fail to share even basic information about criminals, their backgrounds, and the likelihood they will commit crimes again. Just as we discovered after 9/11, there is simply no excuse for government officials not to share critical information that can protect our families and children, whether because of lack of resources, antiquated technology, or worse, conflicts over bureaucratic turf.
That’s why I volunteered to personally lead the effort on the Judiciary Committee and in the General Assembly to lay out a comprehensive plan to overhaul the way state government shares information in the criminal justice system. I’m doing it for the same reason I passed the Lost & Stolen Firearms bill – no person, no family, should ever be unsafe because Government failed to act.
Sincerely,
