RALEIGH, N.C. — Tonya Stephens-Pulley can show you all of her cousin’s favorite spots in her home.

There was the room Kyron Hinton slept in, the kitchen where he cooked a raft of meals for the whole family without once looking at a recipe, the chairs where he sat with his daughter to get his picture taken.

“He was always on the move,” Stephens-Pulley recalls. “He had lots of energy.”

April marks three years since Hinton was beaten by Wake County deputies and state troopers when they stopped him in Raleigh. A deputy and a state trooper later pled guilty to misdemeanor charges in connection with the incident. Hinton was awarded $83,000 from a civil lawsuit against the Wake County Sheriff’s Office in February 2019, only to be found dead a day later. His death remains unsolved.

“He always said after (the beating) happened to him, if he got paid, that he was going to bless the people that didn’t have,” she says.

Trooper Michael Blake and Deputy Cameron Broadwell permanently surrendered their law enforcement certifications as part of their plea deals, meaning they can never again be employed as law enforcement officers in North Carolina. Had they not done so, they could have gotten jobs at another law enforcement agency in the state.

A bill in the state legislature would require the N.C. Department of Justice to maintain a statewide database of disciplinary actions and decertifications against officers at any law enforcement agency in the state, including the SBI and the Highway Patrol as well as campus and company police. NCDOJ also would have to track uses of force and create an early warning system that tracks issues such as citizen complaints and uses of force by law enforcement officers.

Bill sponsor Sen. Danny Britt, (R), Robeson County, says the measure grew out of recommendations in response to last year’s protests over police misconduct, sparked by the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. He says the bill represents the main criminal justice reform effort from the Senate majority this year.

Fred Baggett, legal counsel for the N.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, says law enforcement agencies already have the ability to get rid of problematic officers. Still, there is no way to prevent an officer from simply moving to another agency. He said the database provisions in the bill would give everyone access to the same information.

“The problem of wandering cops is real because officers who get in trouble in one place don’t stay there. They want to go somewhere else,” he says. “We want to identify those people who we don’t want to employ anywhere.”

Also, the measure adds training requirements for behavioral health crises, civil unrest, ethics, and implicit bias. Baggett says improved training standards are needed because police officers are being asked to fulfill many different roles.

Stephens-Pulley says the bill’s provisions might be of some service, but it won’t solve everything. She said it would not, for example, catch underlying issues that an officer might bring with them to work.

“People with issues, mental illness, or if they’re under the influence of narcotics, the officers don’t know how to approach them and address them,” she says. “So if I approach you and if I address you aggressively, you’re going to put your guard up, and you may get aggressive with me.”

The measure has not yet received a hearing.