S.C. Senate Approves HALO Act to Provide First Responders a Buffer Zone

Adrian Ashford/S.C. Daily Gazette

COLUMBIA — A bill guaranteeing a buffer zone around first responders passed the Senate unanimously Thursday after the chamber’s retired police officer advocated getting rid of the proposal’s 25-foot requirement.

The legislation, dubbed the “Helping Alleviate Lawful Obstruction (HALO) Act,” threatens jail time to anyone getting in the way of on-duty officers, firefighters, paramedics or hospital workers after being told to get back.

As advanced by the House and a Senate committee earlier this month, the bill required people to stand back 25 feet after getting a verbal warning.

But Sen. Brian Adams, R-Goose Creek, said stipulating such an exact distance isn’t practical in a chaotic situation.

“A lot of times, first responders don’t say, ‘Move back 25 feet.’ They say, ‘Move back to the other side of the car; move back to that hedge of bushes,’” Adams, a former police officer in Goose Creek and North Charleston, told his colleagues during floor debate Thursday.

An amendment co-sponsored by Adams and Democratic Sen. Overture Walker, a personal injury attorney in Columbia, lets the first responders on the scene set the distance. Under the adopted change, people can be told to “stand a reasonable distance” away, not to exceed 25 feet.

Disregarding the warning with the intent of impeding, interfering with or harming the first responder is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.

In another amendment Thursday, senators deleted a line in the bill making it a violation to approach first responders to harass them. That’s a free speech issue, senators said.

Officers must have “thick skin,” and people have the right to film or question them, Adams said.

But the same amendment, offered by Sen. Greg Hembree of Little River, a former solicitor, still makes it illegal to harass a health care worker — including nurses, doctors, and medical assistants — while they’re providing medical care. They can tell people to get back to whatever distance allows “safe and unencumbered treatment of the patient” in a hospital or clinic.

Another vote in the Senate will send the amended bill back to the House, which passed its version 95-18 on March 4.