SACRAMENTO — Public access to police disciplinary and use-of-force cases in California would be greatly expanded under legislation released Monday, including records about racist and discriminatory acts by officers.
Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, announced the effort to reform and broaden Senate Bill 1421, the landmark police accountability law she sponsored in 2018. That law requires police to release to the public records about officer shootings and other uses of force, as well as officers’ sexual misconduct and dishonesty.
In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, there is a public need for more information about police, Skinner said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. The revelation that Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop charged with second-degree murder in Floyd’s death, had a lengthy disciplinary record shows why greater access is needed, she said.
“Our communities deserve to know that police are held accountable,” Skinner said.
Senate Bill 776, which would expand the existing law, would include fines for public agencies that fail to provide records and allow the public to seek punitive damages if they are forced to sue to obtain the records.
Skinner also introduced a companion bill, Senate Bill 773, that would route 911 calls about mental illnesses and drug overdoses away from police to social service agencies. Skinner brought both pieces of legislation forward Monday, the last day in which lawmakers are allowed to amend bills with significant new material.
In a prepared statement Skinner said that SB 776 will:
• Expand access to all records involving police use of force, not just incidents that result in death or great bodily injury as is now the case, except for frivolous complaints.
• Expand access to all records involving police dishonesty related to criminal investigations and on-the-job sexual assault (not just complaints that are sustained), excluding frivolous complaints.
• Provide access to all disciplinary records involving officers who have engaged in racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic behavior, or actions against any other protected class, excluding frivolous complaints. It would require access to those records even when an officer resigns before the agency’s investigation is complete.
• Provide access to sustained findings of wrongful arrests and wrongful searches.
• Mandate that an agency, before hiring any candidate who has prior law enforcement experience, inquire and review the officer’s prior history of complaints, disciplinary hearings and uses of force.
• Eliminate the five-year rule on retention of police records.
• Allow agencies to charge the public only for the direct cost of duplication of records (not the cost of editing and redacting) and add civil fines of $1,000 a day for agencies that fail to release records and punitive damages when an agency is sued for not releasing records or improperly redacting them.
Many agencies have not fully complied with the law, failing to release records or only releasing partial records. The language creating fines and punitive damages is needed to force compliance on agencies that have been stalling in the release of records for the 18 months since SB 1421 took effect, Skinner said.
Bert Robinson, Senior Editor for the Bay Area News Group, agreed.
“Even as the public demands increased police transparency in the wake of George Floyd’s death and other horrific incidents, California departments continue to drag their feet in revealing the details of their use of force,” Robinson said, singling out the California Highway Patrol and the San Jose Police Department as “SB 1421 scofflaws.”
“I wish it weren’t necessary to threaten these agencies with financial penalties for hiding records at a time when they need to be investing every available dollar in their communities. But sadly, their duty to the public is not enough to get them to follow the law,” Robinson said.
The bill’s introduction also comes as the San Jose Police Department became mired in scandal over the weekend after a blogger exposed bigoted and anti-Muslim social-media posts, both individually and in a private Facebook group of retired and active officers. Among the posts were images comparing Muslims to terrorists and Nazis, and one comment in which an officer posted “black lives don’t really matter.”
Police agencies were slow to respond to questions about the bills Monday afternoon. A spokesman for the California Police Chiefs Association declined to comment, saying the bill needed to be studied.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, lauded Skinner’s efforts to broaden the law.
“I am optimistic given all we’ve seen over the past several months that the Legislature will heed this call for more sunlight in the darkest corners of police agencies around the state,” Snyder said.
Staff writer Robert Salonga contributed to this report.
