(CN) — California Governor Gavin Newsom inked a broad package of criminal justice reforms Thursday, highlighted by a decertification process for officers who wrongly kill or use excessive force against civilians.
The feature legislation, Senate Bill 2, aligns California with nearly every other state and creates an official process to strip badges from rogue officers. The new law also reduces immunity provisions for officers to make it easier for victims of police violence to pursue wrongful death and other civil rights claims in state court.
Currently, California is one of four states along with Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island without official processes to revoke the certificates of disreputable officers.
Newsom said the fact California is one of the last with a statewide decertification process proves how difficult it is to enact police reforms in the nation’s most populous state.
“Forty-six other states have established foundational laws to address [decertification]; why is it so hard to do the right thing?,” Newsom asked during a ceremony attended by the family members of two California men recently killed by police. “It remains still hard to do the right thing.”
Thursday’s signing caps a multiyear struggle for the bill’s author and civil rights groups that have been pushing for the Legislature to act following the police killings of Californians like Stephon Clark, a Black man from Sacramento who was unarmed and gunned down in his grandparents’ backyard in 2018. State Senator Steven Bradford carried a similar bill that cleared the Senate in 2020 but didn’t come up for a vote in the Assembly on the final day of a truncated session.
To get SB 2 over the top this time around, Bradford culled support from key legislative leaders like Senate President Toni Atkins. He also made a series a passionate speeches over the last several months to sway enough votes from Democrats in the Assembly and Senate.
During one marathon hearing, he recited the names of Black Americans recently killed by police and argued California’s refusal to update archaic policing standards stains its progressive image. Bradford says the bill is inspired by the death of Kenneth Ross Jr., who was fatally shot in 2018 by a Gardena officer. The officer recently transferred to Gardena after being involved in multiple other shootings at a nearby department.
On Thursday, Bradford again evoked Ross Jr. and noted the signing ceremony was being held steps away from the park where he died.
“He was shot in the back and killed in broad daylight by an officer who really had no business being here in the city of Gardena,” said Bradford, D-Compton.
Republican lawmakers fought the decertification bill at each step of the process, calling it a heavy-handed approach that could stymie officers’ ability to act quickly under duress. No GOP members in either chamber voted for the final version of the bill.
Meanwhile, law enforcement groups said that while they supported a decertification process, they worried SB 2 would give the new review board too much power in stripping badges.
Their opposition was partly successful as Bradford was forced to accept a series of late amendments last month to keep the bill alive.
Under Bradford’s bill, the state would create a seven-step process for reviewing and acting on allegations of serious officer misconduct. At the conclusion of each investigation, the existing Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training could decide to decertify officers and bar them from taking future law enforcement jobs within the state.
Information used by the commission would be available for inspection under the California Public Records Act and the bill would create a nine-member advisory board appointed by the governor.
Bradford said the main goal of SB 2 is to stop the “wash, rinse and repeat cycle” that allows bad cops to jump from agency to agency after being fired.
“It’s unfair to communities as a whole,” said Bradford.
Newsom also signed legislation proponents have coined the “George Floyd Law.”
Assembly Bill 26 outlines responsibilities and steps officers must take when witnessing excessive force by a fellow law enforcement officer.
State law already requires officers to intercede but AB 26 forces them to immediately report the incident. In addition, an officer who fails to intervene will receive the same discipline as the officer using excessive force, meaning both could be stripped of their badges. Lastly, the bill prohibits agencies from retaliating against the reporting officer.
The bill’s author said AB 26 was crafted to prevent the scenario in Minneapolis where several officers stood by as Derek Chauvin choked Floyd to death. He called the current duty to intervene mandate ambiguous and said his bill will require badly needed new training at departments across the state.
“AB 26 provides us with an opportunity to build more trust between police officers and the communities that they serve,” said Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena.
Rounding out the package are bills that restrict law enforcement’s use of rubber bullets and tear gas for crowd control purposes, a bill raising the minimum age for rookie peace officers from 18 to 21 and legislation that will expand public access to police misconduct records.
The reforms will combine to make policing in the state more effective and transparent, said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. He applauded his former colleagues in the Legislature for “answering the call for justice” and pushing through the reforms.
“Today is an inflection point, a day we witness history get signed into law,” Bonta said.
Follow @@NickCahill_5
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
