California seeks not to disclose investigations into abusive and corrupt police officers

The California government has proposed ending public disclosure of corrupt and abusive police investigations, handing over responsibility to local agencies in a bid to help cover an estimated $31.5 billion budget shortfall.

The proposal, part of the budget package that Gov. Gavin Newsom is still negotiating with the legislature, has drawn strong criticism from a coalition of criminal justice and press freedom groups, which spent years pushing for disclosure rules that were part of a law. landmark that Newsom signed in 2021.

The law allows the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to investigate and decertify police officers for misconduct, such as excessive force, sexual assault, and dishonesty. Requires the commission to make records of decertification cases public.

The Newsom administration now wants to get rid of that element of transparency. The Commission indicates that the population could still obtain the records from police departments. But advocates say local police departments are often reluctant to release that information.

Several states with a police decertification process, including Republican-ruled states like Tennessee and Georgia, require state agencies to release records of police misconduct.

In Tennessee, records made available through the requirement provided a host of new details about the actions of police officers when they brutally beat African-American Tire Nichols during a traffic stop earlier this year. Those details, released by the state police certification commission, were not previously made public by the local police department.

“It is a slap in the face to family members whose loved ones have been stolen that … a key provision of the decertification process is not being followed,” said J Vasquez of the social justice group Communities United For Restorative Justice. , at a press conference last week.

Removing the transparency element from the 2021 law would continue to erode public trust, Antioch Mayor Pro Tem Tamisha Torres-Walker warned. The city, 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco, was rocked after a federal investigation revealed that more than half of the officers on the Antioch police force were in a text message group in which some police officers they freely used racist slurs and bragged about fabricating evidence and beating up suspects.

“I don’t think it’s a fair process to say ‘let’s go to the very people who are committing the crimes against their community and ask them to come forward and hold them accountable,’” Torres-Walker said.

The coalition of more than 20 groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, also accused the Democratic governor of abusing the budget process to push through his proposal presented in April.

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