Accountability bills stalled

With a bill to mandate independent investigation of officer-involved killings in California stalled in committee, other legislative efforts reveal lawmakers’ picky appetites for holding their law enforcement communities accountable.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarty’s bill to outsource the investigation of fatal police encounters is being “held under submission.” The term means there’s a stated desire to discuss the bill, but no forward momentum to move it out of committee.

The bill reads in part: “If a peace officer, in the performance of his or her duties, uses deadly physical force upon another person and that person dies as a result of the use of that deadly physical force, the Attorney General shall appoint a special prosecutor to direct the investigation concerning the use of deadly physical force by that peace officer.”

On May 29, the same fate visited Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s Assembly Bill 619, which would require law-enforcement agencies to report their use-of-force encounters to the California Attorney General’s Office on an annual basis.

There currently is no official database documenting fatal police encounters, much less one for confrontations that stop short of death. Weber’s bill would greatly expand what is known about when and how force is applied by California’s law-enforcement establishment.

The introduction to Weber’s bill says police “custody includes, but is not limited to, any point in time when a person’s freedom of movement is curtailed or limited by a peace officer, or when a person is led to believe, as a reasonable person, that he or she is so deprived of the freedom to move, such as during a stop, a stop and frisk, an interrogation, an arrest, transport prior to booking, or correctional confinement.”

If passed, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018, and “would require each state and local agency that employs a peace officer to annually report to the Attorney General data on the use of force by that agency’s sworn personnel.”

Referencing the viral video litany that includes such names as Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray, racial justice advocate Chauncee Smith indicated that lawmakers have before them a grim opportunity.

“While it is quite difficult to discern betterment in such tragedy, if it exists, it may be that it has delivered a proverbial gut check to our society,” Smith, who works for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, told an Assembly committee on May 27.

Yet the guts of lawmakers may not be quite as big as their eyes. The tepid response to Weber’s AB 619 is due, in part, to its $3.3 million price tag.

Finding more support was Assembly Bill 1289, authored by a former cop, Assemblyman Jim Cooper of Elk Grove. Unanimously approved by the state Assembly on May 25, the proposal now moves to the Senate. If passed, the bill would require a study on local community policing and engagement strategies. The bill shifts that authority from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office to the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which sets the minimum standards for becoming a cop.

Taryn Kinney, a spokeswoman for Assemblyman Cooper, said it was the LAO that recommended the shift, since POST’s contacts with local law enforcement agencies would make the data-collection process easier.

Lastly, there’s Assembly Bill 953, also by Weber. It would expand California’s prohibition against racial profiling to include all forms of identity bias, and create an advisory board under the state Attorney General’s Office to oversee such efforts in 2016.

AB 953 advanced through the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee. “We’ll see if our Assembly actually has the courage to do what the people are asking for,” Weber said during a recent committee meeting.