Data rules guard against race profiling
SACRAMENTO — The Los Angeles Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and other large law enforcement agencies across California will soon begin collecting racial and other demographic data when they stop drivers and pedestrians. The new program will begin in July, as outlined by Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s final regulations released Wednesday.
The data collection is an effort to identify and prevent police racial profiling, and Becerra said it would improve relations between peace officers and the people they serve.
“Trust is the glue that makes the relationship between law enforcement and the community work,” Becerra said in a statement. “This new data collection and reporting process is meant to strengthen, and in some cases repair, that trust.”
The Racial and Identity Profiling Act, passed at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2015, requires all California law enforcement agencies to collect the data, and directs the attorney general’s office to determine how departments would do it.
The final regulations are largely unchanged from a version Becerra detailed in August. Under the regulations, police officers will have to collect data on nearly every stop they make, including interactions with pedestrians and bicyclists. They’ll also have to note a person’s gender, English proficiency and any disabilities. But in emergencies, such as mass evacuations during bomb threats or earthquakes, the rules wouldn’t apply.
Both law enforcement and civil liberties groups lobbied Becerra over the regulations, with police officials concerned about the rules being too burdensome for patrol officers to comply with.
In announcing the final regulations, Becerra released supportive statements from Gardena Police Chief Edward Medrano and the Rev. Ben McBride, a Bay Area community activist. Medrano and McBride co-chair a board designed to review the regulations.
“The Racial and Identity Profiling Act and the recently approved regulations is another tool to ensure our officers continue to provide fair and impartial policing to the communities we serve,” Medrano said.
Nine police agencies, including the LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, will begin collecting the information next summer and will release their first annual reports on the data in April 2019.
Every year, more departments will be required to start collecting data. By 2022, all police agencies in California will be obligated to do so.