Enforcing reform

It’s fallen off the national radar screen, but police reform remains a critical issue to cities and communities across California. So there’s been a tremendous amount of interest in the outcome of two bills that have hearings in the state Legislature this week.

SB1421, authored by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), would open police personnel records to the public in certain serious cases of police use-offorce incidents, on-the-job sexual assault, and dishonesty.

Those are serious cases that deserve some amount of community transparency.

Police reform activists have rightly pointed out that it’s important for the public to have trust in the officers who are policing them, and that it’s difficult to have that trust when information about their records is kept under wraps.

Skinner has also pointed out that California’s existing confidentiality records for law enforcement are among the most secretive in the country.

Transparency and accountability should be bedrock values for law enforcement, but police groups have defeated bills similar to SB1421 in the past.

Police groups say that shielding disciplinary records from the public is a necessary measure to protect officer safety.

This argument overlooks two important facts. The first is that the majority of officers have excellent records and little to fear from public scrutiny. The second fact is that the overall law enforcement community is safer when the public has confidence in its activities.

SB1421 is currently awaiting its hearing in the state Assembly’s Appropriations Committee.

Also awaiting a hearing this week is AB931. This bill failed to pass last year and was resurrected after the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento.

In its current incarnation, AB931 would require police officers who used deadly force to show it was necessary, and that they had first exhausted all other less-lethal alternatives and de-escalation tactics that were appropriate to the situation. AB931 is controversial, and critics have wondered if it’s appropriate for such restrictions to be set at the state level (as opposed to, say, a local police commission).

But the bill’s many proponents are a reflection of the fact that too many community members don’t trust law enforcement to protect them — and that increased transparency and accountability are long overdue.