Push to decertify problem officers
Bid to close state loophole crucial to reform plan
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday called for legislation that would help decertify police officers for serious misconduct — a type of accountability platform that has been long missing in a state that prides itself on criminal justice reforms.
The decertification tool was one of a host of police reform recommendations Becerra announced during a virtual news conference, along with deescalation and useofforce policies that would cover all law enforcement agencies in California.
While many of the recommendations will already be enacted into law in January, the state’s authority to strip officers of their badge has only recently begun to gain traction amid a national reckoning on police misconduct, particularly in communities of color.
“We’re pushing ahead on significant plans to support or sponsor legislation that works to decertify police officers for serious misconduct,” Becerra said.
This, he said, would include “provisions requiring law enforcement agencies to complete investigations even after a peace officer leaves that department.”
Becerra’s announcement comes three weeks after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, sparking protests and riots across the country as people expressed outrage over police killings and excessive uses of force, particularly against black people.
California is one of just five states in the nation that does not operate a statewide system to decertify police officers
when they’ve been fired or resigned amid serious misconduct allegations. The other states are Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The lack of a system has created a substantial loophole for problematic officers to leave their departments and get hired in a different city, said Dennis CuevasRomero, a legislative advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union’s California Center for Advocacy and Policy.
This can play out in a few ways, with a new agency checking into an officer’s background and deciding to “turn a blind eye,” CuevasRomero said, or it simply fails to “check their background file at all.”
Another possibility is an officer could resign during an investigation and get hired at a different department before the investigation is completed.
In these cases, CuevasRomero said, the original agency often drops the internal investigation “and just kind of washes their hands of the officer.”
California’s sworn officers are currently certified by their own departments and training academies.
CuevasRomero noted an effort in the early 2000s to give the California Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, the authority to decertify police officers, but it was quickly shut down by police advocates.
POST does have minimal authority to decertify, he added, but it is limited to officers who received their certification based on fraudulent or misrepresented information, or due to an administrative error.
Officials in San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area have pledged to initiate new oversight policies, rethink longstanding norms of policing and redirect funds away from law enforcement toward more community services.
Police unions in San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles issued a joint statement Monday saying they would work with Becerra’s office on his police reform proposals.
“We appreciate that the Attorney General is engaging stakeholders, including police officers in his ideas for improving policing in California,” officials said. “Many of his proposals have already been successfully implemented in our departments or are part of our national reform plan announced (Sunday) by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, San Francisco Police Officers Association, and San Jose Police Officers Association. We are open to engaging the Attorney General on the details of our ideas and his.”
Becerra said he hasn’t yet identified a lawmaker who would author his decertification proposal, nor does he have specific recommendations on which types of misconduct would qualify for decertification.
“What I can tell you is that it’s going to be an idea that’s going to be getting a lot of attention, and we hope to be in the mix of those who are providing input on this and other of the proposals for reform,” Becerra said.
Among the attorney general’s other recommendations are speeding up the process for enacting useofforce reforms, ending the use of pepper spray against children in juvenile detention, and banning choke holds, carotid restraints and any body positioning intended to cut off the flow of blood to a suspect.
Under these guidelines, police would also be required to give a verbal warning before using any deadly use of force, discontinue “bite and hold” canine techniques and prohibit shooting at or from a moving vehicle.
Ultimately, Becerra said, policies should require deadly use of force to be used only as a last resort.