Urge reworking of police rules for protests
SACRAMENTO — California should restrict the use of rubber bullets and tear gas at protests, clarify when police can declare an unlawful assembly to disperse crowds and require officers to intervene when their colleagues are using excessive force, advisers to Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
Newsom, who convened the advisers to recommend standards for crowd control and use of force in June after protests over police brutality erupted statewide, encouraged the Legislature to adopt the changes. Lawmakers rejected several bills with similar aims during their most recent session.
“The role of police officers in protests and demonstrations is to keep the peace, and facilitate the ability of protesters to demonstrate peacefully without infringing on their First Amendment rights,” Newsom said in a statement. “Implementation of these recommendations will help ensure our law enforcement agencies are better equipped to respond safely to protests and demonstrations and reinforce the values of community partnership, deescalation, and restraint.”
Ron Davis, a former East Palo Alto police chief and director of the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services under former PresAdvisers
ident Barack Obama, and Lateefah Simon, a racial justice activist from Oakland who serves on the BART Board of Directors, wrote the recommendations after consulting this summer with law enforcement and local government officials and representatives of community groups. They are expected to recommend separate guidelines for police use of force in the coming weeks.
Their protest recommendations included updating training for police to teach “that crowds are not inherently irrational or prone to violence and that aggressive or unjustified police actions can antagonize and galvanize otherwise peaceful crowds.” They also called for standards for monitoring and detaining people suspected of violence during a demonstration, requiring officers to wear and activate their body cameras during protests, and limiting the amount of time officers can be on duty.
“Dissent and protests are as American as apple pie,” Simon said in a statement. “The right to peacefully assemble is a fundamental one that we hold dear. This moment of national reckoning on racial justice will be defined by the impassioned voices for reform and leaders who respond courageously.”
Organizations representing California police chiefs and county sheriffs said they were reviewing the recommendations.
The legislative proposals could be the most challenging to adopt. A wave of momentum to overhaul California’s policing practices that began this summer with lawmakers introducing dozens of bills ended in September with Newsom signing only a few modest measures. Among them were laws to ban certain types of choke holds and to require the state attorney general to investigate any case where officers kill an unarmed civilian.
A bill to limit when police could use lesslethal projectiles at protests, such as rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, and chemical agents such as tear gas died on the final night of the legislative session. Newsom’s advisers recommended restricting those tactics unless necessary to protect life, to defend against assaults or, if police have exhausted alternatives, to prevent destruction of property. They also suggested prohibiting the use of dogs and water cannons to disperse crowds altogether.
The advisers recomState mended requiring officers to intervene to stop colleagues from using excessive force, making a false arrest or engaging in other inappropriate conduct, and to report that misconduct. A legislative committee shelved a measure this year that would have mandated police report and intervene to halt excessive force by other officers and disqualified them from serving in law enforcement if they failed to do so.