Media push for police records
Competing news groups join forces to shed light on law enforcement misconduct
One police officer had sex in the front seat of his squad car. Another stole thousands of bullets. Others, while wearing a badge of authority, used force illegally, cavorted with sex workers, lied in police reports and concocted trumped-up charges against citizens.
Revelations about these bad cops have been made public this year under California’s new police transparency law, Senate Bill 1421. To keep the records coming, more than 30 competing news agencies, including this one, have formed an unprecedented coalition to obtain police documents and share the information with each other and the public.
Dubbed the California Reporting Project, the effort announced today also includes the Southern California News Group, the Los Angeles Times, KQED, KPPC, the Press Democrat, the Sacramento Bee and other McClatchy papers, and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, among others. The news organizations’ work is intended to expose rogue police officers and — in some cases — the extent to which their behavior has been tolerated by agencies sworn to uphold laws and protect the public.
“California residents have been waiting decades for information about how effectively cops do their jobs — and who the bad apples are,” said Bert Robinson, the Bay Area News Group’s managing editor/content.
“This coalition will get that information out far more quickly than any news organization working on its own. Ultimately, it will help the police do their jobs better, and help reinforce the community trust that the many good officers in California deserve,” Robinson said.
The effort is only possible because of the new transparency law, which breaks through a wall of secrecy around law enforcement built up since the 1970s that blocked public access to police misconduct and deadly useof-force information.
As of Monday, the coalition had made requests to 675 police agencies in all 58 counties since Jan. 1. This news organization and KQED together have filed more than 460 requests, including ones to all state agencies that employ sworn officers and all police departments in Northern California.
Overall, participating news organizations have combined to blanket the state with more than 1,100 requests — some directed
to police agencies, and others specific to individual officers.
But police unions have resisted the new law, and squared off against the media and good government groups in courtrooms from San Diego to Sacramento.
The unions claim the law cannot be applied to records dated before Jan. 1 because lawmakers did not say specifically in the legislation that it applies to records regardless of when they were created.
David Mastagni, a lawyer who represents police officers, said records created before 2019 were never intended for a public audience, and that releasing those documents could expose sensitive information about both crime victims and officers.
“It's important to remember that both third-party victims and law enforcement have important privacy rights that need to be balanced with these disclosures,” he said. Some police, he said, have no choice but to use deadly force after being shot at by suspects.
“Yet their families are subject to ridicule and threats,” he said. “People will find social media photographs of the officers or spouses or their kids, even list where their kids go to school.”
But the unions have so far had little success convincing judges that the records should stay secret. Even as Attorney General Xavier Becerra refuses to release any Department of Justice records until courts settle the matter, local police agencies are beginning to give up their secrets, some under court order.
Twice already, state Supreme Court justices have declined to take up cases on SB 1421, without opining directly on the argument over whether the law applies to previous years' misconduct records.
The Los Angeles Police Department, tied up in litigation since January, started providing records last week after courts rejected the union arguments. Judges in Contra Costa, Orange, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino and San Diego counties have also ruled for releasing the records. Similar cases are pending in San Francisco and Merced and Fresno counties.
“It's become quite clear through numerous court rulings now that the unions' arguments are totally groundless,” said David Snyder, head of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, which is defending the law's application to past records in several cases around the state.
Perhaps no reason for delay can top the one made by Police Chief Chris Hughes of the city of Lindsay in Tulare County. Boxes containing the records were in an old storage container “stacked in such a manner causing it to be dangerous for an employee to enter the container to retrieve the records,'” he wrote in an email. The city later said it won't release anything until the court cases conclude.
But journalists are not the only ones asking for records. People who have lost loved ones in police shootings are also pushing for disclosure, saying the documents will contain answers that have been a long time coming.
“Every one of us has the same story,” said Rick Perez, whose 24-year-old son Richard “Pedie” Perez was shot dead by Richmond police Officer Wallace Jensen in 2014 outside a liquor store. The younger Perez was unarmed. Jensen claimed he thought Perez was reaching for a weapon and opened fire. The officer has left the department and is receiving a tax-free lifetime pension for an undisclosed injury.
Since the shooting, police have released little information about his son's killing to Rick Perez, citing the officer privacy laws that SB 1421 abolished. “The police will not release information. And then what little information they do release, it's basically the same story: ‘I feared for my life,' ” he said in an interview. “That gets them off every time.”
The Richmond Peace Officers Association sued the city to block Perez's access to the records.
“It's not some dark secrets to be covered up,” police union President Benjamin Therriault said. “It's just that the process is important to folks.”
Rick Perez said he thinks the records will shed new light on his son's killing and confirm his suspicions that Jensen was unfit for police work, and hopes that new information could lead to criminal charges in the matter. He also said he finds it troubling that agencies are waiting to delay releasing records until legal fights are over.
“You hear these cops talking about releasing this information, and once you release it you can't get it back,” Perez said. “They should think about releasing that bullet out of that gun. Once they release it, and it strikes somebody, you can't get it back. So their priorities really hurt.”