San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Use-of-force deal splits activists
SACRAMENTO — Like dozens of other Californians whose family members were killed by police, Quintus Moore traveled to the state Capitol in April to ask lawmakers to raise the legal standard for when officers can use deadly force on a suspect.
After hours of testimony, the bill they were lobbying for passed out of its first legislative committee. Moore said it felt like a “ray of hope” that he would finally get justice for his son, who was fatally shot at a shopping mall last year by Los Angeles police.
“Everybody was so happy and so grateful and so thankful that we thought we were finally going to be able to have some over
sight,” said Moore, 60, a substitute elementary school teacher from Los Angeles.
Two months later, he is seething over a compromise that proponents of the measure, AB392, negotiated with law enforcement organizations. That deal cleared the path for the measure to become law, but it has divided the activists who rallied for the bill and shared their painfully personal testimonials at legislative hearings.
Some groups that originally backed the proposal, including Black Lives Matter, withdrew their support. Others swallowed their disappointment, believing that any steps toward a tougher useof-force standard would be an improvement.
“Nobody thought it was going to be easy, but I thought we would win it,” said Melina Abdullah, cofounder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. She said her organization would not have signed on as a sponsor of the bill if it had been introduced in its current form.
“I believe that we can win more and could have won more,” Abdullah said.
AB392 would give California one of the strongest laws in the country on police use of force. The measure would direct officers to “use deadly force only when necessary in defense of human life.” It does not explicitly define what would be considered “necessary,” though courts could consider the actions of both police and the suspect when determining whether an officer was justified in opening fire.
Current law, established by a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases, considers lethal force to be justified if a “reasonable” officer in similar circumstances would have acted the same way.
California police killed 172 people in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the state Justice Department, an increase of nearly 10% over 2016. The data do not distinguish between shootings and other types of force, such as blunt impact or choke holds.
Law enforcement groups were intensely opposed to the original measure, arguing that it would put officers in danger by causing them to second-guess their actions. They dropped their objections after proponents scaled back some of the language, including a requirement that police exhaust all alternatives before using deadly force. The bill would now order officers, when possible, to use techniques to de-escalate the situation before shooting. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, the San Diego Democrat who introduced the measure, said she has received a “very positive” response to the compromise from the public and her colleagues. The Assembly approved the bill almost unanimously last month after the deal was struck. It moves next to the Senate.
Weber said she understood why some supporters were disappointed, but that “you have to look at what the bill does and the greater good.”
“When you do a bill like this, you’re going to find yourself losing some people along the way,” she said. “The vast majority of people are still with us. Most of the families are still with us.”
Organizers at the Anti Police-Terror Project, an Oakland community organization, maintained their sponsorship of Weber’s measure after checking with the families they work with whose relatives have been shot to death by police.
Co-founder Cat Brooks said she initially felt “a little agitation and some sadness” about the amendments, which she said showed how powerful law enforcement remains in Sacramento. She said she always knew that advocates of tougher standards would have to give up some of what they wanted in the bill, but she thought the political landscape was more favorable to their effort.
The families decided it was better to get some change than none at all, she said, and did not want to bail on Weber, who has “been there for us.”
“We felt obligated to uphold their wishes,” Brooks said.
Brooks sees AB392 as a foot in the door to a stricter law in the future and hopes it will prompt more debate about what conduct is acceptable for police. She found it hard to accept that the compromise bill removed a definition of “necessary” that would have required officers to consider all alternatives to deadly force before shooting.
“That doesn’t feel like a radical thing to ask for,” Brooks said. “You should have some alternatives to pulling a trigger.”
Activists from Black Lives Matter, however, said the changes to appease law enforcement went too far. So did Silicon Valley De-Bug, a criminal justice advocacy organization in San Jose that also dropped its support for Weber’s bill.
“There shouldn’t be any middle ground with those that killed our loved ones,” said Rosie Chavez, an organizer with the group.
Abdullah, of Black Lives Matter, pointed to two changes that made it impossible for her organization to accept the compromise. One reinserted references to how an “objectively reasonable” officer would interpret a confrontation, which Abdullah said was too similar to the current standard. The other linked AB392 to another measure, backed by police groups, that would spell out new guidelines for department use-offorce policies and provide additional money for training.
“As Black Lives Matter, we believe that what really makes communities safe is mental health funding and housing and those kinds of things,” Abdullah said. “We don’t want to be part of a legislative package that expands funding for police.”
Abdullah said that of 17 families with whom Black Lives Matter was working with to pass the bill, 15 did not support the new version.
“We’re disappointed, because we invested a significant amount of time, energy and resources into this,” she said. But, she added, “there’s a level of pride, too. We feel proud of the work we’ve done. It wouldn’t have gotten this far without us.” Moore was among the family members who urged Black Lives Matter to withdraw its support.
His 30-year-old son, Grechario Mack, was fatally shot by two Los Angeles police officers in April 2018 while he was carrying a knife through a mall in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood. Moore said his son, who had asked security guards for a psychiatrist, was having a mental health episode.
When police confronted Mack, he took off running and the two officers opened fire, according to a review by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Mack fell to the ground, then sat up, reached again for his knife and began making slashing motions across his throat. Believing he was trying to stand back up, the officers each shot Mack one more time.
The commission ruled in March that the officers violated department policy when they fired the final rounds, because Mack no longer posed an imminent threat. Moore wants the officers fired and prosecuted but he has not heard anything from the Police Department or the district attorney’s office since the commission issued its judgment.
Moore said police need to face accountability for their actions, so they will stop and think about what they are doing before they shoot a suspect. He no longer believes that can be achieved through AB392, which he compared to a toothless rottweiler trying to guard its owner’s backyard.
“What good is that?” he said. “What good is having a rottweiler with no teeth?”
“When you do a bill like this, you’re going to find yourself losing some people along the way.” Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, on the compromise to her mesaure on police use of force