Despite reform, California is failing to properly police its cops

Despite being a Democratic bastion, California has had some of the nation’s slimmest law-enforcement oversight. We were one of only a few states that had no process for decertifying misbehaving officers. A 2006 state Supreme Court decision placed most misconduct information off limits to public oversight. Lawmakers’ coziness with police unions derailed even the most modest accountability proposals.

That all started to change over the past few years as public perception shifted. The state finally enacted a decertification process and expanded public access to misconduct records. It was an uphill battle, as the state’s previous two attorneys general remained closely wedded to the police unions.

In particular, former AG Xavier Becerra flouted the state’s new public records laws – and claimed his department didn’t have the money to enforce Assembly Bill 1506, which required the AG to investigate many police shootings. We believed that situation would change after President Joe Biden tapped Becerra for a federal post and Gov. Gavin Newsom replaced him with former Assemblyman Rob Bonta.

We strongly endorsed Bonta as he ran for attorney general this month in large part because of his serious approach toward improving police accountability. We stand by that decision, but we’re dismayed by a recent CALmatters investigative report showing that his office has failed to do its job under the new law. He has trotted out similar excuses made by Becerra.

The Legislature passed AB 1506 following the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. That nationally televised incident, which sparked protests across the country, disrupted the political environment in the Capitol.

The new law requires “a state prosecutor to investigate incidents of an officer-involved shooting resulting in the death of an unarmed civilian.” That’s a simple and reasonable requirement. Typically, police agencies handle their own investigations of their own officers and, rarely, recommend charges – even in egregious situations. The law provides a higher level of oversight, although the Legislature only approve around half of the money ($13 million) the Department of Justice requested to create a new division.

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Yet the CALmatters report found that the department has “opened 25 investigations of law enforcement officers who shot and killed an unarmed person” over the last 16 months, but “has resolved only one of the state’s 25 opened cases.” It found that California police agencies shot and killed around 140 people annually, yet dozens of them were not armed.

What explains this failure to live up to the straightforward dictates of the new state law? Bonta, according to the article, said the budget reduction reduced the size of its investigation teams and prevented it from purchasing a mobile forensic lab. We’re not persuaded by that argument. The department has a $1.2 billion budget, so it’s a matter of priorities.

Part of the problem revolves around the slow-moving nature of any bureaucracy, but this remains a huge disappointment. The public’s frustration stems in large part from the sense that there’s little accountability built into the system. Creating oversight systems and then not fully implementing them breeds resentment.

We believe Bonta when he vows to make the system work, but it’s past time for him to find a way to provide the timely investigations mandated by the law.