New legislation in California seeks to reduce police shootings of civilians

The federal government does not currently have accurate records on how many civilians are killed by police officers annually in the U.S. However, since 2015, The Washington Post has been tracking police shootings of civilians nationwide. Also, the advocacy group Mapping Police Violence maintains a database of police killings of civilians. According to Mapping Police Violence, from 2013 – 2020, 98.3% of police killings of civilians have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.

The state of California has one of the highest rates of police-civilian shootings in the country. In 2018, lawmakers in California worked to create legislation to make police misconduct records available to the public and to require police departments to release body camera footage. In addition to being the most populous state in the U.S., California has more police shootings than any other state.

On average, there are about 100 to 200 civilians in California who are killed by police every year. In 2016, California’s Department of Justice began collecting data on use of force by law enforcement agencies in the state.

In California, Hispanics make up approximately 39% of the state’s population. However, between 2016 – 2018, Hispanics represented 46% of the people who were killed by police in California. Additionally, between 2016 – 2018, police from California killed 97 unarmed civilians. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, from 2005 – 2016 there were almost 1,200 police-involved killings of civilians in California. For all of these cases only two of the killings were determined to be unjustified.   

The following legislative bills were introduced by California legislators with the goal of reducing the number of police shootings of civilians:

AB 392: Introduced by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego

* Became a state law on January 1, 2020

* Raises the legal standard for justifying police use of deadly force, allowing officers to shoot only “when necessary in defense of human life.”

* Updates a section of the state law unchanged since it was written in 1872. 

SB 230: Introduced by Senator Anna Caballero, D-Salinas

* Became a state law on January 1, 2021

* Requires basic training for officers to include lessons on de-escalation tactics and other alternatives to violence.

* Requires law enforcement agencies to update use of force policies to specify that officers must de-escalate situations when feasible.

Sources:

* California’s attempt to reduce police shootings, explained. By Laurel Rosenhall. July 18, 2019. Cal Matters. https://calmatters.org/explainers/california-police-shootings-deadly-force-new-law-explained/

* California Has a High Rate of Police Shootings. Could a New Open-Records Law Change That? By Tim Arango. February 12, 2019. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/us/california-police-records.html

* Mapping Police Violence. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

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