WITH systemic police reform gaining momentum on both the state and national levels, California is leading the charge with the first-ever bill to combat racial profiling and police brutality.
Assembly Bill 953, also known as the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, is the first bill of its kind to collect basic information on police stops to better prevent racial and identity profiling. The bill, first introduced by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), was approved by the California Senate on Wednesday, Sept. 9, and will return to its original house for concurrence.
Once a collective decision is made, AB 953 will be considered for signature by Governor Jerry Brown.
“Recent incidents have forced us to confront some ugly truths about the persistence of racial bias in law enforcement. One of our best defenses is information about who is stopped by police and why,” said Weber. “Currently, information on these incidents isn’t provided publicly in a comprehensive way. The goal of AB 953 is to rectify this so we can make policies with the best information possible.”
If approved, the legislation would update California’s definition of racial and identity profiling to be in line with federal recommendations (including other demographic characteristics, such as gender/sexual orientation), require that California law enforcement agencies uniformly collect and report data on civilian interactions and establish an efficient advisory board to analyze data made at stops/searches and better address problems with disparate policing, according to a statement released by Asian Americans Advancing Justice — Los Angeles.
Last week, about 800 people were present at the capitol to urge Governor Brown to pledge his support for AB 953. Protestors staged three die-ins, each lasting four and a half minutes (to represent the four and a half hours Michael Brown’s body laid on the street after he was shot in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri), and then occupied the halls outside of Gov. Brown’s office for over two hours.
Participants and advocacy groups, including Advancing Justice — LA , cited racial profiling as one of the reasons why people of color are being killed by police at racially disproportionate rates.
“Far too long Black, Indigenous, Latino, and immigrant communities have been unfairly profiled, harassed, and killed by law enforcement. We know it starts with a stop, but it can end in tragedy,” said Rev. Ben McBride, Director of Regional Clergy Development for PICO California. “Law enforcement has gone unchecked and [the] state legislature has failed at protecting those most vulnerable to police misconduct.”
An independent analysis of officer-involved killings provided by Southern California Public Radio recently found that California leads the nation in the number of police-related deaths so far this year.
According to the database, the Los Angeles Police Department has killed more people than any other law enforcement agency in the US in 2015 so far. The number — 10 — is twice the number killed by deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which tied for second with two other agencies. Demographic research shows that 69 of the 74 killed in California were men.
Broken down by race, the data showed 27 of those killed were white, 25 were Latino, 14 were black, and three were Asian or Pacific Islanders (five were listed as “unknown”).
Across the US, more than 450 people have been killed by law enforcement officers this year. 129 of those are in California, which holds the record for highest number of deaths in the nation.
However, bill advocates argue that the state does not collect, analyze or make available even basic information about who the police stop, search or even shoot. In Connecticut, a Racial Profiling Prohibition Project has data-collection and advisory board components similar to those proposed under Weber’s bill. However, AB 953 would go even further to include both traffic and pedestrian stops analysis.
“The passage of AB 953 is just one way state legislators can begin to root out the evil ingrained in the culture of mass criminalization that exists in our state,” McBride continued. “Black lives matter. People of color matter. We must demand that our elected officials and law enforcement officers do what they are paid to do and that is protect us.”
“If signed into law, AB 953 would pave the way for the nation on the issue of fair policing,” said Salimah Hankins, Director of Legislative Advocacy for Dignity and Power Now. “By developing a model system for collecting basic information about police stops, California would be moving away from the anecdotal to the empirical. And we know that as California goes, so goes the nation.”
