California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday urged local law enforcement agencies statewide to adopt new use-of-force reforms, including banning chokeholds and carotid restraints.
But he stopped short of backing proposals to have his office investigate police uses of force and sidestepped questions about nationwide calls to reduce funding for police departments.
The proposed reforms come amid nationwide unrest in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned down his neck for more than eight minutes. Massive protests continued throughout the state for a third week, with Black Lives Matter and other groups demanding police reform.
“With Americans across the country standing up against injustice and racism, we have been called to recognize the systemic failures that cause and allow police misconduct to perpetuate,” Becerra said.
The attorney general’s proposals include asking police agencies to mandate a policy requiring officers to intervene to stop others from using excessive, unnecessary force, as well as to de-escalate situations and give a verbal warning before using force. Becerra added that “all agencies should require that deadly force be used only as a last resort when reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or are not feasible.”
Agencies should also prohibit officers from shooting at someone in a moving vehicle, unless the driver “poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the public or an officer,” Becerra said. Also, police canines shouldn’t be trained to bite a suspect at first response and instead bark to alert the handler.
The attorney general called the recommendations just the “initial step,” saying there’s still a lot of work to do.
Becerra, a Democrat, supported stripping away officers’ training certifications if they’ve been fired from one agency so that they can’t be hired by other agencies. He also said agencies should have to complete their investigations into alleged misconduct even if officers quit, forestalling a practice that has allowed some to go to work elsewhere.
“At this stage, California does not have a system in place to decertify a peace officer,” Becerra said. “It could take any number of forms … Certainly there would be a due process requirement in any decertification. There would be collection of the facts and evidence. There would be presentation so that an arbiter on this would be able to reach a decision.”
Many of his other proposals on use-of-force mirror national proposals, he said. Others date back 18 months, to when his office recommended changes to the Sacramento police department after two officers fatally shot Stephon Clark, a black vandalism suspect, when they said they thought the cellphone he was holding was a gun.
Recent protests across the state — including in Los Angeles — at times devolved into clashes with police. Officers were shooting rubber bullets and using tear gas on protesters, who have heavily criticized agencies for their response when the demonstrations began.
Becerra on Monday also urged police agencies to place clear limits on crowd control techniques during protests or mass gatherings, including restrictions on the use of rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and batons.
The attorney general’s recommendations also include requiring training on “bias by proxy,” which he says happens when a person calls the police and makes false claims about people they have a prejudice against. He said the New York woman who called police on a black man who was bird watching at a park is an example of that.
“We’re urging local authorities across California and our state legislature to work with us in actively engaging in police reform,” Becerra said. “We cannot afford to ignore the realities faced by black Americans and of people of color, through this nation and in our state.”
Three California police unions, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, San Jose Police Officers Association and the San Francisco Police Officers Association, on Sunday announced proposed reforms “to root out racist cops.”
The reforms include setting up a database of former police officers fired for gross misconduct to prevent other agencies from hiring them, new use of force standards and de-escalation training, among other changes.
The unions bought newspaper ads to announce the reforms.
Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey has said the big barriers preventing prosecution of police officers are the laws allowing the use of lethal force and a propensity of jurors to give officers’ the benefit of the doubt.
But she said she is again considering having a group of investigators handle police shootings that are not from the officers’ own agency.
“What George Floyd has done and what this discussion has done is make me think, ‘Is there a better way?’ Because people seem to have written off the process,” she told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday. “We should look at are there other ways so the public has more faith in it. Because clearly some in the public don’t.”
