By the time the sun set at the Capitol on Monday evening, hours from a legal deadline to pass bills for the year, state Sen. Steven Bradford knew his proposal to strip badges from troubled officers was in trouble.

For weeks prior, police reform bills were points of contention — even among Democratic legislators publicly sympathetic to the cause but privately circumspect, often under the pressure of intense lobbying by law enforcement interests.

But then, in the last hours, chaos broke out at the Capitol, with technological troubles, overt anger between lawmakers and partisan wrangling bringing the Senate to a halt and slowing business throughout the building. Bradford (D-Gardena) was unable to even have the bill called for a floor vote in the state Assembly, he said.

Bradford contends more than one colleague used the tumult of the night to slow his bill and keep it from getting a vote — thereby saving those on the fence from having to go on the record opposing police reform at a time when the majority of Californians are in support of it.

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