CALIFORNIA AG BACKS LEGISLATION ON POLICE SHOOTINGS THAT IS HALF-GOOD, HALF-BAD

AG Kamala Harris is backing a bill that will enable her to post detailed reports of all California police shootings on her website

California Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, has submitted a bill that if passed would require all California law enforcement agencies to submit a detailed report of any police shooting to the state attorney general’s office by computer. The agencies will have to disclose the age, race and gender of the person shot, whether the person was armed and, if so, what type of weapon was possessed.

AG Kamala Harris is a strong backer of Irwin’s bill because she wants to put these reports on her Open Justice website for public viewing.

Making those reports available to the AG’s office for statistical purposes is a good idea, but allowing the public to view those reports is not. That’s carrying transparency too far, way too far and that’s why Irwin’s bill is half-good, half-bad.

The reports may be submitted before the investigation has been completed and will disclose the name(s) of the officer(s) doing the shooting, thereby leaving the cop(s) open to harassment.

Contrary to calming the ‘community’ down, rabble rousers will be able to cherry-pick those reports and stir up ‘community’ anger even when the police shooting was a righteous one.

KAMALA HARRIS BACKS A BILL THAT WOULD IMPROVE SISCLOSURES ON POLICE SHOOTINGS
California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris supports legislation that she says would “bring criminal justice data reporting into the 21st century.”

By Jack Dolan

Los Angeles Times
March 21, 2016

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris wants to require police agencies to file detailed reports about officer-involved shootings to her office electronically, so they can be quickly and easily posted on a state website for public viewing.

Despite the heated national debate over police use of force, no reliable database tracks all police shootings in California, making it difficult for researchers to definitively answer some fundamental questions, including whether minorities are shot at disproportionately higher rates and which departments pull the trigger most often.

For years, state law required police departments to report deaths in custody, including fatal officer-involved shootings, but the requirement had little enforcement and many departments routinely neglected to file the required information.

And, there was no reporting requirement if a suspect was shot but not killed.

Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring new, detailed reports on all police shootings that result in serious bodily injury or death. The departments will have to disclose the age, race and gender of the person shot, whether the person was armed and, if so, what type of weapon was possessed.

That law, however, allowed departments to provide the information on paper. The new bill backed by Harris and sponsored by Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) would require departments to submit the information electronically, making it much easier to disseminate on the attorney general's Open Justice website.

"This legislation will bring criminal justice data reporting into the 21st century," Harris said.

The bill would also require departments to file traditional crime statistics electronically, including the numbers of murders, rapes, robberies and property crimes. Currently, 60% of departments submit that information on paper, requiring state workers to type it into computers before it can be analyzed and disseminated. The process is unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming, state officials said.

Harris, a Democrat who is running for U.S. Senate, has been criticized by some civil rights activists for not doing enough to increase accountability for police departments amid the national debate over shootings of young black men. Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is the top law enforcement officer in California.

Last year, she opposed a bill that would have made her office responsible for investigating police shootings. Currently, those investigations are handled by local prosecutors, who critics say are too close to the police to provide impartial oversight.

A Times investigation last month found that since 2004, there had been more than 2,000 officer-involved shootings in Southern California, with only one officer charged with a crime. He was acquitted.