California bill proposes misdemeanor for officers who cover their face on duty
Local, state, and federal law enforcement officers who cover their faces while conducting official business could face a misdemeanor in California under a new proposal announced Monday.
The bill would require all law enforcement officials show their faces and be identifiable by their uniform, which should carry their name or other identifier. It would not apply to the national guard or other troops and it exempts Swat teams and officers responding to natural disasters.
Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator representing San Francisco, and Jesse Arreguin, a Democratic state senator representing Berkeley and Oakland, said the proposal seeks to boost transparency and public trust in law enforcement.
'We are seeing more and more law enforcement officers, particularly at the federal level, covering their faces entirely, not identifying themselves at all and, at times, even wearing army fatigues where we can't tell if these are law enforcement officers or a vigilante militia,' Wiener said.
'They are grabbing people off our streets and disappearing people, and it's terrifying,' he added.
The state senators said that in recent months, federal officers have conducted raids while covering their faces, and at times their badges and names, at churches, restaurants, hardware stores and schools in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Concord, Downey and Montebello.
'Law enforcement officers are public servants and people should be able to see their faces, see who they are, know who they are. Otherwise, there is no transparency and no accountability,' Wiener said.
Some videos of raids showing masked officers using unmarked vehicles and grabbing people off the streets have circulated on social media in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, a group of masked and armed men detained a Latino man in a church parking lot in Downey, a small, largely Latino suburb near Los Angeles.
The senior pastor of the church, Rev Tanya Lopez, described the incident and said the men did not identify what agency they worked for and refused to provide their names or badge numbers when asked. Lopez attempted to speak to the man, who only spoke Spanish, but one of the men turned a rifle on her.
'Who knows if this man is a citizen? They were not letting him answer any questions or provide any identification,' Lopez later told reporters. 'They surrounded him and started to just get ready to grab him. And that's why I could not just stand idly by.'
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