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Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Attorneys Have Their Hands Full with Consumer Complaint Boom
Lawsuits against businesses based on consumer complaints surged last year and continue to grow in 2025 Class-action settlements alone hit nearly $40 billion in 2024, marking the third consecutive, record-setting year in the category. Private TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) claims have also exploded: Filings in January 2025 soared 268% year over year, with first-half TCPA class actions rising 44% from 2024. Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) complaint database – a proxy for consumer dissatisfaction – registered over 1.29 million complaints in Q1 2025, a 169% increase from Q1 2024. California courtrooms are as busy as anywhere with such cases. And the complaints come from a diverse array of categories, many of which are clearly a sign of the times. This year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta released the 'Top 10 Consumer Complaints' and highlighted ongoing efforts to protect California consumers. The list included the top consumer complaint categories the California Department of Justice (DOJ) has received in the last calendar year. 'California is a pillar of strong state consumer protection laws and an outspoken advocate for robust federal protections,' said Bonta. 'Whether protecting our kids online, stopping egregious bank fees or cracking down on illegal price gouging, as the People's Attorney, I am committed to going to the mat for California consumers.' The Attorney General's Top 10 Consumer Complaint Categories Over the Past Year: California's 2025 surge in consumer lawsuits and complaints is a trend that's being felt most acutely in Los Angeles. Whether it's misleading advertising, hidden fees, data breaches, labor violations or deceptive pricing practices, consumers across the state are increasingly turning to the courts to assert their rights. The result is a new and more litigious landscape for businesses, especially those in consumer-facing industries, like retail, tech, automotive and hospitality. This uptick is not without context. California has long been home to some of the strongest consumer protection laws in the country, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the Unfair Competition Law (UCL). But in 2025, three forces appear to be fueling this litigation surge. First, there's the continued evolution of consumer rights awareness. Californians are more informed and tech-savvy than ever. The widespread availability of information about their legal rights, combined with high-profile class actions splashed across headlines and social media, has created a climate where consumers are not just willing but eager to challenge perceived corporate misbehavior. Second, new regulations and state-level legislation – including expanded protections under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) – have created a legal framework that both empowers plaintiffs and broadens the definitions of violations. For example, companies that mishandle or sell consumer data without consent are increasingly being held accountable in court, even for relatively minor infractions. Third, the rise of plaintiff-friendly legal technology has lowered the barrier to entry for filing lawsuits. Platforms that streamline class action recruitment, litigation funding firms that take on financial risk and AI-assisted legal tools have all contributed to a system in which consumers feel emboldened and lawyers feel equipped to take on more cases. Indeed, consumer financial litigation is clearly on the rise. In May of 2025, for example, filings jumped across the board – Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) cases were up 10.1% compared to the previous month; Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) cases were up 15.5%; and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) complaints were up 8.8% – with year-to-date increases of 12.6% for FCRA cases and a near doubling (97.6%) in CFPB complaints compared to the same period in 2024. TCPA (telephone marketing) cases more than doubled year-over-year, with 507 class actions in Q1 2025, up 112% from Q1 2024. January alone was up 260%, according to the National Law Review. Los Angeles, as California's commercial and cultural capital, has become a flashpoint for this activity. In one high-profile 2025 case, a group of L.A. consumers filed a class action suit against a popular meal delivery app, alleging that the company used deceptive pricing, adding hidden fees during checkout that were not disclosed up front. Though the company denied wrongdoing, the suit sparked wider scrutiny of pricing transparency across the industry and led several other platforms to quietly update their fee disclosure practices. In another L.A.-based case, a tech startup that marketed a line of 'smart' home security devices was sued for failing to adequately protect user data. Plaintiffs alleged that poor cybersecurity practices led to a breach that exposed thousands of customers' personal information, including home addresses and video footage from interior cameras. The lawsuit not only drew national attention but also triggered an investigation by the California Attorney General's office. Even brick-and-mortar businesses aren't immune. Several Los Angeles-based gyms and wellness centers are now facing lawsuits over misleading membership practices, including unauthorized renewals and hidden cancellation fees, issues that have become more common as consumers re-evaluate subscription services post-pandemic. This growing tide of consumer litigation has caught many businesses off guard. Some are calling for reforms to prevent abuse of the system, particularly in cases where statutory damages can lead to large payouts even when actual consumer harm is minimal. Others argue that the system is working as intended: shining a spotlight on companies that cut corners, violate consumer trust or exploit legal gray areas. Ultimately, the rise in lawsuits may signal a broader cultural shift in California, a rejection of opaque business practices and a demand for greater transparency, fairness and respect for consumer rights. For companies operating in the state, particularly in cities like Los Angeles, this is not a moment to retreat behind legal firewalls. It is a time to assess compliance policies, ensure ethical customer treatment and recognize that accountability is no longer optional – it's expected. As California continues to set the tone for consumer protection nationally, the experiences of businesses in L.A. today may well become the blueprint for how companies across the country adapt to a more empowered and litigious customer base tomorrow.
USA Today
11-08-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Walmart to pay $5.6 million as part of settlement for overcharging customers
Walmart will pay $5.6 million as part of a settlement in a consumer protection lawsuit that alleged the retailer overcharged its customers. The Arkansas-based company is accused of overcharging customers and selling products, such as produce, baked goods and other prepared items with less weight than shown on the label, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office in California. The civil complaint, filed by four California counties, also alleged that the retailer unlawfully charged customers prices higher than their lowest advertised or posted price. The Santa Clara's District Attorney's office said Walmart's actions violate California's False Advertising and Unfair Competition Laws. "When someone brings an item to the register to be scanned, the price must be right," District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. "They expect it. California expects it. My office expects it – and we will apply the law to make sure of it." Walmart previously accused of overcharging consumers In 2012, Walmart agreed to pay $2.1 million for overcharging consumers in violation of a 2008 court judgment, according to a statement released by the California Department of Justice. "Consumers who were overcharged at the cash register should have immediately received $3 off the lowest advertised price of the item. If the price was less than $3, the item was to be given to the consumer for free," based on a statement released by the then state's Attorney General and former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2012.
India Today
01-08-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Hindu-hate cases rise in California, but top official skips mention in statement
Incidents of anti-Hindu bias in California have risen for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Annual Hate Crimes Report presented by the California Department of Justice (DOJ) this week. However, the statement issued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, which was also part of the 80-page report, skipped any mention of "Hindu-hate" incidents, and came in for criticism from The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), an advocacy latest report shows anti-Hindu crimes increased from seven in 2023 to 10 in 2024, prompting concern from the Hindu American community. CoHNA said many such cases go underreported due to fear within the Hindu community, who are mostly first or second-generation immigrants to the advocacy group also mentioned that no arrests or prosecutions have been made for the 2023 vandalism attacks on Hindu temples in Newark and Hayward, California. CoHNA issued a sharp rebuke of the California Attorney General, calling his public response to the report "tone-deaf" for failing to mention Hindus among the communities impacted by hate."Anti-Hindu incidents continued to rise for the 4th straight year. This comes as no surprise to us – we have seen this manifest in the vandalisation attacks on Hindu temples – 4 in 14 months in California," the advocacy group said in a statement."The attacks have ranged from small temples run by a family from Fiji to the largest temple in the state – BAPS Chino Hills (Shri Swaminarayan Mandir)! And the attacks on Hindu individuals – both physical and online," the statement March, the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in California's Chino Hills was defaced with anti-India graffiti, less than five months after a similar incident was reported at another Hindu temple in the US External Affairs Ministry also commended the incident and called upon "local law enforcement authorities to take stringent action against those responsible for these acts, and also ensure adequate security to places of worship".Notably, other states of the US have witnessed attacks on temples June, a total of around 20-30 gunshots were fired at the Shri Shri Radha Krishna Temple in Utah's Spanish Fork city. The attack was the third on the temple in the same month. The temple management called it a hate ANTI-HINDU CASES GO UNDERREPORTED: CoHNAComing from a large immigrant community, CoHNA stressed that the reported numbers likely underestimate the true scope of the problem."Coming from an immigrant-heavy community, the institutions know that these numbers they are tracking are just an indication of the problem, due to widespread under-reporting, driven by fear and lack of knowledge and the privilege of access," the statement Attorney General Rob Bonta's statement on hate crimes drew concern over the lack of Hindu mention."Yet in an astonishingly tone-deaf response, California Attorney General Rob Bonta released a statement that did not even mention the Hindu community as one of the communities that is 'hurting'. What will it take for our law enforcement officials and lawmakers to acknowledge the unjust treatment being meted out to Hindus?" it added."Throughout California's history, too many of us have felt the sting of hate and discrimination. Too many Asian, Latino, Black, Native American, people with disabilities, LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh Californians all across the state are hurting. It's going to take all of us working together to take on bias and hate and their toxic effects on our society," the Attorney General was quoted as saying in the above-mentioned ARREST OR PROSECUTION IN 2023 TEMPLE ATTACK CASE: CoHNAThe advocacy group also expressed concern that no arrests were made in the 2023 temple vandalisation case."Here, it is important to point out that 18 months after the Hindu temples in Newark and Hayward were vandalised, no arrests or prosecutions have been made," the group Hindu temple was defaced with pro-Khalistani slogans in California's Newark city in December Vijay's Sherawali Temple in Hayward, California was attacked with anti-India graffiti in the same month in 2023, according to another advocacy group, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF).Pictures shared online by the HAF showed the temple board defaced with slogans supporting Khalistan and abusing Indian to the 80-page report, the Department of Justice's responsibility is to collect and review the actual incident reports to determine if the incident was identified and reported report also reveals that overall reported hate crime offences in California increased by 8.9%, from 2,359 in 2023 to 2,568 in 2024. Reported hate crime events, involving a religion bias, has also increased from 3% from 394 in 2023 to 406 in 2004."Over the last 10 years, reported hate crime events have increased by 141.7%," the report to the report, anti-Asian crime has seen a drop in the reported bias events fell from 125 in 2023 to 119 in 2024, a decrease of 4.8%.The report also mentioned that four anti-Sikh crimes were also reported in 2024, while five such cases were reported in 2023.- EndsMust Watch
Politico
29-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Bondi opens new front in sanctuary state war
SANCTUARY STANDOFF: Donald Trump has long excoriated California's sanctuary state immigration law, and now his administration is openly challenging local law enforcement to violate it. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently sent letters to sheriffs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Riverside and San Diego counties saying they have 30 days to share a litany of information about immigrants in their jails. This includes a list of those who aren't citizens, crimes for which they've been arrested or convicted and their release dates. 'I hope that you will voluntarily produce this requested information in furtherance of our shared duty to keep the citizens of San Francisco County safe and secure,' Bondi said in one letter. 'But if you refuse to voluntarily produce this information, the Department of Justice will pursue all available means of obtaining it, including subpoenas or other compulsory process.' But doing so would violate SB 54, which California leaders approved during Trump's first term. It prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officers in most cases. Police and sheriff's deputies aren't allowed to ask those they arrest about their immigration status, and they can only disclose release dates and other jail information if it's related to inmates convicted of serious crimes. The sanctuary law has withstood legal challenges, with the Supreme Court declining to review it in 2020. This leaves Bondi to pressure local officials into a kind of pick-your-poison standoff — either with the state or with the federal government. The California Department of Justice will 'review [Bondi's] directive and monitor its implementation for compliance with the law,' said Nina Sheridan, a DOJ spokesperson. 'President Trump and his Department of Justice cannot bully our local law enforcement into breaking the law,' Sheridan said in a statement. So far, the officials who've received the letters aren't exactly jumping at the chance to share information with the attorney general. When asked about the letter last week, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a press conference he hadn't yet received it and would be consulting with county attorneys about the kinds of information he could legally release. The sheriff's department uploads fingerprints for those in custody to a national database that's shared with state, regional and federal law enforcement, Luna said. It also already posts inmates' names, booking numbers and release dates online. But Luna emphasized his department doesn't collect immigration status information. 'For those who ask us, 'Hey, how many people do you have in custody that are immigrants?' We don't know the answer to that, because none of us ask that question,' he said. Similarly, San Francisco County Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said in a statement to Playbook that federal officials already have the identity and fingerprints of everyone in the county's jail. They can use a warrant or a court order to arrest people, and the sheriff's office will 'respond to any request for information consistent with local, state, and federal law.' 'My priority is public safety — not politics,' Miyamoto said. 'And we will not foster fear in immigrant communities by acting as an arm of immigration enforcement.' The San Diego County Sheriff's Office did not respond to a request for comment. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a Republican who's running for California governor and has been highly critical of SB 54 — was more opaque when asked about the letter. Lt. Deirdre Vickers, a sheriff's office spokesperson, said in a statement they would 'cooperate with the federal government within the confines of state law.' Asked for more specifics about the kind of information the office would provide, Bianco called Vickers' statement 'a very plain and complete answer.' 'I guess it's just not suitable for an anti-law enforcement bias looking for a gotcha or a sensationalistic headline,' he said in an email. IT'S TUESDAY AFTERNOON. This is California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check on California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to lholden@ WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY KEEPING BILL: Bill Essayli will become acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed. The move seems to follow the same playbook that the Trump administration has used to work around expiring appointments by Bondi. If this sounds confusing to you, that's because Essayli has been the District's interim attorney since April when he was appointed by Bondi. Federal law says that appointment expires after 120 days, which would be this week. After that interim period, courts have the option to appoint someone else to serve until the vacancy is filled. In this case, Fox News and the Los Angeles Times report that the judges decided not to act. This new appointment will seemingly give Essayli 210 more days. The Trump administration has acted similarly in New Jersey and New York, an unconventional move to keep nominees in their temporary position. In New Jersey, they are challenging the move in court. The U.S. Attorney's office referred all questions to the White House, which did not respond to comment. The Trump administration has yet to officially nominate Essayli for the position, which prevents him from getting an official nomination hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. — Nicole Norman IN OTHER NEWS SETTLING UP: UCLA has agreed to pay $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit Jewish students and a professor filed against the school over pro-Palestinian encampments on campus during protests last year, our Eric He reports for POLITICO Pro subscribers. The lawsuit, which was filed following weeks of upheaval as demonstrations against Israel's war against Hamas consumed the campus, alleged that university officials did not protect the plaintiffs from discrimination by protesters. The students and professor claimed 'checkpoints' set up by protesters prevented them from accessing parts of campus. The proposed settlement, which still must be approved by a judge, comes months after the Trump administration filed a statement of interest in the case voicing support for the plaintiffs. FUNDING FIGHT: Bonta and 22 other Democratic attorneys general and governors are suing the Trump administration over a bid to strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood clinics, our Rachel Bluth reports. 'We need to just call it what it is: punishment for Planned Parenthood's constitutionally protected advocacy for abortion,' Bonta said at a press conference Tuesday morning. 'The hypocrisy is really hard to ignore: a party that claims to be defenders of free speech only seem to care about it when it aligns with their own agenda.' Congressional Republicans have wanted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood since Trump's first term. If they're successful, about 200 of the 600 clinics the nonprofit operates around the country could close, with over half of them in California. 'California is the most impacted state in the country,' said Jodi Hicks, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. 'It's important to have a California lens on this.' WHAT WE'RE READING TODAY — San Francisco has made it easier for residents to report concerns about homeless people through the city's app for non-emergency complaints. (San Francisco Chronicle) — A San Jose-based company that makes chip design tools pleaded guilty to charges accusing it of supplying hardware and software to China's National University of Defense Technology. (Bloomberg) AROUND THE STATE — Declining demand for farmers' wine grapes have left some vineyards minimally cared for in the San Joaquin Valley, the state's leading producer of lower value wine grapes. (The Fresno Bee) — Government budget cuts have forced a pullback of a temporary housing subsidy program aimed at tackling homelessness. (Los Angeles Times) — San Diego's downtown, Bankers Hill, Hillcrest and North Park have had a homebuilding boost as the region pushes to accelerate residential development, a new analysis shows. (Voice of San Diego) — compiled by Juliann Ventura
San Francisco Chronicle
15-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
California police are killing fewer people. The opposite is happening in red states
California law enforcement officers killed fewer people, shot fewer people and used physical force against fewer people in 2024 than in any year since the state began keeping track nine years ago. Red states, meanwhile, are experiencing a reverse trend. According to a Chronicle analysis of statistics compiled by the California Department of Justice from 2016 through 2024, the 117 people killed by officers last year marked a 13% decline from the 134 killings in 2023 and a 32% drop from the 172 slayings in 2017 and again in 2020, which tied for the most recorded by the state. No California officers died as a result of use-of-force encounters last year either, the first time that's happened since at least 2016. 'It's a calmer California,' said Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, who passed legislation intended to reduce racial profiling and lethal encounters while in the state Assembly. 'There's still so much to do. But I think it indicates in some way that when we make up our mind that we want to bring about change, we can.' Other lethal force databases both confirm and extend California's positive trajectory. A Washington Post database that strictly tracks fatal police shootings — and which was discontinued this year — counted 111 such killings in California in 2024, the lowest since it began counting in 2015, when officers in the state fatally shot 190 people. And the research nonprofit Mapping Police Violence, which includes killings by off-duty officers and intentional vehicle collisions, tallied the fewest police killings in California since its tracking began 13 years ago: It said that officers killed 127 people last year, the lowest figure since at least 2013 and down 36.5% from 2015's high of 200 deaths. Mapping Police Violence and the Washington Post rely on news coverage to compile their totals, which Mapping Police Violence augments with public records requests. The state Justice Department receives its statistics from the law enforcement agencies themselves and 'does not collect the entire universe of' use-of-force incidents, a spokesperson said, statutorily restricted to consider force that results in death or the most serious of injuries. Still, taken together, the different data sources broadly agree that police violence has steadily declined in the nation's most populous state. It's a quiet transformation, backstopped by hard-won legislative victories and occurring with little fanfare, even as California sharpens its contrast with Republican-controlled states where police killings are on the rise, say data scientists, reform advocates and former lawmakers. 'Particularly since 2020 and the murder of George Floyd … there's been a divergence or a gap opening up between more progressive or blue states and red states,' said Samuel Sinyangwe, a Stanford University graduate who founded Mapping Police Violence in 2012. 'California is leading that trend. … The opposite is happening in Texas.' In California, Sinyangwe pointed to a series of legislative reforms that he and others contend have achieved results greater than the sum of their parts. Assembly Bill 953, the Racial and Identity Profiling Act, or RIPA, passed in 2015, requires law enforcement agencies to produce data on every vehicle and pedestrian stop and every racial profiling complaint to a state advisory board. Assembly Bill 392, passed in 2019, made the deadly force standard a little more restrictive, requiring officers to believe such force was 'necessary' rather than 'reasonable' to protect themselves and others. Senate Bill 230, companion legislation from the same year, standardized minimum use-of-force training requirements around the state. Assembly Bill 1506, passed in 2020, tasked the Attorney General's Office with reviewing officer killings of unarmed civilians and deadly force policies at law enforcement agencies that requested it. And Assembly Bill 2054, also from 2020 and known as the Community Response Initiative to Strengthen Emergency Systems Act, temporarily funded non-law enforcement emergency response teams in four counties. No one bill has changed the paradigm around police violence and some have fallen short of their advertising — AB392 bases its standard on an officer's perception, not the reality of danger; and the Attorney General's Office has declined to prosecute officers in 29 straight cases it's reviewed under AB1506 — but they've had a cumulative, overlapping effect, said Sinyangwe. 'There's been a layered approach that's scaled up over time,' he said. 'These are policies that are in many ways models for the nation.' Many needed multiple attempts — and in some cases, watering down — to overcome grueling opposition from powerful law enforcement unions. Weber, who wrote the RIPA Act and AB392, said she almost gave up on the former. But she received encouragement from an unlikely source — police officials who wanted change and told her not to believe claims that they couldn't collect the kind of data she was seeking. And after leaders from her own party pulled AB392's predecessor in 2018, she returned the following year alongside dozens of civil rights organizations, community activists and people affected by police violence, many of whom held vigils at the state Capitol and confronted lawmakers attempting to duck out of floor votes. 'Listen, I had an army. Literally an army of people who showed up for hearings and spent nights sleeping at the Capitol,' she said. 'The work that they did was just profound, it really was. It made a tremendous difference.' AB392 took effect in 2020, when police killings experienced an upswing as the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a jump in gun sales and a retrenchment of vital programs in vulnerable neighborhoods. But police killings declined steadily from there, a reality that Weber had intuited from a drop in controversy and heartache in her own community. 'I live in the heart of this southeast community,' she said of her San Diego neighborhood. 'And I haven't seen the kind of violence or tremendous number of stops, this and that. … I've seen officers attending a whole lot of different kind of community meetings.' Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty, a former Assembly member who wrote AB1506 and two earlier iterations, said he recently went to the scene of a police shooting blocks from City Hall. Police had been called about a man waving a gun in the roadway of North 16th Street. The department said three officers shot and wounded the man after he kept walking toward them and pulled what later turned out to be an imitation gun from his pocket. McCarty said he watched a debriefing and body-camera footage. 'The officers used every possible technique before they had to respond,' McCarty said. Sinyangwe said California can build on its progress by scaling up the things that are working, like expanding the Attorney General's Office's ability to audit agencies' use-of-force procedures, and by making the CRISES Act statewide and permanent. 'These laws can make a difference, but they're often not at the scale of the problem,' he said. Neither the Legislature's Democratic leadership, which exacted the reforms over the objections of law enforcement unions, nor the leaders of those unions have celebrated the downturn in violence or taken credit for it. The California Peace Officers Association, California Police Chiefs Association, Peace Officers Research Association of California Legal Defense Fund, based in Santa Rosa, did not respond to requests for comment. Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose recent swing through South Carolina heightened speculation about a 2028 presidential run, has used his platform to advertise the state's declining crime rate and his administration's efforts to increase law enforcement spending, combat organized retail theft, illicit cannabis grows and intoxicated drivers. 'In the wake of a nationwide spike in crime during the pandemic, California made the choice to invest — not abandon — our communities,' Newsom said in a statement. 'While Republicans in Congress pushed a bill that guts law enforcement funding and the President focuses on arresting farmworkers, California is showing what real public safety looks like: serious investments, strong enforcement, and real results.' According to the California Department of Justice, 2024 also marked nine-year lows in the number of officers who admitted using force (1,190), officers who were shot at (155) and civilians who were proven to be armed (280). And though no California officers died at the hands of someone they were trying to arrest, there were six line-of-duty deaths in 2024, according to the nonprofit Officer Down Memorial Page, which, unlike the state, counts federal officers like a Homeland Security agent who died in a helicopter crash during a border patrol mission near San Diego and a federal prison officer who handled a letter allegedly laced with a synthetic cannabinoid. That was the lowest figure in 13 years and down 87% from 2021, when 45 officers died in the state — 30 from COVID-19. 'It is an unfortunate reality that law enforcement is an inherently dangerous profession, but we are grateful that brave officers continue to answer the call every day,' Cory Salzillo, legislative director for the California Sheriffs' Association, said in an email. He did not respond to a question about the drop in use-of-force deaths for both civilians and officers. In California, four of the five law enforcement agencies with the most deadly encounters last year were sheriffs' departments. The Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department tied with 12 civilian deaths each. They were followed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department (10), Riverside County Sheriff's Department (7) and Sacramento County Sheriff's Department (6). In the Bay Area, the Alameda Police Department, Antioch Police Department, Berkeley Police Department, Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, Marin County Sheriff's Department and San Mateo County Sheriff's Department were among dozens of agencies that reported no significant incidents last year. Antioch Police Chief Joe Vigil, appointed on an interim basis to lead a department that emerged in January from a federal civil rights investigation into a racist text-messaging scandal, said low staffing might be a factor, because officers aren't able to respond to high-priority calls as quickly as they should. But he also said the department is working with a police oversight commission to update training procedures and has a crisis team that can respond to mental health calls with or without officers. 'I think that's part of the bigger trend that's happening throughout California,' Vigil said. 'It's too early to say if it's sustainable.' Outside of California and on the other end of the political spectrum, 2024 was the deadliest year in Texas since Mapping Police Violence began keeping track: The 168 police killings last year marked a 113% increase from 2017, when officers killed 79 people, and a 79% increase from 2020, when officers killed 94 people. The rise in police killings coincided with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signing legislation in 2021 that financially penalized cities that decrease their police spending. Similarly, Florida saw an 82% upswing in police killings from 2021, when the Republican-controlled Legislature passed bills making it legally more permissible to hit protesters with cars, to 2024, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation blocking civilian oversight of police misconduct. The 98 police killings Mapping Police Violence recorded in Florida last year were the second-most in at least 12 years, below the 100 counted in 2020. Nationwide, Mapping Police Violence says that police killings are trending up in red states, rural and suburban areas, and trending down in blue states and urban areas. The increases have offset the gains in states like California, making 2024 the deadliest year for police violence in Mapping Police Violence's history.
