Latest news with #SenateBill1421
San Francisco Chronicle
05-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bill banning deals that hide police misconduct, prompted by Chronicle investigation, clears hurdle
A bill that would bar California law enforcement agencies from using secret deals to bury officer misconduct, a widespread and longtime practice exposed in an investigation published last year by the Chronicle, cleared a legislative hurdle Tuesday, passing out of the state Assembly's Public Safety Committee. 'Throughout California, dangerous and dishonest officers are skirting accountability through this practice,' the bill's author, Assembly Member Isaac Bryan, D-Culver City (Los Angeles County), told the committee. The Chronicle investigation 'Right to Remain Secret,' produced with UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program, revealed that at least 163 departments had signed 'clean-record agreements' that concealed allegations of corruption and criminality against nearly 300 officers, helping at least 108 of them to land subsequent jobs in law enforcement or as security guards. The conduct hidden by these agreements included many accusations of serious misconduct, including sexual assault, falsifying police reports and excessive force. In many cases, the departments that agreed to bury the alleged misconduct in secret files did so despite an unwavering belief that the conduct had occurred. As written, the bill would prohibit California law enforcement agencies from agreeing to destroy, remove, halt, modify, or conceal findings of any misconduct and void any of these promises retroactively. Additionally, the bill would make all such agreements disclosable. Currently, the Peace Officers Research Association of California, or PORAC, the state's most powerful law enforcement lobbying organization, is the only group publicly opposing the bill. The California Police Chiefs Association and the California State Sheriffs' Association have not taken a formal position. Testifying in opposition, PORAC's legislative advocate, Randy Perry, told the committee the bill is redundant, saying police accountability bills passed in California within the past decade have addressed this issue. 'Officers that they're using as examples would never be able to be peace officers now. They couldn't go to another department and be hired by somebody else,' Perry told the committee, referencing Senate Bill 2, which permits the state to revoke the licenses of officers accused of serious misconduct. Bryan said that was a 'ridiculous argument,' saying, 'We just have not seen those numbers from the police certification board.' According to a website maintained by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training's website, the agency with the power to revoke licenses, only one officer identified in the Chronicle's investigation has lost his license. As for the provision to make clean-record agreements disclosable, Perry said that the newspaper investigation, by getting access to more than 300 agreements, proved that this part of the bill is also unnecessary. He cited Senate Bill 1421 and Senate Bill 16, laws that for the first time gave the public access to specific police misconduct records. 'This bill is trying to help the press go back and get very old cases,' Perry said. Bryan countered that 'the idea that this information is readily available is false,' noting that one-third of the agencies contacted by the Chronicle and the Investigative Reporting Program refused to disclose all or some of these secret deals, including the 10 largest agencies in the state. In fact, the passage of SB1421 and SB16 were only part of why reporters received many of these agreements. Much of the underlying conduct covered up by the agreements does not fall in the categories of records disclosable under those transparency laws. PORAC has offered an alternative to Bryan's bill — a clarification that any police separation agreements that conceal misconduct described in SB1421 and SB16 are disclosable. It does not propose a prohibition of these agreements. Bryan said the amendment was not sufficient. 'These agreements shouldn't exist. They are against the public interest. They are against public safety. They allow for the worst of the worst to cover that misconduct,' he said. PORAC has advocated for the use of clean-record agreements for years, records show. Almost every agreement obtained by reporters was executed by a small group of attorneys funded by PORAC, which is financed by police unions. Additionally, PORAC's website highlights dozens of examples of these lawyers' success in securing agreements that give officers a 'clean slate.' The bill passed through committee with bipartisan support, with both Republicans on the committee — Juan Alanis of Modesto and Tom Lackey of Palmdale (Los Angeles County) — voting yes. The sole dissenting vote was James Ramos, D-San Bernardino. A spokesperson for the Assembly member did not explain the reason for the no vote but said Ramos is 'seriously reconsidering his vote before the bill comes to the full Assembly floor.' 'These protect the self-described bad apples of the department from whom they would like to separate,' he said. 'We need to end this practice.'
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Yahoo
Citrus Heights police shoot man who officers say pulled knife, made threats
Citrus Heights police shot and wounded a man Monday morning after officers said he threatened people with a knife in a shopping center parking lot. Officers responded around 10:30 a.m. to reports of a man with a knife near Lichen Drive and Antelope Road, said Lt. Nicole Garing, a Citrus Heights Police Department spokesperson. Officers found the man at 10:42 a.m., still armed, and at least one officer opened fire, Garing said. The man was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said. No officers or bystanders were hurt. In line with department policy, the officers who fired on the man were expected to be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of the incident by the department. This incident is also being investigated by the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office, a standard procedure for officer-involved shootings in the county. Police were also expected to release video from body-worn and patrol car cameras, as mandated by Senate Bill 1421, which requires disclosure of police records pertaining to incident of great bodily injury within 30 days of an incident. Monday's officer-involved shooting was the first by city law enforcement since October 2024, according to previous Bee reporting. Justin Jerome Phillips, now 42, survived the shooting and was arrested on suspicion of robbery, corporal injury of a spouse and threatening with a weapon. Phillips remains held in Sacramento County sheriff's custody in lieu of $1 million bail. Phillips returns Thursday to Sacramento Superior Court in connection with the October incident.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Longtime Bee reporter Sam Stanton to be honored with lifetime achievement award at SPJ gala
Retired Sacramento Bee reporter Sam Stanton will receive a lifetime achievement award Thursday from the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter, honoring his four-decade career dedicated to government accountability and the public's right to know. Stanton will be awarded the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award during SPJ NorCal's 40th annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards in San Francisco. The Yoffie award is named after the former Marin Independent Journal publisher and co-founder of SPJ's Northern California Freedom of Information Committee. 'Stanton's reporting is defined by not only a commitment to the right to know, but also journalistic excellence,' SPJ NorCal said in announcing the honor. Stanton's 42-year journalism career began in 1982 at The Arizona Republic, where he covered state and national politics. He joined The Sacramento Bee in 1991, quickly becoming a standard-bearer for accountability journalism in California's capital. His byline became a mainstay of The Bee's coverage for more than three decades. Colleen McCain Nelson, The Bee's executive editor, described Stanton as 'irreplaceable.' 'His ability to source, report and make sense of chaos has set a standard few can match,' Nelson said in remarks to SPJ. Stanton's reporting often broke new ground in government transparency. His work securing public records and pushing for government accountability led to lawsuits by The Bee to enforce public access laws. He worked closely with attorney Karl Olson in high-profile cases, including the fight for internal affairs records from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and police shooting files from the Sacramento Police Department. Olson, who has represented The Bee and other McClatchy newspapers in California for decades, received the Yoffie award in 2024. The Bee and Stanton were honored by SPJ NorCal in 2020, recognizing work by Stanton and his colleagues in seeking compliance with Senate Bill 1421, a police transparency law, among other investigative work. In 2017, Stanton and then-Bee education reporter Diana Lambert received SPJ's James Madison Freedom of Information Award for their investigation of former UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. Their reporting uncovered Katehi's use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to manage her online image, along with her participation in lucrative board appointments and international trips. The revelations led to a separate University of California investigation and Katehi's resignation in 2016. The investigation earned two first-place awards from the Inland Press Association for investigative reporting in 2016. Over his 33 years at The Bee, Stanton won numerous awards for breaking news and investigative reporting. Among his notable work was a 2013 investigation of Carissa Carpenter, who proposed building a large movie studio in Dixon despite a history of failed projects and legal troubles. Stanton's reporting, alongside longtime Bee reporter and editor Marjie Lundstrom, led to Carpenter's conviction in 2018. Lundstrom, a 1991 Pulitzer Prize winner, retired after serving as deputy editor at CalMatters. Before his retirement in May, Stanton was named Journalist of the Year by the Sacramento Press Club. In honoring Stanton, the club remarked: 'The Sacramento Bee editor who nominated Sam Stanton for journalist of the year called him a weight-bearing wall of a journalist. We agree.' The Madison awards honor the 'people and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing freedom of information and expression in the spirit of James Madison, the creative force behind the First Amendment.' Among other honorees at Thursday's event is Fresno Bee reporter Melissa Montalvo, whose nine-month investigation into Pitman Family Farms in Hanford exposed unsafe working conditions following the death of employee Jesus Salazar. Her reporting prompted a state investigation into the company.
