California governor approves series of police reform bills

The governor of California has enacted a series of bills that give the state the power to remove the badges of officers who commit misconduct, raise the minimum age for officers and take other steps to change the police following calls for nationwide reform.

Bills signed Thursday also limit when police can use things like rubber bullets and bean bullets during protests. They prohibit restraints that can cause suffocation of a person and require officers to immediately report any excessive force exerted by others.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said some of the measures were long overdue. He said 46 other states already had the power to revoke police credentials for misconduct.

State Senator Steven Bradford, a Democrat who drafted the bill, said it aimed to end “the cycle of washing, rinsing and repeating police faults” in which officers can leave one department before being made redundant and rehired elsewhere.

“This bill is not just about holding bad officers accountable for their misconduct,” Bradford said. “It is also about restoring trust between our communities and the police.”

The law allowing decertification comes 18 years after lawmakers removed the power of a state police standards commission. This left it up to local agencies to decide whether the agents should be fired.

The bills were signed over a year after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on his neck and was later convicted of murder. The death of Floyd, who was black, by Derek Chauvin has sparked outrage and calls for changes in police services across the country.

California Police Departments will also be banned from allowing any techniques or methods of transportation that pose a risk of “positional asphyxiation” – which experts say happened to Floyd, but can also happen when people are immobilized. and left on the ground.

Among the bills signed Thursday is also the one that raises the minimum age of officers from 18 to 21 and adds education requirements. Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer said data showed more mature and educated officers are less likely to use excessive force.

Another is to increase the transparency of police misconduct files.

The governor and lawmakers were joined in the signing of the bill Thursday by relatives of people who died after meetings with police.

Among them were the family of Angelo Quinto, who suffered from a mental health crisis in December and died after Antioch police immobilized him. His family said police knelt on his neck, which police denied. The family filed a complaint.

“Even the last four minutes of restraint he wasn’t reacting, and they didn’t talk about it at all…” said his sister, Bella. “It was just absolutely excessive and unnecessary.”

The Associated Press contributed.