BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 71 (Rodriguez) - Criminal justice: reporting
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|Version: July 6, 2015 |Policy Vote: PUB. S. 7 - 0 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: August 17, 2015 |Consultant: Jolie Onodera |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: AB 71 would require law enforcement agencies to
annually report to the Department of Justice (DOJ) incidents
involving the use of force by and against peace officers, and
incidents of peace officer-involved shootings, as specified.
Fiscal
Impact:
Potentially significant one-time and ongoing
state-reimbursable local costs in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars (General Fund) annually to track and report the
detailed information for each type of incident. Initial costs
would be dependent on the tool prescribed for data reporting
by the DOJ. Annual costs would be dependent on the number of
incidents subject to the reporting requirements and the
associated workload to collect and report this data.
One-time significant costs potentially in the hundreds of
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thousands of dollars (General Fund) to the DOJ to develop the
database and complete programming to enable reporting of the
specified data by law enforcement agencies. Minor ongoing
costs for DOJ to report the specified incident data for its
own officers.
Minor, absorbable impact to the California Highway Patrol
(CHP), Department of State Hospitals (DSH), Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), and the Department of
Fish and Wildlife (DFW), assuming the number of incidents to
be reported is minimal.
Background: In response to the rash of highly publicized deaths of
civilians by peace officers, and amid protests in numerous
cities across the nation, President Barack Obama signed an
Executive Order on December 18, 2014, creating the Task Force on
21st Century Policing in an effort to strengthen community
policing and trust among law enforcement officers and the
communities they serve. In its Final Report of the President's
Task Force on 21st Century Policing, dated May 18, 2015, with
respect to policy and oversight, the Task Force recommended the
following:
To achieve this end, law enforcement agencies should
have clear and comprehensive policies on the use of
force (including training on the importance of
de-escalation), mass demonstrations (including the
appropriate use of equipment, particularly rifles and
armored personnel carriers), consent before searches,
gender identification, racial profiling, and
performance measures - among others such as external
and independent investigations and prosecutions of
officer-involved shootings and other use of force
situations and in-custody deaths. These policies
should also include provisions for the collection of
demographic data on all parties involved. All
policies and aggregate data should be made publicly
available to ensure transparency.
Additionally, U.S. Senators Boxer and Booker recently introduced
S. 1476, the Police Reporting Information, Data and Evidence Act
of 2015 (PRIDE Act) on June 2, 2015. This bill would authorize
federal grants to eligible states to report annually to the U.S.
DOJ on any incident in which a law enforcement officer is
AB 71 (Rodriguez) Page 2 of
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involved in a shooting, and any other instance in which use of
force by or against a law enforcement officer or civilian
results in serious bodily injury or death. This bill was
recently referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
This bill seeks to enact state statute requiring data collection
and reporting by state and local law enforcement agencies
consistent with the data reporting requirement included in the
pending federal legislation.
Proposed Law:
This bill would require, commencing January 1, 2017, each law
enforcement agency to annually furnish to the DOJ in a manner
defined and prescribed by the AG, a report of all instances when
a peace officer employed by that agency is involved in any of
the following:
An incident involving the shooting of a civilian by a
peace officer.
An incident involving the shooting of a peace officer by
a civilian.
An incident in which the use of force by a peace officer
against a civilian results in serious bodily injury or
death.
An incident in which the use of force by a civilian
against a peace officer results in serious bodily injury or
death.
For each incident reported above, this bill requires the
information reported to the DOJ to include the following
information:
The gender, race, and age of each individual who was
shot, injured, or killed.
The date, time, and location of the incident.
Whether the civilian was armed, and if so, the type of
weapon.
The type of force used against the officer, the
civilian, or both, including the types of weapons used.
The number of officers involved in the incident.
The number of civilians involved in the incident.
A brief description regarding the circumstances
surrounding the incident, which may include the nature of
injuries to officers and civilians and perceptions on
behavior or mental disorders.
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This bill requires the DOJ to annually include a summary of
information contained in the reports in its annual crime report,
as specified, classified according to the law enforcement
jurisdiction. In cases involving a peace officer who is injured
or killed, this bill requires the report to list the officer's
employing jurisdiction and the jurisdiction where the injury or
death occurred, if different.
Related
Legislation: S. 1476 (Boxer and Booker) 2015, The Police
Reporting Information, Data and Evidence Act of 2015 (PRIDE
Act), was introduced on June 2, 2015, and would authorize
federal grants to eligible states to report annually to the U.S.
DOJ on any incident in which a law enforcement officer is
involved in a shooting, and any other instance in which use of
force by or against a law enforcement officer or civilian
results in serious bodily injury or death. This bill has been
referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
AB 953 (Weber) 2015 would require each state and local agency
that employs peace officers to annually report data to the AG on
all "stops," as defined, conducted by the agency's peace
officers, and require that data to include specified
information. The bill would also require the AG to analyze the
data collected, report its findings from the first analysis by
January 1, 2019, issue reports each January 1, thereafter, and
make the reports available to the public by posting them on the
DOJ website. This bill is scheduled to be heard today by this
Committee.
Staff
Comments: The DOJ could potentially incur one-time moderate
costs in the mid- to high hundreds of thousands of dollars
(General Fund) to develop the database and complete programming
to enable reporting of the specified data by law enforcement
agencies.
This bill requires each state and local law enforcement agency
report specified data to the DOJ on an annual basis. There are
currently 482 cities and 58 counties in the State. While
statewide costs cannot be estimated with certainty, given the
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large number of local agencies and the types of data required to
be collected and reported, these activities could result in
significant one-time and ongoing costs, potentially in excess of
hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. To the extent local
agency expenditures qualify as a reimbursable state mandate,
agencies could claim reimbursement of those costs (General
Fund). For context, the Commission on State Mandates' statewide
cost estimate for Crime Statistics Reports for the DOJ reflects
eligible reimbursement of over $13.6 million per year for
slightly over 50 percent of local agencies reporting.
The costs to individual agencies would vary widely and depend on
various factors, including but not limited to the size of the
agency, the number of incidents to be reported, the method of
collecting the data (which is not specified in the bill), the
workload involved to collect and report the data as prescribed
by the DOJ, and any potential training conducted by each agency.
The CHP has indicated the costs associated with meeting the
reporting requirements of this bill would be absorbable.
Although the bill increases workload associated with the
reporting of specified incidents, the CHP has indicated these
types of incidents are infrequent, and the reporting
requirements are not anticipated to create a significant burden
on existing resources.
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