BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1860
Page 1
Date of Hearing: May 4, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
AB
1860 (Alejo) - As Amended March 17, 2016
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill requires the Board of State and Community Corrections
(BSCC) to develop a grant program for body-worn cameras.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires BSCC to develop a grant program to make funds
available to local law enforcement entities to purchase
body-worn cameras and related data storage and equipment, and
AB 1860
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to hire personnel necessary to operate a local body-worn
camera program.
2)Deletes the transfer requirement from the Penalty Fund to the
Driver Training Penalty Assessment Fund (DTPAF) and repeals
this fund and instead requires a transfer to the newly
created, continuously appropriated, Body-worn Camera Fund
(BCF).
FISCAL EFFECT:
GF cost of $25 -$30 million to backfill DTF appropriations to
various state agencies. The Governor's 2017-17 proposed budget
includes, in addition to a $1.7 million appropriation to the
Department of Education, the following transfers from the DTF:
a) To the Corrections Training Fund, $9,800,000
b) To the Peace Officers' Training Fund, $11,000,000
c) To the Victim Witness Assistance Fund, $4,121,000
d) To the Traumatic Brain Injury Fund, $360,000
COMMENTS
AB 1860
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1)Background/Purpose. Under current law, once a month, 25.70%
of the state penalty funds deposited in the State Penalty Fund
during the preceding month are transferred into the Driver
Training Penalty Assessment Fund. AB 1860 redirects these
funds to the newly created BCF, and the funds are continuously
appropriated to the BSCC for grants to local law enforcement
agencies to finance body-worn cameras.
According to the author, videos of police officers'
interactions with the public will help create accountability
and evidence in domestic violence cases or traffic accidents.
Body cameras will help us address problems of misconduct,
absolve officers who've been wrongly accused and help the
public understand things from a public safety perspective.
2)Support. According to The League of California Cities, "AB
1860 seeks to take advantage of a three-year federal
allocation of $263 million that will be available in the form
of matching funds to state and local governments that purchase
body cameras."
3)Opposition. According to The Electronic Frontier Foundation,
"police body-worn cameras present serious issues that must be
addressed prior to the creation of any grant program,
including concerns regarding their constitutionality, their
efficacy, the standards governing the disclosure of body
camera footage, the privacy of Californians who appear in
videos, and public safety. As currently written, AB 1860 does
not address these critical interests at all, let alone strike
a defensible balance among them."
AB 1860
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4)Related Legislation:
a) AB 1957 (Quirk), requires a state or local law
enforcement agency to make available, upon request, footage
from a law enforcement body-worn camera 60 days after the
commencement of an investigation into misconduct that uses
or involves that footage. AB 1957 is awaiting hearing in
this Committee.
b) AB 1940 (Cooper), exempts body-worn camera recordings
that depict the use of force resulting in serious injury or
death from public disclosure pursuant to the act unless a
judicial determination is made, after the adjudication of
any civil or criminal proceeding related to the use of
force incident, that the interest in public disclosure
outweighs the need to protect the individual right to
privacy. AB 1940 is awaiting hearing in this committee.
c) AB 65 (Alejo), which was very similar to this bill, was
held in this Committee's Suspense file.
d) AB 66 (Weber), would have stated the intent of the
Legislature to enact legislation to require local police
departments that utilize police body-worn cameras to follow
specified procedures. AB 66 was held in this Committee's
suspense file.
e) SB 175 (Huff), would have required each department or
agency that employs peace officers and that elects to
require those peace officers to wear body-worn cameras to
develop a policy relating to the use of body-worn cameras.
SB 175 would have required the policy to be developed in
collaboration with nonsupervisory officers and to include
certain provisions, including, among others, the duration,
time, and place when body-worn cameras shall be worn and
operational. SB 175 was held in this Committee's suspense
file.
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1) Prior Legislation:
a) AB 69 (Rodriguez), Chapter 461, Statutes of 2015,
Requires law enforcement agencies to consider specified
best practices when establishing policies and procedures
for downloading and storing data from body-worn cameras,
including, among other things, prohibiting the unauthorized
use, duplication, or distribution of the data, and
establishing storage periods for evidentiary and
nonevidentiary data, as defined.
b) AB 790 (Karnette), of the 2007-2008 Legislative Session,
would have redirected 4% of funds from the Driver Training
Penalty Assessment Fund and allocated that money to the
Department of Justice to be used to support the California
Witness Protection Program. AB 790 was held in this
Committee's Suspense file.
c) SB 1761 (Poochigian), of the 2005-2006 Legislative
Session, would have changed the percentage of money that is
deposited into each of the funds in the State Penalty Fund,
and would have created the Child Advocacy Center Fund, into
which 4.97% of state penalty funds in the State Penalty
Fund would be deposited monthly. SB 1761 was held in the
Senate Appropriations Committee Suspense file.
d) AB 204 (Lowenthal), of the 2001-2002 Legislative
Session, would have required all funds transferred to the
Driver Penalty Assessment Fund, which would otherwise be
transferred to the General Fund, be appropriated on an
annual basis to the State Department of Education for the
purposes of providing driver training instruction in the
public schools. AB 204 was held in this Committee's
Suspense file.
AB 1860
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Analysis Prepared by:Pedro Reyes / APPR. / (916)
319-2081