Bay Area state senator moves to expand landmark police transparency law

Three months after the legislative clock ran out, a Bay Area state senator is asking her colleagues to reconsider in their new term expanding a landmark police-transparency law mandating disclosure of officer-misconduct records, to cover allegations of racist behavior and close avenues used to ward scrutiny off problem officers.

On Monday, Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, re-introduced Senate Bill 16, her bill to bolster SB 1421, which went into effect as law in 2019. That law compelled police agencies across the state to release previously protected personnel records involving police officers who used deadly force or inflicted serious injuries on the job, or were proven, by their agency, to have committed on-duty sexual assault or dishonesty.

Skinner’s initial attempt to widen the bill’s purview, in the form of SB 776, failed after the bill did not make it to the Senate floor for a vote before the COVID-shortened 2020 legislative session ended Aug. 31. Given its 53-15 bipartisan approval in the state Assembly beforehand, there is reason to believe that the second try will be smoother.

SB 16 would primarily expand the footprint of what is covered under the current law, including expanding the types of use-of-force cases that would mandate disclosure to broadly cover force deemed “unreasonable or excessive” and sustained cases where officers engaged in racist or biased conduct, including unlawful arrests or searches. The bill would also eliminate purging schedules for misconduct records and limit what agencies can charge to “the actual cost of copying records.”

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