California anti-profiling bill requires data on police stops

California lawmakers on Wednesday narrowly approved anti-racial profiling legislation ordering unprecedented data collection on police stops, as they grapple with reducing tensions between law enforcement and minority communities.

It was one of dozens of bills considered ahead of a Friday deadline to pass legislation out of one chamber of the Legislature. The Senate also approved an ambitious climate change package that would boost the use of renewable energy to 50 percent in 15 years and slash greenhouse gas emissions.

In the Assembly, AB953 barely advanced to require law enforcement agencies starting in 2018 to report a racial breakdown of whom they pull over or question. It is one of few surviving police reform bills introduced in the wake of nationwide protests over police killings of minority men.

AB953's author, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, said she believed police pulled her over because they thought she was out of place in her own neighborhood. Weber is black.

"When do we stop the cycle? When do we say enough is enough in this country?" the San Diego Democrat said.

Her bill calls for police departments, sheriff's offices and other agencies to write annual reports breaking out the number of stops, the outcomes (such as citations or arrests) and the age and race of those stopped. Law enforcement groups say such data tracking is unnecessary and would distract from keeping communities safe.

Supporters of the bill countered that data collection could end up showing that racial discrimination by police isn't as widespread as believed.

"It will help law enforcement, especially now when the public believes there is something dramatically wrong with their interactions with people of color," said Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat who leads the Legislative Black Caucus.

Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside, was the only lawmaker to speak against the bill, saying "labeling police officers as part of the problem isn't helpful."

The bill heads to the Senate after passing 41-23, the minimum needed to advance.

Other police reform legislation has struggled in California this year.

A fiscal panel last week shelved legislation requiring independent investigations of police shootings and an annual report about deaths in police custody. Another bill regulating the use of police body cameras, AB66 also by Weber, is at a standstill over whether officers should be able to review footage before submitting reports about shooting people.

Via: http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/06/03/52189/california-anti-profiling-bill-requires-data-on-po/

Obama: ‘Now is the moment’ for police to make changes

WASHINGTON >> President Barack Obama said Monday the deaths of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York show that law enforcement needs to change practices to build trust in minority communities, as a White House task force called for independent investigations when police use deadly force.

The president said last year’s deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City exposed “deep rooted frustration in many communities of color around the need for fair and just law enforcement.” He said a policing task force that he appointed found it’s important for law enforcement to improve training, data collection and cooperation with the communities they cover.

“The moment is now for us to make these changes,” Obama said from the White House during a meeting with members of the task force, who worked for three months to develop the recommendations. “We have a great opportunity coming out of some great conflict and tragedy to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations so that everybody feels safer and our law enforcement officers feel — rather than being embattled — feel fully supported. We need to seize that opportunity.”

The task force made 63 recommendations after holding seven public hearings across the country that included testimony from more than 100 people. The panel also met with leaders of groups advocating for the rights of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, veterans, gays, the disabled and others.

Obama said the task force found the need for more police training to reduce bias and help officers deal with stressful situations. He recognized a particularly controversial recommendation would be the need for independent investigations in fatal police shootings.

“The importance of making sure that there’s a sense of accountability when in fact law enforcement is involved in a deadly shooting is something that I think communities across the board are going to be considering,” Obama said.

Specifically, the task force recommended external independent criminal investigations and review by outside prosecutors when police use force that results in death or anyone dies in police custody, instead of the internal investigations that are the policy of some law enforcement agencies. The task force suggested either a multi-agency probe involving state and local investigators, referring an investigation to neighboring jurisdictions or the next higher level of government. “But in order to restore and maintain trust, this independence is crucial,” the report said.

Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said an outside investigation of a police-involved shooting may make sense in limited circumstances when a police department has few resources. But in the vast majority of cases, he said, it is unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive.

“I think it helps to drive a wedge between a local police department and the community it serves, which is exactly contrary to what the intent of this police task force was supposed to be,” said Johnson, whose organization is an umbrella group of police unions. “I think it sends a message that your local police can’t be trusted.”

The task force echoed calls from officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey for more complete record-keeping about the numbers of police-involved shootings across the country. Such data is currently reported by local law enforcement on a voluntary basis, and there is no central or reliable repository for those statistics.

“There’s no reason for us not to have this data available,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, a task force co-chair, who said he was surprised to learn that there were no reliable records kept. “Now that we know that this does not exist, it is our responsibility to do everything we can to develop that information.”

Ramsey also pointed out that the task force recommended decoupling immigration from local law enforcement to help improve police relationship with immigrant communities where residents may fear calling for help if they or someone in their family is in the country illegally. He said information on immigrant felons would remain available under the panel’s recommendations.

Obama earlier had called for Congress to help fund the purchase of 50,000 body cameras for police to wear and record their interactions with the public. But the task force found that the cameras raise extraordinarily complex legal and privacy issues.

“There’s been a lot of talk about body cameras as a silver bullet or a solution,” Obama said. “I think the task force concluded that there is a role for technology to play in building additional trust and accountability but it’s not a panacea. It has to be embedded in a broader change in culture and a legal framework that ensures that people’s privacy is respected.”

Laurie Robinson, a professor at George Mason University and co-chair of the task force, told reporters the type of community-police relations envisioned by the report does not happen quickly.

“It takes time, it takes relationship-building and it doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.

California bill would create third-party oversight of police shootings

Police officers who fatally shoot suspects would be subject to an outside review under California legislation being introduced by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento.

The bill follows a number of intensely scrutinized police killings, both the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, which drew national attention, and the case of an Army veteran, Parminder Singh Shergill, felled by police bullets in Lodi.

“There’s been an appetite for this on a national level and locally as well,” said McCarty. “The overarching issue is, who should investigate police shootings where a fatality is the outcome?”

Leaving that matter in the hands of local district attorneys, who typically have close ties to the police departments whose officers they are investigating, is not ideal, McCarty said. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office cleared the officers who shot down Shergill of any criminal wrongdoing.

“Many times DAs run for office and have such high links with the local law enforcement, and work with them on a daily basis, that enough people ask the question: ‘Should they distance themselves when they actually have to review an officer-involved shooting?’” McCarty said.

Under McCarty’s Assembly Bill 86, a law enforcement panel, likely within the California Department of Justice, would study each case of a California police officer shooting someone and issue a recommendation. The goal would not be issuing indictments but ensuring the community trusts that fatalities are thoroughly reviewed, McCarty said.

“Whether or not there would be a subsequent criminal action regarding that, that’s totally a different conversation,” McCarty said. “I’m just talking about the investigation.”

Some prosecutors could welcome the opportunity to “quell any appearance of a conflict,” said California District Attorneys Association CEO Mark Zahner. But he disputed the notion that district attorneys handle cases involving police officers differently from others.

“A county prosecutor’s job is to investigate criminal conduct within their jurisdiction, and they all take that very seriously,” Zahner said. “To them it doesn’t matter if a suspect is a cop, a police officer, a sheriff – they feel it is their obligation to a community to prosecute a case like that.”

via: sacbee.com

Samuel L. Jackson calls out other celebrities with a song challenge

Watch on YouTube here.

A Badge is an American Halo

A badge is an American halo,

We have to abide just because you say so?

But what if your intentions are not rightful...

They give you a badge and the same rule I'm supposed to follow, you don't follow.

Is it justice or do you have your own gang that supports you just because you have that metal thing?

Treyvon, Michael, or Samantha were just some that were taken from a badge with a gun.

When will it stop?

By Nakila

Cop widow becomes unlikely public face for Proposition 47

The policeman's widow stood in the Oakland courtroom and poured out her broken heart.

She told the jury about a young daughter who would never see her daddy again, a teenage boy who lost his father figure, a wife stripped of her soul mate. She begged that the convicted killer, whom she branded a "beast," be given the death penalty so he could "burn in hell." After the tears had been wiped away, the jury agreed with Dionne Wilson, sentencing to death the man who shot San Leandro Officer Dan Niemi seven times during a routine stop.

But the 2007 verdict didn't bring the mother of two, who met Niemi while working in a South Bay gun shop, peace of mind. Consumed with rage, Wilson clung even more fiercely to the belief that the law should crack down hard on all offenders -- even on someone who just steals "a Popsicle."

When she could no longer live with her anger, the police widow underwent a spiritual journey that's led to an unlikely outcome. Nine years after her husband was gunned down, Wilson has become the public face for a sentence-reduction initiative on the November ballot that she once would have scorned as the work of "mentally ill liberals." Proposition 47 would require misdemeanor sentences rather than longer felony sentences for six crimes, including petty theft under $950.

"Dan would probably say, 'Who are you and what have you done with my wife?' " Wilson, 45, said of her new outlook. "But we need to think about where this whole cycle of crime started. If we can get in front of it, maybe there won't be a person on the other end who is killing a police officer like Dan."

Wilson joins a growing chorus of tough-on-crime advocates from across the country who now agree with social justice champions on the left that the prison-only approach for nonviolent offenders is failing, and that there are more efficient uses of taxpayer dollars to make communities safer.

Last year, 35 states passed less-restrictive laws, including conservative Mississippi and Alabama. The year before, Californians voted overwhelmingly to ease the state's Three Strikes Law, then the toughest in the nation. And in a landmark decision earlier this year, the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce lengthy sentences for most federal drug offenders and make thousands of current inmates eligible for resentencing under the new guidelines.

Proposition 47 itself has netted another unexpected champion. Conservative Christian Republican and Public Storage founder B. Wayne Hughes Jr. has contributed $750,000 so far, with plans to spend $5 million.

"This is a situation where the walls of partisanship ought to come down immediately," the millionaire wrote in the ballot statement.

But other crime victims with tragic tales similar to Wilson's disagree. Three victims groups oppose the measure, including the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which objects that it would make possession of date-rape drugs and other narcotics an automatic misdemeanor. Misdemeanors carry lighter sentences than felonies, often just probation or short stints in jail.

The initiative also has drawn serious opposition from law enforcement -- including associations of district attorneys, sheriffs and police -- and from groups of retailers and grocers, who contend that property crime would increase. So far, only former San Diego and San Jose police Chief Bill Landsdowne and two California district attorneys have come out in support -- George Gascon in San Francisco and Paul Gallegos in Humboldt County.

"Someone can commit petty theft 10,000 times," San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said, "and we'd still have to always charge it as a misdemeanor." Also under Proposition 47, Wagstaffe noted, about 10,000 nonviolent inmates in overflowing jails and prisons would be eligible to apply for early release.

Proponents say that's exactly the point. The hundreds of millions dollars that the secretary of state's office estimates would have been spent annually to house prison inmates would instead go to education, mental health and drug treatment programs, and victims assistance.

Such leniency once would have been unthinkable for Wilson.

From the moment she heard the knock on the door in the middle of that awful night at her Milpitas home, and saw three police officers crying, the pain was unrelenting.

After the single mother and Niemi had met in the gun shop, they had never been apart. Married in 1999, they had a daughter, Jordan, and Niemi became close to her son, Josh Hewett.

"It was just one of those fairy-tale love stories," said Wilson, sitting in her Morgan Hill home.

But her sense of safety was shattered and her life became a blur of grief on July 25, 2005. Niemi, 42, who had become a policeman just three years earlier, was shot to death by Irving Ramirez, 23, while responding to a noise complaint. Carrying two handguns and some drugs, Ramirez was on probation and didn't want to go back to jail.

Wilson had hoped the death verdict two years later would start a healing process. In her case, it didn't. Even as she remarried, "moving on" eluded her.

She suffered health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. She drank, favoring appletinis. She tried, and failed, to distract herself, buying things such as technology gadgets and a succession of nine horses.

"Everything was an outward expression of my hate toward Irving and anybody who had ever committed a crime," Wilson said.

Seeking to quiet her roiling mind, she began a "mad quest" of spiritual teachings that brought her to meditation and Buddhism, finding comfort in the concepts of compassion and overcoming suffering.

At some point, she was stunned to realize that she no longer hated the man who had torn apart her family's life. In 2010, she drafted a letter to Ramirez, writing that she regretted making him seem "less than human" at the trial. She no longer supports the death penalty.

"I'm really proud of her to be able to get through the difficult times and be able to forgive," said her son, Hewett, 24, who was close to his stepfather. "I'm pretty sure some people disapprove, but they also don't understand how hard this has been on her and what it's taken for her to get to this point."

Now, she is on the board of the Insight Prison Project, a restorative justice agency based in San Rafael, which tries to find something redemptive even in society's worst as they accept accountability for what they have done. Wilson also is the survivor outreach coordinator for Californians for Safety and Justice, Proposition 47's sponsor, meeting with crime survivors across the state and helping them put their lives back together.

The state remains under enormous pressure to comply with a federal court order and reduce prison overcrowding. And Wilson sees Proposition 47 as another step toward a smarter criminal justice system that would prevent more families from going through what hers has endured.

"I want to get ahead of crime instead of just playing cleanup," Wilson said. "Instead of calling the coroner, let's get into the schools and invest in the families and communities who are filling the prisons. Isn't that what this whole public safety discussion is about?"

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.

Plans for the savings

Under a fixed formula, hundreds of millions of dollars a year that would have been spent annually to house prison inmates will be reallocated.65 percent -- to the Board of State and Community Corrections for mental and drug treatment programs and diversion programs
25 percent -- to K-12 education, for programs aimed at helping at-risk kids
10 percent -- to Victims Compensation Fund, for grief and mental health counseling, and relocation