Only 12% of law enforcement officers in California have completed the state-certified training course, according to data from the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training. The training of officers on the new law is highly inconsistent across the state, with some agencies enrolling them in a two-hour state-certified course, others creating their own training and some departments just handing officers a memo and a 14-minute video.In the 15 years before 2020, only six California officers were criminally charged for killing on the job, according to data compiled by a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Five officers in California have been criminally charged for on-duty deaths, though two of them (in San Francisco and Contra Costa counties) are being prosecuted for shootings that happened before the new law took effect in another case, the Stanislaus County district attorney won’t say if her decision is based on the new law.The number of fatal police shootings in California rose: from 135 in 2019 to 148 in 2020, according to data tracked by the Washington Post. Nor has the training law led to widespread, state-certified instruction for officers on the new standard for using deadly force.ĬalMatters analyzed data on deadly police shootings, officers charged with crimes for on-duty deaths, and use-of-force training of officers since the law took effect. How judges and juries apply it in these cases could shape its power in the years to come.īut beyond these two cases, the available evidence so far suggests that the new law has not been as transformative as supporters hoped when they pushed the so-called Act to Save Lives through the Legislature. Prosecutors in both cases cited the law in their decisions to file charges. Addie Kitchen, Steven Taylor’s grandmother, speaks to the crowd at a celebration of life held for Taylor on the one-year anniversary of his death, at the San Leandro Marina on April 18, 2021. Nearly a year-and-a-half since the laws took effect, the two criminal cases - a San Diego sheriff’s deputy charged with second-degree murder and a San Leandro police officer charged with manslaughter - are the most concrete signs that one of the nation’s strictest use-of-force laws is having an impact. Law enforcement groups put their weight behind companion legislation that was supposed to improve how officers are trained. So they championed the new law as a way to reduce police shootings and hold officers accountable when they unnecessarily take a life. Passed in 2019 - a year before the killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests over racism and police violence - California’s law further limits when police can use deadly force, saying it’s allowed “only when necessary in defense of human life.” Previously, an officer could be justified in shooting someone if doing so was deemed “reasonable” - a standard that many civil rights advocates believed was vague and allowed police to kill with impunity. In both cases, officers who fired the fatal shots are facing criminal charges as a result of a closely watched and contested state law that took effect on Jan. That process is now under way in courts in San Diego and Alameda counties. “We want the officers to be held accountable.” “I want people to understand that our children are important to us and that we want justice,” said Kitchen, a retired prison guard.
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