As a consequence of the March 18 shooting in Sacramento, California, of Stephon Clark—a 22-year-old, unarmed black man—Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday in the California Assembly to change the standard from “reasonable force” to “necessary force” for when police officers can open fire on someone. A number of black community leaders called the bill a “good first step.”
The current law has been on the books since 1872 and states that a police officer can use “reasonable force” to “effect the arrest or to prevent escape or to overcome resistance.” Ben Bradford reports:
Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber announced the legislation in a packed hearing room at the state Capitol, flanked by advocates from the ACLU, Black Lives Matter in Sacramento, and the grandfather of Stephon Clark.
The bill would largely restrict police from using deadly force except in scenarios where it’s necessary to protect human life.
“We know that our police officers have the capacity to do this, because they do it every day in other communities,” said Weber, who specifically mentioned police apprehending the Parkland shooter and the Charleston church shooter — two white men. “It’s not like it’s strange or unusual. So what we have to do is make sure that that knowledge that they have and the skills that they have is now applied to the African-Americans that they meet every day on the streets.”
In addition to changing the standard for opening fire, the bill would let prosecutors consider whether an officer’s behavior before they kill someone could have needlessly and negligently put the officer at risk, and whether the officer sought to de-escalate or defuse a confrontation before shooting. Officers involved in fatal shootings are rarely prosecuted and even more rarely convicted.
If the bill passes and is signed by the governor, California would be the first state with such a standard on the books, although a handful of other states temper their “reasonable force” provisions with constraints. In addition, a few cities’ police departments, San Francisco among them, operate under rules similar to, or more restrictive than, those in the bill.
According to the lawmakers who appeared with Weber when she introduced the bill, police officers killed 162 people in California in 2017. Only half of them had guns. They also noted that black people are more likely to be slain by police than white people and cited studies showing that five of the nation’s 15 police departments with the highest per capita rates of killings by police officers are in California: Bakersfield, Stockton, Long Beach, Santa Ana, and San Bernardino.
The bill probably will face a major fight in the legislature if law enforcement groups decide to use their prodigious political clout to oppose the bill, and they seem likely to do so.
The Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) calls the proposal “irresponsible,” and some law enforcement officials queried in the matter are opposed to, or at least wary of, the proposal. Liam Dillon reports:
Craig Lally, the president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file Los Angeles police officers, said in a statement that the bill ignores the dangers involved in policing and that LAPD training ensures that officers use deadly force only when it's absolutely necessary.
If the bill becomes law, Lally said, "it will either get cops killed or allow criminals to terrorize our streets unchecked."
"It's one thing to criticize from your keyboard or from behind a microphone at a press conference; it's another to actually work in the very real and dangerous world of policing," he said.
Samuel Sinyangwe, co-founder of Campaign Zero, the policy arm of the Black Lives Matter movement, cited data compiled by his organization on Delaware, Iowa, Rhode Island and Tennessee, the only states which require officers to use all reasonable means before using deadly force. Police killings in those states are 17 percent lower than in the rest of the nation, he said, adding: "It's a huge deal. It's probably the biggest thing that can be done to address police shootings is to address deadly force standards."