As Residents of Antioch Await Police Transparency and Accountability, SB 2 is Under Attack
This spring, the city of Antioch, where I sit as Mayor Pro Tem, was plunged into emergency after an investigative report by the FBI and Contra County District Attorney uncovered a massive chain of racist and violent texts involving 45 of the city’s 99 sworn officers.
To obtain the accountability needed for healing, our community is relying on the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), the state agency recently imbued with the power to decertify abusive police officers, to be fully transparent in its investigation. But an expedited bill introduced by the Governor’s office threatens to cloak decertification proceedings in secrecy, undercutting our campaign for justice.
In 2021 the legislature passed Senate Bill 2, the Kenneth Ross, Jr. Police Decertification Act. This bill was introduced in reaction to the mass uprising following George Floyd’s murder, and finally created a path in California to decertify officers who engage in serious misconduct.
Until recently, officer wrongdoing was kept confidential by their employers, meaning that bad actors would keep their jobs. If an officer feared discipline was likely, they would just quit and take a job with a different law enforcement agency. Rarely were officers held criminally liable. Instead, cops would plead down to lesser crimes, if they were prosecuted at all.
Thankfully, when activists, lawyers, law enforcement, and lawmakers negotiated SB 2, a critical provision was added stating all records introduced during decertification proceedings “shall be public.” This means that POST, the law enforcement agency responsible for decertification proceedings, must respond to public records requests.
This transparency was both pivotal and common sense. After all, who, besides guilty officers, would object to the disclosure of records relating to police dishonesty, abuse of power, physical abuse, sexual assault, and bias?
When SB 2 passed, I, along with many other residents of Antioch, celebrated, hopeful that it would provide a desperately needed response to blatant police wrongdoing and racism.
Unfortunately, right as the new law is getting on its feet, a critical transparency piece of SB 2 is at risk of being secretly cancelled. If this happens, residents of Antioch may never be free of the entrenched racism within the Antioch Police Department.
For the last several months, my constituents and I have been calling for the termination and decertification of officers employed by the Antioch Police Department who were found to have sent or received text messages characterized by the Antioch Chief of Police as “racially abhorrent.”
The Chief Public Defender in Contra Costa County estimates that at least 40% of the 99 officers employed by Antioch Police Department are implicated in the text messaging scandal. This includes a sergeant who serves as the president of the Antioch Police Officers’ Association. The texts repeatedly refer to Black people as gorillas and often use the “N” word. The officers brag about falsifying confessions, using police K9s viciously, racial profiling, and violating civil rights. Less than half of the officers involved have been named and none have been fired despite conduct that qualifies as serious misconduct under SB 2.
Although investigation records should be made public under a transparency 2018 law, we have no faith that Antioch Police Department will ever fully disclose the scope of the scandal. Our best chance of learning the true breadth and nature of the rot inside of the Department is through the public records of the SB 2 proceedings. With these records, we will be able learn the extent of problematic behavior and ensure all of the bigoted officer are held accountable. It also will rebuild trust in the government by allowing our community to scrutinize the decertification process and make sure it is not tainted with bias.
Governor Newsom’s administration appears to be trying to save money in a tight budget season by secretly removing POST’s obligation to administer public records requests. This anti-transparency effort is being conducted through trailer bill language, which means there are no committee hearings, no stakeholder negotiations, no opportunity for public debate, not even a report of alleged costs or savings. The use of trailer bill to enact sweeping policy is criticized every year for being anti-democratic. These bills are crafted in closed rooms with no input from people like me and the residents of Antioch who are tired of being harassed and abused by a racist policing system.
I ask all those reading to join me in calling on Governor Newsom to abandon this effort. SB 2 was carefully crafted in a publicly visible process with the involvement of numerous stakeholders. If there is going to be any change to these critical police accountability measures, it should also happen in the light of day. Use this this link www.acceaction.org/SB2 to tell tell Governor Newsom to preserve SB 2 transparency — in Antioch and beyond, too many will be harmed by its repeal.
