Another California Court Rules Against Law Enforcement Secrecy, Says Agencies Must Release Old Misconduct Files

from the court-to-cops:-POLICE!-OPEN-UP! dept

If an appeals court doesn't step in within the next few days, California law enforcement agencies will have to start handing out police misconduct records to records requesters.

Since the new transparency law went into effect at the beginning of this year, California police unions have been rushing to stop it from having any meaningful effect. The unions are hoping courts will side with their take on the law -- a take that allows law enforcement agencies to memory-hole misconduct and use of force files predating the law's effective date.

The author of the law, Senator Nancy Skinner, made it clear the new law applies retroactively. The state attorney general, Xavier Becerra, chose to ignore the clarification sent directly to his office by the Senator, and claimed the issue of retroactivity was still open.

The issue isn't as open as Becerra and a few dozen police unions think it is. One court has already said the law should apply retroactively, lifting its temporary injunction pending an appeal. Now another court has sided with the public and greater accountability, stating that the new law can reach old misconduct files.

A Los Angeles judge dealt a blow Tuesday to law enforcement unions trying to limit the scope of a landmark transparency law, ruling that records from shootings, use of force and some misconduct by police officers in California are public even if they occurred before the new law took effect this year.

The decision marks a provisional victory for open-government groups and media organizations that intervened in a case brought by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which sought to keep records of older incidents confidential.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s ruling involves records that fall under Senate Bill 1421 — internal investigations into shootings by officers, severe uses of force and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying by officers.

The expiration date for secrecy -- according to this decision -- is March 1st. The order will take effect and force affected agencies to start respecting the law that went into effect three months earlier. No doubt this will be appealed, but there's no indication this judge is willing to hand out a temporary injunction to the unions while they fight the inevitable. The only option left for agencies to do while the legal war wages on is stonewall requests and overvalue their redaction efforts.

Filed Under: california, discipline, foia, police discipline, police records, retroactive, transparency

California Court Says New Records Law Covers Past Police Misconduct Records

from the your-tax-dollars-hard-at-work-hiding-stuff-from-taxpayers dept

The battle over public records in California continues. A new law made records of police misconduct releasable to the public, kicking off predictable legal challenges from law enforcement agencies not accustomed to accountability.

These agencies believe the law isn't retroactive. In essence, they think the passage of the law allows them to whitewash their pasts by only providing records going forward from the law's enactment. None other than the law's author, Senator Nancy Skinner, has gone on record -- with a letter to the Senate Rules Committee and the state Attorney General's office -- stating the law applies retroactively.

This has been ignored by the state AG, who has stated in records request denials that he believes the law can't touch pre-2019 misconduct files. This is exactly what agencies challenging the law want to hear. Unfortunately for them, they've just been handed a loss by a California court.

A Contra Costa County judge on Friday refused to block public access to records of police misconduct that occurred before California’s new transparency law took effect, the first ruling in a string of police-backed lawsuits filed across the state.

Judge Charles Treat said it seemed unlikely the suing law enforcement unions would prevail on the merits while dumping the unions' requested injunction. He pointed out the new law has no impact on past misconduct. All it does is make those records available to the public.

“If it was illegal in 2018, it’s illegal in 2019,” Treat said. “It doesn’t change the legal principles applicable to anyone’s conduct.”

This was said in response to the unions' argument that the release of old records would introduce new liabilities for officers. The availability of records may make it easier to sue officers, but it doesn't change the fact they were always potentially liable for misconduct. It just used to be a lot easier to hide this misbehavior from the public.

The impact of this bench ruling is muted by Treat blocking his own unblocking for another ten days to allow the union to appeal his decision.

There's a chance this ruling will be overturned, despite Sen. Skinner's clarification. And it's not the only legal battle being waged over the new transparency. Multiple agencies are suing in multiple counties and it's probably going to take a trip to the state Supreme Court to resolve the issue.

These agencies may state publicly they believe the law isn't retroactive, but their actions say something different. The Inglewood PD went so far as to get permission from the city council to shred all pre-2019 misconduct records prior to the law's enactment date. As a local attorney points out, why would they have bothered if they felt the law would only affect records generated after January 1, 2019?

First Amendment and police misconduct attorney Matthew Strugar predicted the unions’ challenge will ultimately fail.

[...]

Cities, too, had expected SB 1421 to disclose existing records, Strugar said. “Why was Inglewood running its shredding machines 24/7 before the New Year?” he asked.

It's a question no cop or city legislator in Inglewood wants to answer. Thanks to their cooperative effort, the likelihood of the PD being sued over unreleased misconduct is almost nil… easy to do when there's nothing left to sue over.

Filed Under: california, foia, nancy skinner, police discipline, public records, retroactive, transparency

California AG Steps Up To Help Cops Pretend New Public Records Law Doesn't Apply To Past Misconduct Docs

from the bros-before-accountability,-as-they-say dept

The bullshit debate over California police misconduct records continues. A new law granting the public access to police misconduct records for the first time in decades has resulted in a slew of public records requests. It's also resulted in a slew of refusals and legal challenges.

Some law enforcement agencies (and their unions) have chosen to believe the law erases their past misdeeds. Although the law says nothing limiting access to records created prior to January 1, 2019, some agencies have decided the lack of specific language allows them to draw this inference from the missing words. Multiple lawsuits have hit the California court system, which may soon force the state's Supreme Court to deal with this miss, even if it took a hard pass on one law enforcement union's attempt to get a preemptive declaration that past misconduct records are off-limits.

If these law enforcement agencies were truly seeking clarity, they were given a crystal clear explanation of the legislative intent from none other than the law's author, Senator Nancy Skinner.

[I]t is my understanding in enacting SB 1421 that the change in the law applies to all disclosable records whether or not they existed prior to the date the statute went into effect…

This isn't the answer cops wanted. They wanted someone to tell them they could whitewash the past and stonewall the future. Instead, the law's author told them the law applies retroactively. If they missed their opportunity to destroy these records prior to the law's enactment, that's on them.

But they're getting a little help from the state's top cop. State attorney general Xavier Becerra has decided retroactivity is still an open question, despite Sen. Skinner's statement on the issue.

The attorney general's response to a public records request seeking that information references some superior court challenges to the law's application to past records brought by police unions.

"We will not disclose any records that pre-date January 1, 2019 at this time," Mark Beckington, supervising deputy attorney general, said in a response last Friday to a request from freelance reporter Darwin BondGraham.

This sentence follows a very dubious assumption by the attorney general's office.

[U]ntil the legal question of retroactive application of the statute is resolved by the courts, the public interest in accessing these records is clearly outweighed by the public's interest in protecting privacy rights.

Oh, really? But whose privacy rights? The public may want to protect their own privacy rights, but I doubt they're more concerned about protecting the "privacy" of public servants who committed misconduct on the public's dime.

AG Becerra is deliberately confused by the retroactivity non-question. Sen. Skinner, the law's author, is honestly confused.

"I find the AG's interpretation puzzling considering that we have law enforcement agencies up and down the state, including our California Highway Patrol, releasing records..."

Also confusing: the AG was sent a copy of the same letter Skinner sent to the Senate Rules Committee clarifying the law's retroactive powers.

Cops have a friend in high places. With this action, he's the best friend a bad cop could have. But he's only delaying the inevitable. These records will be in the public's hands. If the courts somehow find in favor of law enforcement agencies, this only keeps the past a secret. Unless police misconduct is somehow also only a thing of the past, California cop shops will still be generating a whole lot of publicly-accessible documents.

Filed Under: california, foia, nancy skinner, police, police discipline, retroactive, transparency, xavier becerra

Author Of California's Public Records Law: The Law Covers Old Police Misconduct Files, Not Just The New Ones

from the stick-that-in-your-deliberate-obtuseness,-PD-officials dept

For the first time in years, California police misconduct records are accessible by the public. There's a huge asterisk on that sentence because, so far, law enforcement agencies have been unwilling to hand them over.

One police department decided to purge all of its old records before the law went into effect, mooting the question with a questionable memory-holing. Other agencies have told requesters the law isn't retroactive, pretending the law says something it doesn't. A sheriff's union tried to force the question by petitioning the state's supreme court, but the court declined the opportunity to clarify the law's ability to open up records of past misconduct.

At this point it's clear PDs aren't interested in complying with the new law. They'll sit on records until they're forced out of their hands by lawsuits. This isn't how transparency is supposed to work. The law wasn't a History Eraser button for old files and it certainly isn't there to assist PDs in withholding documents they're definitely obligated to turn over to the public.

Most law enforcement agencies appear to believe the law hit the reset on misconduct records, ordering them only to release records created past the point the law went into effect (January 1st, 2019). Again, the law says nothing about it only affecting records going forward, but since it doesn't say anything specifically about past misconduct records, law enforcement agencies will continue to pretend it doesn't affect those until courts tell them otherwise.

Whenever the courts take up the question, they'll have to examine the bill-making process and the law itself to determine its legislative intent. The law doesn't have to specifically order the release of pre-2019 documents if it's clear legislators intended the law to be retroactive. Fortunately for those suing PDs over withheld documents, the legislation's author has decided to clear the air on the law police departments are conveniently and deliberately misunderstanding.

In a one-page letter to the state Senate Rules Committee, Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), sought to clarify the intent of the law, which opens up records of shootings by officers, severe uses of force and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying by officers.

In the letter obtained by The Times, Skinner said any relevant discipline records kept by a government agency should be disclosed under the new law, which was approved last year.

“Therefore, it is my understanding in enacting SB 1421 that the change in the law applies to all disclosable records whether or not they existed prior to the date the statute went into effect,” Skinner wrote. “This is the standard practice for public records legislation in California.”

We'll see how quickly this letter results in the lifting of the temporary restraining order secured by Contra Costa law enforcement agencies, which are being sued by California newspapers for refusing to turn over historical misconduct files. There doesn't seem to be any room for misunderstanding in Skinner's letter. But if anyone's incapable of understanding crystal clear laws, it's law enforcement agencies.

Filed Under: california, foia, nancy skinner, police, police misconduct, public records, retroactive

George W. Bush Tried To Retroactively Declare Illegal, Unconstitutional NSA Surveillance Legal, Because He Said So

from the secret-laws,-secret-interpretations dept

When it comes to the NSA, we've been discussing just how dangerous it is when the government gets to put in place its own secret interpretation of laws that, when read by the public, appear to say something quite different than the secret interpretation. Otherwise you have secret laws, and that's no way to run an open Constitutional democracy. For many years, it's been known that in March of 2004 there was a hospital room showdown between then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales (with White House Chief of Staff Andy Card) and (at the time, quite ill) Attorney General John Ashcroft and acting Attorney General James Comey, over whether or not to reauthorize some sort of surveillance program. Comey, Ashcroft, and then FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign over the issue, and eventually, we were told, President Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. We knew at the time that the dispute was over domestic surveillance and whether or not it was legal. More recently, it came out that it was over domestic collection of internet/email metadata. This was a program similar to the phone metadata program that was revealed by Ed Snowden, but for email/internet information.

However, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the NY Times, late on Friday, the government declassified some more information about what happened, and it appears that George W. Bush tried to first retroactively "legalize" this pretty clearly unconstitutional domestic surveillance, by saying that he'd always meant that while the NSA could sweep up all metadata, it didn't technically "acquire" it until it did a search on it. Again, this is in direct contrast to what most people thought the law (and the 4th Amendment) says the government could do.

This happened on March 11th, the day after the hospital showdown. President Bush signed a new authorization for the mass surveillance of internet records, but first decided that the White House Counsel, Gonzales, could certify it by himself, rather than having the Attorney General sign it, as in the past. This new authorization, though, directly claims that the President can simply override the law, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was put in place to limit the Executive Branch's ability to spy on Americans in the first place. Then there's the added language saying that the information is only actually "acquired" when its searched for even though it has already "retained" all the data. In other words, to get around the whole Constitution, Bush apparently just redefined the word acquire. And, to make this all the more obnoxious, while this language was only included for the first time on March 11th, the authorization claimed that Bush had really meant this to be the case all along. In short, the day after being told that the surveillance on Americans' internet metadata was likely unconstitutional, President Bush (though put together by Dick Cheney's top legal beaver David Addington) decided to fix all that by signing a new authorization that redefined a basic English word ("acquire") and then retroactively say that this new definition applied backwards on all previous authorizations to spy on Americans, pretending that this magic incantation suddenly made it all Constitutional.

Apparently these legal shenanigans were enough to make then NSA Director Michael Hayden perfectly happy to keep spying on Americans in violation of both the FISA law and the Constitution. This whole thing seems pretty horrific all around. The whole point of FISA was to restrict the government from spying on Americans. And, yes, we know that the past two administrations have basically tapdanced their way around that, but now we're getting more details on exactly how. It starts with John Yoo insisting that the President can basically do whatever the fuck he wants because it's "wartime" (never mind that Congress never officially declared war...), and then that the President can just override FISA because he says so. Then, let's add into that the fact that the President (with help from David Addington) can apparently just redefine plain English words, in order to make illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans appear legal, but, even more crazy, is that he can claim this new definition applies retroactively, after people realize that they may be on the hook for a few years worth of unconstitutional surveillance.

And, again, the folks who did all this keep telling us that we should just "trust them" because they're doing everything to keep us safe.

There are some things that it's entirely reasonable to keep secret if you're a government. But your secret definition of a law that anyone can read -- as well as your actions retroactively pushing that unique definition back historically, do not seem like the kinds of things that should be kept secret.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, alberto gonzales, andy card, david addington, george w. bush, internet metadata, james comey, john yoo, metadata, nsa, privacy, retroactive, richard ashcroft, secret interpretation, secret law, surveillance