A new law from a South Bay legislator will mandate that California police agencies screen for hate-group affiliations and hateful behavior when they evaluate prospective recruits and receive related complaints about current officers.
The California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act — also referred to as the CLEAR Act — was authored by state Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, and co-sponsored by the San Jose State University Human Rights Institute.
Forms of the bill had been in the works for a few years but it got boosted traction after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Investigations after the attack revealed participation by scores of current and retired police officers from across the country, and demonstrations of support on social media from numerous law-enforcement officers.
But beyond sympathetic words, the storming of the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump also renewed attention to ties, both direct and indirect, between police officers and law-enforcement leaders — including the Riverside County sheriff — and extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, whose members were prominently involved in the insurrection.
“The reality is that the infiltration into law-enforcement by these violent groups that are often times even espousing overthrow of the government has been going on for many years. The FBI has recognized the issue for over a decade,” Kalra said in an interview. “What happened on Jan. 6 makes it further clear that we do everything we can to make sure those in law enforcement are not affiliated with or support groups that are hateful and promote violence.”
Kalra’s bill was initially introduced in 2021 but was postponed in the Legislature for the remainder of the year. It was taken up again in January, and was signed Sept. 30 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The new law disqualifies a police candidate or a working officer if a law-enforcement agency, during the backgrounding process or while investigating a complaint, finds that the subject “engaged or is engaging in membership in a hate group, participation in any hate group activity or advocacy of public expressions of hate.”
A key qualifier under the law that the hate-related conduct has to have happened after the age of 18, and within the prior seven years after its detection.
The bill did not encounter aggressive opposition. The California Police Chiefs Association did not take an official stance on the bill; its executive director told the Bay Area News Group that the group believed the bill’s requirements were already covered by existing “proactive” practice and a police decertification law passed last year.
Over the past few years, Bay Area police agencies have come under fire after scandals involving hate-related behavior, particularly on social media.
A former Oakland police officer was found to have been at the Jan. 6 insurrection, leading to the discovery of demonstrations of support for him, as well as a separate Instagram account associated with Oakland police officers that made light of police brutality and included racist and misogynist posts. That scandal has threatened the police department’s odds of getting out from under two decades of federal monitoring.
San Jose police were the subject of a scandal in the summer of 2020, amid the national civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, when a series of racist, Islamophobic and other derogatory remarks posted on Facebook by former and current San Jose Police Department officers surfaced.
Both the Oakland and San Jose scandals led to discipline, resignations, and terminations of several officers.
William Armaline, director of the Human Rights Institute at San Jose State, said the point of the CLEAR Act should be a matter of common sense, and stressed that it sets a high threshold for disqualifying behavior.
“What you see in the bill is a high bar for what is being prohibited. This is explicit membership, participation and support for actual hate crimes and genocide. This is not gray area,” Armaline said. “I don’t think it should be terribly controversial to take seriously those kinds of issues.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com