Bill Text - AB-1947 Hate crimes: law enforcement policies. - California Legislative Information
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION
An act to amend Sections 422.55, 422.87, 422.9, 13023, and 13519.6 of the Penal Code, and to amend Section 1 of Chapter 691 of the Statutes of 2021, relating to hate crimes.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 1947, as introduced, Ting. Hate crimes: law enforcement policies.
Existing law defines a “hate crime” as a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of actual or perceived characteristics of the victim, including, among other things, race, religion, disability, and sexual orientation. Existing law requires the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to develop guidelines and a course of instruction and training for law enforcement officers addressing hate crimes. Existing law requires state law enforcement agencies to adopt a framework or other formal policy created by POST regarding hate crimes. Existing law requires any local law enforcement agency that adopts or updates a hate crime policy to include specified information in that policy, including information on bias motivation. Existing law requires the Department of Justice to collect specified information relative to hate crimes and to post that information on its internet website.
This bill would require each local law enforcement agency to adopt a hate crimes policy. The bill would require those policies to, among other things, include instructions on considering the relevance of specific dates and phrases when recognizing whether an incident is a hate crime, to include a supplemental suspected hate crime form, and to include a requirement that, absent a more pressing violent crime emergency, officers respond immediately to a report of a hate crime in progress, as specified. The bill would require every state and local agency to use specified definitions for the terms “hate crime incident” and “protected characteristics.” The bill would require each law enforcement agency to report their hate crime policy to the Department of Justice, as specified. The bill would require the department to post information regarding the compliance and noncompliance of agencies that are required to provide information relative to hate crimes to the department. The bill would require POST to develop a model hate crime policy, as specified. The bill would additionally make specified findings regarding state-mandated local programs in its provisions. By imposing additional duties on local law enforcement agencies, this bill would create a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: YES
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
This act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Freedom from Hate Crimes Act.
SEC. 2.
Section 422.55 of the Penal Code is amended to read:
422.55.
For purposes of this title, and for purposes of all other state law unless an explicit provision of law or the context clearly requires a different meaning, the following shall apply:
(a) “Hate crime” means a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim:
(1) Disability.
(2) Gender.
(3) Nationality.
(4) Race or ethnicity.
(5) Religion.
(6) Sexual orientation.
(7) Association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics.
(b) “Hate crime” includes, but is not limited to, a violation of Section 422.6.
SEC. 3.
Section 422.87 of the Penal Code is amended to read:
422.87.
(a) Each state and local law enforcement agency may shall adopt a hate crimes policy. Any local law enforcement agency that updates an existing hate crimes policy or adopts a new hate crimes policy policy that shall include, but not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) The definitions in Sections 422.55 and 422.56.
(2) The content of the framework and model policy framework that the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training developed in 2019 pursuant to Section 13519.6, and any content that the commission has revised or added or may revise or add in the future, including including, but not limited to, any policy, definitions, response and reporting responsibilities, training resources, and planning and prevention methods.
(3) (A) Information regarding bias motivation.
(B) For the purposes of this paragraph, “bias motivation” is a preexisting negative attitude toward actual or perceived characteristics referenced in Section 422.55. Depending on the circumstances of each case, bias motivation may include, but is not limited to, hatred, animosity, discriminatory selection of victims, resentment, revulsion, contempt, unreasonable fear, paranoia, callousness, thrill-seeking, youthful pranks, desire for social dominance, desire for social bonding with those of one’s “own kind,” or a perception of the vulnerability of the victim due to the victim being perceived as being weak, worthless, or fair game because of a protected characteristic, including, but not limited to, disability or gender.
(C) (i) In recognizing suspected disability-bias hate crimes, the policy shall advise instruct officers to consider whether there is any indication that the perpetrator was motivated by hostility or other bias, occasioned by factors such as, but not limited to, dislike of persons who arouse fear or guilt, a perception that persons with disabilities are inferior and therefore “deserving victims,” a fear of persons whose visible traits are perceived as being disturbing to others, or resentment of those who need, demand, or receive alternative educational, physical, or social accommodations.
(ii) In recognizing suspected disability-bias hate crimes, the policy also shall advise instruct officers to consider whether there is any indication that the perpetrator perceived the victim to be vulnerable and, if so, if this perception is grounded, in whole or in part, in antidisability bias. This includes, but is not limited to, if a perpetrator targets a person with a particular perceived disability while avoiding other vulnerable-appearing persons such as inebriated persons or persons with perceived disabilities different than those of the victim, those circumstances could be evidence that the perpetrator’s motivations included bias against persons with the perceived disability of the victim and that the crime must be reported as a suspected hate crime and not a mere crime of opportunity. victim.
(D) In recognizing suspected religion-bias hate crimes, the policy shall instruct officers to consider whether there were targeted attacks on, or biased references to, symbols of importance to a particular religion or articles considered of spiritual significance in a particular religion. Examples of religions and such symbols and articles include, but are not limited to:
(i) In Buddhism, statutes of the Buddha.
(ii) In Christianity, crosses.
(iii) In Hinduism, forehead markings, known as bindis and tilaks, Aum/Om symbols, and images of deities known as murtis.
(v) In Judaism, Stars of David, menorahs, and yarmulke.
(vi) In Sikhism, turbans, head coverings, and unshorn hair, including beards.
(4) Information regarding the general underreporting of hate crimes to, and by, law enforcement and the more extreme underreporting of antidisability and antigender antidisability, antigender, and anti-Sikh hate crimes and a plan for the agency to remedy this underreporting.
(5) A protocol for reporting suspected hate crimes to the Department of Justice pursuant to Section 13023.
(6) A checklist of first responder responsibilities, including, but not limited to, being sensitive to effects of the crime on the victim, determining whether any additional resources are needed on the scene to assist the victim or whether to refer the victim to appropriate community and legal services, and giving the victims and any interested persons the agency’s hate crimes brochure, as required by Section 422.92.
(7) A specific procedure for transmitting and periodically retransmitting the policy and any related orders to all officers, including a simple and immediate way for officers to access the policy in the field when needed.
(8) The title or titles of the officer or officers responsible for ensuring that the department has a hate crime brochure as required by Section 422.92 and ensuring that all officers are trained to distribute the brochure to all suspected hate crime victims and all other interested persons. persons, regardless of whether they specifically request it.
(9) A requirement that all officers be familiar with the policy and carry out the policy at all times unless directed by the chief, sheriff, director, or other chief executive of the law enforcement agency or other command-level officer to whom the chief executive officer formally delegates this responsibility.
(b)
(2) Any local law enforcement agency that updates an existing hate crimes policy or adopts a new hate crimes policy may include any of the provisions of a model hate crime policy and other relevant documents developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police that are relevant to California and consistent with this chapter. state law.
422.9.
All state and local agencies
(a) Every law enforcement agency and each state and local agency shall use the definition of “hate crime” set forth in subdivision (a) of Section 422.55 exclusively, except as other explicit provisions of state or federal law may require otherwise. exclusively.
SEC. 5.
Section 13023 of the Penal Code is amended to read:
13023.
(a) Subject to the availability of adequate funding, the Attorney General General, in consultation with subject matter experts, as defined in Section 422.55, shall direct local law enforcement agencies to report to the Department of Justice, in a manner to be prescribed by the Attorney General, any information that may be required relative to hate crimes. This information may include any general orders or formal policies on hate crimes and the hate crime pamphlet required pursuant to Section 422.92.
(b)
(d) On or before July 1 of each year, the Department of Justice shall update the OpenJustice Web portal with the information obtained from local law enforcement agencies pursuant to this section. The information shall include the names of agencies that have complied with subdivision (a) and other relevant laws in the report year and the names of any agencies that have failed to comply with those laws. The information also shall include the names of any agencies that failed to comply in the both the report year and the previous year, regardless of whether any information is required of compliant agencies in the report year. The department shall submit its analysis of this information to the Legislature in the manner described in subdivision (g) of Section 13010.
(c)
13519.6.
(a) The commission, in consultation with subject-matter subject matter experts, including, but not limited to, law enforcement agencies, civil rights groups, and academic experts, and the Department of Justice, as defined in Section 422.55, shall develop guidelines and a course of instruction and training for law enforcement officers who are employed as peace officers, or who are not yet employed as a peace officer but are enrolled in a training academy for law enforcement officers, addressing hate crimes. “Hate crimes,” for purposes of this section, has the same meaning as in Section 422.55.
(b) The course shall make maximum use of audio and video communication and other simulation methods and shall include instruction in each of the following:
(1) Indicators of hate crimes.
(2) The impact of these crimes on the victim, the victim’s family, and the community, and the assistance and compensation available to victims.
(3) Knowledge of the laws dealing with hate crimes and the legal rights of, and the remedies available to, victims of hate crimes.
(4) Law enforcement procedures, reporting, and documentation of hate crimes.
(6) Multimission criminal extremism, which means the nexus of certain hate crimes, antigovernment extremist crimes, anti-reproductive-rights crimes, and crimes committed in whole or in part because of the victims’ actual or perceived homelessness. as defined in Section 422.55.
(7) The special problems inherent in some categories of hate crimes, including gender-bias crimes, disability-bias crimes, including those committed against homeless persons with disabilities, anti-immigrant crimes, anti-Sikh crimes, and anti-Arab and anti-Islamic crimes, and techniques and methods to handle these special problems.
(8) Preparation for, and response to, possible future anti-Asian, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, anti-Arab/Middle Eastern Eastern, and anti-Islamic hate crimewaves, and any other future hate crime waves that the Attorney General General, in consultation with subject matter experts, determines are likely. likely, and for which the Attorney General has notified law enforcement agencies.
(c) The guidelines developed by the commission shall incorporate the procedures and techniques specified in subdivision (b), and shall include a framework and possible content of a general order or other formal policy on hate crimes that all state law enforcement agencies shall adopt and the commission shall encourage all local law enforcement agencies to adopt. model hate crime policy. The elements of the framework and model policy shall include, but not be limited to, the following:
(1) A message from the law enforcement agency’s chief executive officer to the agency’s officers and staff concerning the importance of hate crime laws and the agency’s commitment to enforcement.
(2) The definition of “hate crime” in Section 422.55.
(3) References to hate crime statutes including Section 422.6.
(4) A title-by-title specific protocol that agency personnel are required to follow, including, but not limited to, the following:
(A) Preventing and preparing for likely hate crimes by, among other things, establishing contact with persons and communities who are likely targets, and forming and cooperating with community hate crime prevention and response networks.
(B) Responding to reports of hate crimes, including reports of hate crimes committed under the color of authority.
(C) Accessing assistance, by, among other things, activating the Department of Justice hate crime rapid response protocol when necessary.
(D) Providing victim assistance and followup, including community followup.
(d)
(e) (1) The course of training leading to the basic certificate issued by the commission shall include the course of instruction described in subdivision (a).
(2) Every state law enforcement and correctional agency, and every local law enforcement and correctional agency to the extent that this requirement does not create a state-mandated local program cost, shall provide its peace officers with the basic course of instruction as revised pursuant to the act that amends this section in the 2003–04 session of the Legislature, beginning with officers who have not previously received the training. Correctional agencies shall adapt the course as necessary.
(e)
(f) (1) The commission shall, subject to an appropriation of funds for this purpose in the annual Budget Act or other statute, for any basic course, incorporate the November 2017 video course developed by the commission entitled “Hate Crimes: Identification and Investigation,” as updated in August of 2020, and as updated thereafter, or any successor video, into the basic course curriculum.
(2) The commission shall make the video course described in paragraph (1) available to stream via the learning portal.
(3) Each peace officer shall, within one year of the commission making the course available to stream via the learning portal, be required to complete the November 2017 video facilitated course developed by the commission entitled “Hate Crimes: Identification and Investigation,” the course identified in paragraph (4), or any other POST-certified hate crimes course via the learning portal or in-person instruction.
(4) The commission commission, in consultation with subject matter experts as defined in Section 422.55, shall develop and periodically update an interactive course of instruction and training for in-service peace officers on the topic of hate crimes and make the course available via the learning portal. The course shall cover the fundamentals of hate crime law and preliminary investigation of hate crime incidents, and shall include updates on recent changes in the law, hate crime trends, and best enforcement practices.
(5) The commission shall require the course described in paragraph (3) to be taken by in-service peace officers every six years.
(f)
(g) As used in this section, “peace officer” means any person designated as a peace officer by Section 830.1 or 830.2.
SEC. 7.
Section 1 of Chapter 691 of the Statutes of 2021 is amended to read:
SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all the following:
(a) (1) In 2018, the California State Auditor released a report entitled “Hate Crimes in California: Law Enforcement Has Not Adequately Identified, Reported, or Responded to Hate Crimes.”
(b)
(2) The California State Auditor found that despite an increase in hate crimes in California since 2014, law enforcement has not been doing enough to identify, report, and respond to these crimes.
(c)
(3) According to the Department of Justice’s annual report entitled “Hate Crime in California,” law enforcement agencies reported 1,015 hate crimes statewide for 2019, a 4.8 percent decrease from 2018, but far from 2014’s historic low of 758. hate crime events increased 31 percent from 1,015 in 2019 to 1,330 in 2020.
(d)
(4) In 2020, 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 838 active hate groups. groups and found increased hate activity by individuals unaffiliated with any groups, increased spread of hate ideology, and, in some cases, affinity for violence in a growing number of persons with antigovernment extremist views and more traditionally mainstream populations.
(e)
(5) Hate crimes and incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (“AAPIs”) have surged in response to increased xenophobia and bigotry amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Stop AAPI Hate coalition has reported receiving 3,795 incidents nationwide of hate, violence, harassment, and discrimination against AAPIs, most of which targeted women, from March 19, 2020, to February 28, 2021. Similarly, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism released data in early March 2021 that showed the number of anti-Asian hate crimes reported to police in America’s largest cities spiked 145 percent between 2019 and 2020. California in particular has seen a rise in hate-fueled violence against Asian Americans, including recent brutal attacks against elderly Asian Americans. The Department of Justice figures showed that anti-Asian hate crime events more than doubled in 2020, rising from 43 in 2019 to 89 in 2020. The numbers that are being reported and the incidents that are being publicized reflect only a fraction of the number of hate crimes and incidents that actually occur because of insufficient data collection and underreporting. AAPI immigrant communities face particular barriers to reporting due to insufficient language access.
(f)
(6) Many of the estimated 9,000,000 Californians with disabilities, including disabilities caused by aging, are always at high risk of becoming hate crime victims, victims of hate crimes, often including extraordinary sadism, and antidisability hate crimes in California and nationally are justifiably called the invisible hate crimes. A 2017 United States Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of hate crime victims estimated 40,000 antidisability hate crimes per year. This figure is certainly an underestimation because antidisability hate crime victims often do not recognize that the crimes they suffered were hate crimes, those with serious disabilities often find it difficult or impossible to report the crimes, and the estimate omits crimes in hospices, nursing homes, group homes, prisons, jails, and other institutions. Yet in 2019, law enforcement agencies reported just 177 antidisability hate crimes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), less than 0.5 percent of the earlier estimate. In California in 2019, 2020, law enforcement agencies reported just 10 five antidisability hate crimes.
(g)
(7) According to the FBI’s annual hate crime statistics, in 2019, California law enforcement agencies reported more hate crimes nationwide than any other state, accounting for almost 14 percent of all reported hate crimes nationwide, despite comprising only 12 percent of the population, and almost 40 percent more than the second highest reporting state, New York.
(h)
(8) Hate crimes are notoriously underreported, both by victims to law enforcement and by law enforcement to state departments of justice and the FBI, so the actual number of victims and cases is generally unknown.
(i)
(9) According to the FBI’s 2019 statistics, 11 California cities with populations of at least 100,000 affirmatively reported zero hate crimes in their jurisdictions.
(j)
(10) Also according to the FBI’s 2019 statistics, only 195 California law enforcement agencies reported at least one hate crime, out of the 692 law enforcement agencies listed on the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training’s internet website.
(k)
(11) The California State Auditor’s report found that out of the four law enforcement agencies reviewed, three failed to properly identify some hate crimes. For example, for the years 2014 to 2016, inclusive, the Los Angeles Police Department and the San Francisco State University Police Department failed to correctly identify 11 of the 30 cases the California State Auditor reviewed as hate crimes.
(l)
(12) The four law enforcement agencies the California State Auditor reviewed failed to report to the Department of Justice a total of 97 hate crimes—about 14 percent of hate crimes identified.
(m)
(13) The California State Auditor’s report noted that better proactive guidance and oversight by the Department of Justice will result in improved reporting of hate crime information.
(n)
(14) The Department of Justice’s current reporting process does not capture the geographic location where each hate crime occurred, but only reports the agency that reported the crime.
(o)
(15) Of the 245 law enforcement agencies the California State Auditor surveyed, more than 30 percent stated they do not use any methods to encourage the public to report hate crimes.
(p)
(16) The California State Auditor noted that the Department of Justice is “uniquely positioned to provide leadership for law enforcement agencies’ response to hate crimes” because of its statutory responsibilities to collect, analyze, and report on hate crimes.
SEC. 8.
(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(1) Section 422.87 of the Penal Code, as amended by this act, creates no costs to state law enforcement agencies because it is declaratory of existing law in subdivision (c) of Section 13519.6 of the Penal Code.
(2) Section 422.87 of the Penal Code, as amended by this act, minimizes state-mandated local costs to local law enforcement agencies by allowing them to meet the requirements of that section by adopting the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training model hate crime policy and any updates of that policy that the commission develops in the future.
(3) Section 13023 of the Penal Code, as amended by this act, creates no state-mandated local costs to local law enforcement agencies because all of the requirements of the amendments to that section were within the authority of the Attorney General to require prior to enactment of those amendments.
(4) As concerning the supplemental report form requirements, this act creates no state-mandated local cost to any local law enforcement agency that has adopted or revised a hate crime policy on or after January 1, 2019, for reasons including, but not limited to, those stated in subdivision (c) of Section 7 of this act.
(b) If the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.
source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1947
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