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Sacramento – Several police officers from five Bay Area cities, including Oakland and Richmond, are currently the subject of internal investigations following allegations that over 20 current and former officers abused their power and had sex with a sex worker in exchange for protection and advanced warning about prostitution stings. Now 18, the woman says she was underage when some of the encounters occurred. The scandal became public weeks after the California Legislature killed a bill to allow public access to some police misconduct records.
Natasha Minsker, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of California’s Center for Advocacy and Policy, had this to say in response to the scandal:
The nature of these allegations and breadth of this scandal calls into question, once again, police departments’ ability to hold their own officers accountable for job-related misconduct. That so many cities and officers are implicated in this clear abuse of power points to a larger, systemic problem that arises from California’s secretive police misconduct laws.
The public may never know the outcome of the investigations connected to this scandal unless someone is actually charged with a crime. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf is correct that California law bars her from disclosing the reasons behind Interim Police Chief Ben Fairow’s dismissal—we will never know if the rumored reasons are the true reasons. The same laws will bar release to the public of the full findings of the investigations now occurring, even if officers have committed serious misconduct.
To the extent that officers are abusing their power, the public has every right to know the full findings of investigations into their wrong-doing. Senate Bill 1286 would have lifted this veil of police secrecy, but the California Legislature failed to let the measure move forward under intense pressure from law enforcement lobbyists. We call on California’s elected officials to restore the public’s right to know all the facts when police commit serious misconduct.
Background
Unlike other public employees, all records connected to police discipline are confidential and exempt from California’s Public Records Act, meaning departments cannot tell the public whether an officer is guilty of misconduct, if they have been disciplined, or what the discipline consisted of.
