Bill Text: CA AB57 | 2021-2022 | Regular Session | Amended

NOTE: There are more recent revisions of this legislation. Read Latest Draft

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Bill Title: Law enforcement: hate crimes.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 21-1)

Status: (Passed) 2021-10-08 - Chaptered by Secretary of State - Chapter 691, Statutes of 2021. [AB57 Detail]

Download: California-2021-AB57-Amended.html

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Amended  IN  Assembly  March 25, 2021

Amended  IN  Assembly  February 25, 2021

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill

No. 57

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Introduced by Assembly Members Gabriel and Chiu
(Principal coauthor: Senator Min)
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Bauer-Kahan, Bloom, Friedman, Cristina Garcia, Holden, Levine, Low, Medina, Nazarian, Quirk, Ting, and Ward)
(Coauthors: Senators Allen, Glazer, Rubio, Stern, and Wiener)

December 07, 2020

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An act to amend Section 13519.6 of, and to add Section 13016 to, the Penal Code, relating to law enforcement.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

AB 57, as amended, Gabriel. Law enforcement: hate crimes.

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 also requires, subject to the availability of adequate funding, the Attorney General to direct local law enforcement agencies to report specified information relative to hate crimes to the Department of Justice.

This bill would require the department to carry out various duties relating to documenting and responding to hate crimes, including conducting reviews of all law enforcement agencies every 3 years to evaluate the accuracy of hate crime data provided and agencies’ hate crime policies, implementing a school-based program in conjunction with school districts and local law enforcement agencies aimed at educating students regarding how to report all suspected hate crimes to prevent future hate crimes, submitting specified hate crime reports to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for inclusion in the national crime repository for crime data, and sending advisory notices to law enforcement agencies when the department determines that hate crimes are being committed in multiple jurisdictions. The bill would also include a statement of legislative findings and declarations.

This bill would additionally require the basic course curriculum on the topic of hate crimes to be developed in consultation with subject matter experts, as specified, and to include the viewing of a specified video course developed by POST. The bill would also require POST to make the video available via the online learning portal, and would require all peace officers to view the video no later than January 1, 2023. The bill would require POST to develop and periodically update an interactive refresher course on hate crimes for in-service peace officers, and require officers to take the course every 3 years.

Digest Key

Vote: MAJORITY   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: YES   Local Program: NO  

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Bill Text

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all the following:

(a) 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) 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) 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.

(d) In 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 838 active hate groups.

(e) 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, 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, law enforcement agencies reported just 10 antidisability hate crimes.

(e)

(f) According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) 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.

(f)

(g) 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.

(g)

(h) 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.

(h)

(i) 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.

(i)

(j) 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.

(j)

(k) 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.

(k)

(l) 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.

(l)

(m) 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.

(m)

(n) 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.

(n)

(o) 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. 2.

 Section 13016 is added to the Penal Code, to read:

13016.

 The Department of Justice shall, in consultation with subject matter experts, including civil rights organizations, law enforcement agencies, and academic experts, do the following:

(a) Maintain and annually update a list of all law enforcement agencies.

(b) Every three years, conduct reviews of all law enforcement agencies to evaluate the accuracy of hate crime data provided and agencies’ hate crime policies. During this review, the department shall obtain all of the following:

(1) Hate crime statistical data.

(2) Copies of the law enforcement agencies’ hate crime policies.

(3) Information regarding the agencies’ community outreach activities on hate crimes, including copies of the agencies’ hate crime brochures mandated pursuant to Section 422.92.

(c) Distribute information to all agencies on hate crime reporting procedures in cooperation with the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).

(d) Periodically do outreach to all law enforcement agencies to increase awareness of the department’s Hate Crime Rapid Response Team, as necessary.

(e) Add region-specific data fields to the department hate crime database, as recommended by the California State Auditor in the 2018 report entitled “Hate Crimes in California: Law Enforcement Has Not Adequately Identified, Reported, or Responded to Hate Crimes.”

(f) Create and provide law enforcement agencies with outreach materials to better engage their communities, to provide updates on local trends relating to and statistics regarding hate crimes committed in their communities, and to provide updates regarding threats in the form of hate crimes in their communities. In complying with this paragraph, the department shall do all of the following:

(1) Provide all outreach materials in the Medi-Cal threshold languages.

(2) Provide guidance and best practices for law enforcement agencies to follow when conducting outreach to vulnerable communities about hate crimes within their jurisdictions. This should include collaboration with city and county human relations and human rights commissions.

(3) Include presentation materials specific to various types of communities historically vulnerable to hate crimes.

(4) Provide the materials described in this subdivision to POST for inclusion in its model policy framework developed pursuant to Section 13519.6.

(g) Implement a school-based program in conjunction with school districts and local law enforcement agencies aimed at educating students on the negative consequences of, and how to recognize, bias, prejudice, harassment, and violence and report all suspected hate crimes to prevent future hate crimes, as recommended by the report described in subdivision (e).

(h) Submit hate crime reports provided by local law enforcement agencies pursuant to Section 13023 to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for inclusion in the national crime repository for crime data collected for purposes of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, as required by the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, pursuant to Section 534 of Title 28 of, and Section 41305 of Title 34 of, the United States Code.

(i) Analyze reported hate crimes in various regions of the state and send advisory notices to law enforcement agencies when the department determines that hate crimes are being committed in multiple jurisdictions.

SEC. 3.

 Section 13519.6 of the Penal Code is amended to read:

13519.6.

 (a) The commission commission, in consultation with subject-matter experts, including, but not limited to, law enforcement agencies, civil rights groups, and academic experts, and the Department of Justice, 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.

(5) Techniques and methods to handle incidents of hate crimes in a noncombative manner.

(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.

(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, 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-Arab/Middle Eastern and anti-Islamic hate crimewaves, and any other future hate crime waves that the Attorney General determines are likely.

(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. The elements of the framework 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.

(E) Reporting.

(d) (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) (1) The commission shall, for any basic course commencing on or after June 1, 2022, incorporate the November 2017 video course developed by the commission entitled “Hate Crimes: Identification and Investigation,” 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, on or before January 1, 2023, be required to watch the video described in paragraph (1) via the learning portal.

(4) The commission shall develop and periodically update an interactive refresher 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 refresher course described in paragraph (4) to be taken by in-service peace officers every three years.

(f) As used in this section, “peace officer” means any person designated as a peace officer by Section 830.1 or 830.2.