Tag: AB 449

Attorney General Rob Bonta Allocates Funding to Review Law Enforcement Hate-Crime Policies

By Greg deGiere, Civil Rights Advocate, The Arc of California

In a major breakthrough in the fight against anti-disability hate crimes – and all hate crimes – Attorney General Rob Bonta has made available funding to have the Department of Justice (DOJ) check law enforcement agencies’ hate crime policies guiding all officers throughout the state.

The Arc &UCP California Collaboration (The Arc-UCP) was the lead sponsor of Assembly Bill 449 of 2023 by Assemblymember Phil Ting requiring every police agency to adopt a hate crime policy guiding every officer in California. Each police agency policy must include extensive instructions about recognizing and responding to anti-disability hate crimes and additional items in the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission’s model policy

The bill requires every police agency to submit its policy to DOJ for review – but only if adequate funds are available. Due to a deficit 2023-24 budget year, there was no way to fund the compliance checking.

Bonta informed us last week that he has located the funds to pay for checking the policies of the first 25% of the police agencies who submit their policies by January 1, 2025. The other 75% are to be submitted and checked in the next three years.

If an agency fails to submit a policy or submits one that falls short of the legal standards, the DOJ will instruct the agency to submit a compliant policy.

Police agencies with hate crime policies report about 25% more hate crimes than those with no policies, according to University of California research. And that covers any policies, not just the extensive policies that AB 449 requires.

In 2021, AB 57 (Gabriel) included an amendment we sought that recognized anti-disability hate crimes as “the invisible hate crimes.” California police agencies reported just 18 anti-disability hate crimes last year, including just six crimes motivated by bias against mental disabilities (intellectual disabilities, mental illness and dementia). And even those numbers were up from earlier years, perhaps reflecting the recent efforts to bring police attention to anti-disability hate crimes. Historically, studies show law enforcement agencies without hate-crime policies have been significantly under-reporting hate crimes, and thanks to our AB 449 last year and Bonta’s funding, we hope to improve this statistic.

AB 449, some earlier bills we supported or sponsored (some of which passed), and extensive DOJ actions were motivated by the state auditor’s report “Hate Crimes in California: Law Enforcement Has Not Adequately Identified, Reported or Responded to Hate Crimes.” The Arc-UCP led other community groups in convincing the Legislature to order the audit in 2017. It’s been a long road, and we’re not near the end yet.

If you need to report a hate crime, call 9-1-1. If your local police are unresponsive, call your area’s FBI office. The FBI asks for reports of every hate crime. For further help and support, and to answer questions about what is considered an anti-disability hate crime, visit https://www.cavshate.org/

New Police Training Video Released on Reporting and Investigation of Hate Crimes

By Greg deGiere, Civil Rights Advocate, The Arc of California

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) has released a new police training video on reporting and investigating hate crimes. Please consider sharing the video with your local law enforcement agencies. Besides encouraging them to use the video to train their officers on the new hate crime laws we succeeded in passing last year with AB 449 by Assemblymember Phil Ting, this might be an opportunity to establish a relationship with them, particularly with the hate crime coordinators that some agencies have designated recently. Those relationships could be very useful when members of the disability community are victimized by hate crimes.

Senior groups especially may want to remind them that disabilities caused by aging, illnesses and/or injuries are covered by the hate crime laws, specifically Penal Code Sections 422.55(a)(1) and 422.56(b). A lot of people, even officers, don’t know that.

The POST video features both victims of hate crimes and police officers stressing the new legal requirements and importance of responding to reports of possible hate crimes.

Thanks to AB 449 (Ting), every law enforcement agency must adopt a hate crime policy guiding officers’ professional conduct on hate crimes.

ACTION ALERT: Urge Governor Newsom to Sign Hate Crime Bill

By Greg deGiere, Civil Rights Advocate, The Arc/UCP California Collaboration

The Senate voted 39-0 last Monday to give final passage to California’s most important hate crime bill in 19 years, sponsored by a broad coalition of civil rights and community groups led by The Arc/UCP California Collaboration.

Assembly Bill 449 by Assemblymember Phil Ting is headed to Governor Gavin Newsom for signature or veto, and we need your help in urging the Governor to sign the bill.

What AB 449 will do if signed into law:

The bill will require every law enforcement agency to adopt a detailed hate crime policy that all California officers will be required to know and follow — with special emphasis on recognizing, reporting and responding to anti-disability hate crimes — the most overlooked “invisible hate crimes.”

To ensure accountability, the bill also will require all law enforcement agencies to submit their hate crime policies to the Department of Justice to check for compliance with the legal requirements.

The requirements are based on the results of a performance audit of police response to hate crimes, which found that “law enforcement has not adequately identified, reported, or responded to hate crimes.” The coalition convinced the Legislature to order the audit in 2018, and we’ve been working for what became this bill ever since.

Three ways you can TAKE ACTION to show your support:

    1. Have your organization email the governor a support letter at [email protected]. CLICK HERE to download a short letter you can use if you choose, or you can write your own.
    2. Send a Thank You email to the bill’s author, Assembly Member Phil Ting at [email protected] to show him your appreciation. The subject line of the email should say “AB 449 (Ting): Support.” Copy The Arc/UCP at [email protected].
    3. Ask your network of friends, family members and colleagues to email the Governor at the same address above. The email can be as short as “Please sign AB 449.”

If you have questions or want to be included in future updates about this law, please email [email protected] 

Major Steps Toward Better Police Protection for People with Disabilities and Seniors

In a major step toward revolutionizing policing to better protect people with disabilities and older adults, Governor Newsom last week signed Assembly Bill 751 to ensure that every city police and county sheriff’s department trains and guides its officers in this often-neglected aspect of law enforcement. The Arc & UCP California Collaboration and the California Alliance for Retired Americans sponsored AB 751. Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo carried the bill for us, and it becomes law January 1.

And in a related success, the Senate Public Safety Committee passed Assembly Bill 449 a similar bill covering all law enforcement agencies’ policing of hate crimes against all victims, with particular attention to anti-disability hate crimes. The bill moves now to an uncertain fate in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which must act on it by September 1. The Arc/UCP is the lead sponsor of AB 449, also backed by a wide, diverse coalition of community groups and carried by Assemblymember Phil Ting.

Why is there a need for action of this sort?

“Abuse of People with Disabilities: Victims and Their Families Speak Out” (Nora Baladerian, Thomas F. Coleman and Jim Stream, Spectrum Institute Disability and Abuse Project, 2013) surveyed victims with disabilities and their families. Of the cases where victims reported the abuse to authorities, 52.9 percent said that nothing happened. According to the victims and family members surveyed, the number of alleged perpetrators arrested was 7.8 percent.

This study added to the findings of an earlier university research project (“Crime Victims with Disabilities Specialists Program: A Report Prepared for the California Department of Mental Health,” Valerie Jenness, University of California Irvine, and Nancy Naples, University of Connecticut, November 2003), which summarized the problem starkly:

“Across a variety of studies, the officially reported violence against persons with disabilities is simply alarming. Moreover, the evidence suggests that officially reported violence against people with disabilities and criminal victimization of people with disabilities more generally is merely the tip of the iceberg as most violence against people with disabilities goes unreported. Lack of reporting occurs for a variety of reasons, including that the criminal justice system cannot–or will not–serve those with disabilities. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to refer to people with disabilities who are victimized as ‘invisible victims.’ As such, they have historically and in the present day been systematically denied access to justice via the criminal justice system.”

AB 751, which the Legislature passed unanimously and the governor signed last week, ensures that almost every local law enforcement agency must adopt a formal Senior and Disability Victimization Policy guiding all officers. Among the many provisions of the policy are:

    • Officers must investigate every report of a major crime against an adult or child with a disability or against an adult 65 or older, except in unusual compelling circumstances as determined by a supervising officer and reported to the victim and, upon request, to Disability Rights California. No more blowing off calls.
    • If an officer has evidence of one of these major crimes, they must arrest the suspect when necessary to protect the victims or others and must seek emergency protective orders at the scene by phone to a judge on-call 24 hours a day.
    • Every officer must be trained to handle these often-difficult cases.
    • Every law enforcement agency must have an extensively trained senior and disability unit, or in smaller agencies at least one officer, to serve as a resource in these cases and act as the agency’s liaison to the senior and disability communities and other agencies. 
    • Every agency must develop a detailed checklist of first-responding officers’ responsibilities.
    • Every agency must develop its own protocols for carrying out the policy, assuring the policy works for that department.

Last week’s actions came as the state Department of Justice released its 2022 hate crime statistics, showing a more than 20 percent jump over the 2021. As usual throughout the United States, though, the data almost totally left out anti-disability hate crimes, reporting just 12 statewide. Law enforcement agencies report less than 0.4 percent of the National Crime Victimization Survey’s estimated anti-disability hate crimes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ latest report.

AB 449, our hate crime bill, takes aim at this extreme under-reporting, both by encouraging victims with disabilities and all victims to report and guiding police to recognize hate crimes when they see them.

 

 

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