Tag: AB 449 (Ting)

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/

Hate Crime Bill Passes Final Committee, Heads to the Governor’s Desk

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

After three years of effort, it looks almost certain now that California will soon require all its law enforcement officers to follow strict protocols to recognize, report and respond to hate crimes – with particular attention to anti-disability crimes, also known as the invisible hate crimes.

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 449 by Assemblymember Phil Ting with a 7-0 vote.  AB 449 is sponsored by a diverse coalition of civil rights and community groups led by The Arc / UCP California Collaboration and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Passage by the full Legislature now looks assured, leaving Governor Gavin Newsom as the final hurdle. While it’s likely he will sign the bill into law, we can’t be 100% sure and will need to make the case to him.

The bill has never received a “no” vote in any committee during its legislative journey.

If signed by the Governor, the bill will require every local and state law enforcement agency in California to adopt a formal policy guiding officers on how to respond to hate crimes. The deadline for them to adopt the policy will be July 1, 2024.

Equally importantly, it will require all law enforcement agencies to submit their policies to the state Department of Justice to be checked for compliance with legal requirements that the Legislature enacted with this bill and earlier bills that we also sponsored.

Among those required elements of the policy are:

    • In recognizing suspected disability-bias hate crimes, the policy shall 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.
    • In recognizing suspected disability-bias hate crimes, the policy also shall 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 anti-disability 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.”

The Arc’s recent, intense advocacy work to protect children and adults with disabilities dates back to our sponsorship of the first Crime Victims with Disability Act bill, AB 2038 by Assemblymember Salley Lieber, in 2008 and then SB 110 by Senator Carol Lou in 2009.

It continued through a series of bills making incremental progress, culminating with AB 1985 by Assemblymember Ting of 2018, which we co-sponsored with Equality California. Efforts by the coalition we lead resulted in a 2018 report by State Auditor: Hate Crime in California Law Enforcement Has Not Adequately Identified, Reported, or Responded to Hate Crimes , which laid the groundwork for our efforts for the last three years leading to AB 449.

The coalition members sponsoring AB 449 included:

    • The Arc & United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration
    • California League of United Latin American Citizens LULAC
    • California Asian Pacific American Bar Association
    • California Hawaii State Conference of the NAACP
    • Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism
    • Asian Law Alliance
    • Japanese American Citizens League
    • California Association of Human Relations Organizations
    • California Council of Churches IMPACT
    • Feminist Majority
    • Sikh Coalition
    • California Alliance for Retired Americans
    • Hindu American Foundation

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