Saving Bad Apples

Most people agree that bad apples—whether misbehaving police officers, state workers, or school teachers—should be removed from public service or at least disciplined. Yet a California legislature that couldn’t be bothered to consider serious pension reform or address a spate of coming municipal bankruptcies passed three union-backed bills that protect the state’s worst “public servants.” Talk about priorities.

Governor Jerry Brown signed the most offensive of the three bills, SB 313, which passed both legislative houses by a combined vote of 108-5. Republicans were just as likely as Democrats to back a bill that would forbid police agencies from relying on so-called Brady lists to reassign, demote, or otherwise punish police officers and deputy sheriffs. In a 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court required prosecutors to disclose any evidence that could be favorable to the person accused of a crime. As a Senate analysis of SB 313 explains, “If the prosecutor is aware of misconduct, past or present, on the part of a police officer who may be called as a witness in a case, and that misconduct could discredit or ‘impeach’ the officer’s testimony, the prosecutor has an obligation to turn that evidence over to the defendant.”

As a result, district attorneys compile lists of officers who have been found to have lied under oath or falsified police reports, used excessive force, or who have been convicted of certain crimes. There’s good reason to keep these individuals off the witness stand, given that their lack of integrity can cost a prosecutor a conviction. And police agencies will sometimes discipline or reassign officers found to have behaved so poorly.

Progressive-minded police officials, such as Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, have publicly supported the use of Brady lists to help assure that the public can have “a high degree of trust” in their officers, as he explained to the Sacramento Bee. But police unions and their allies, such as the Peace Officers Research Association of California—a group that pays the legal-defense fees of officers accused of horrific behavior—despise the Brady lists. SB 313 expands the Peace Officers Bill Of Rights, which already makes it nearly impossible to discipline or fire law-enforcement officials for anything other than criminal convictions.

Via: California Political Review

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