Newsom signs bill giving civilian oversight boards access to police personnel files

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed legislation authored by local Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins that grants California’s law enforcement oversight boards access to confidential police personnel records.

Assembly Bill 847 gives oversight commissions, like San Diego County’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board and the city of San Diego’s Commission on Police Practices, the same access to peace officer files currently held by prosecutors, grand juries and the state attorney general.

While many oversight panels can subpoena documents and investigate misconduct complaints, requests for officer personnel files have routinely been denied by law enforcement agencies.

Without that information, they say, it’s difficult to identify patterns of misconduct, understand disciplinary history or recommend policy changes.

“The reality is that effective civilian oversight of the sheriff’s department requires that oversight commissions be able to subpoena and receive confidential documents,” Sharp-Collins, a La Mesa Democrat, told the Assembly’s public safety committee in April. “AB 847 fixes that problem.”

The measure includes strict confidentiality protections. Records may only be reviewed in closed session, and commissions are barred from releasing personally identifying or sensitive details.

Last month, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors officially voted to support AB 847, with Supervisors Monica Montgomery Steppe, Terra Lawson-Remer and Paloma Aguirre in favor and Republicans Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson opposed.

Montgomery Steppe, who requested the vote, argued that AB 847 would give the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board the tools it needs to conduct the kind of investigations voters expected when they created it more than three decades ago.

The San Diego Sheriff’s Office joined several other law enforcement agencies and organizations in opposing the bill.

But two of the state’s most powerful law enforcement advocacy groups — the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association and the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) — switched their positions from opposed to neutral after working with Sharp-Collins to reinforce the bill’s confidentiality protections.

“It allows oversight agencies to do their job while respecting officer privacy,” PORAC President Brian Marvel told The San Diego Union-Tribune.