By Knx News, 6/15/23
As many as 3,500 California police officers could be decertified or suspended every year under a new state law that cracks down on misconduct.
That number comes from the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training , the state agency in charge of enforcing SB-2. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, gives POST power to strip officers of their certification for serious misconduct, such as excessive force, intimidating witnesses, or joining a law enforcement gang .
After decertification, an individual is never allowed to work as a police officer in California again.
The estimate suggests that almost 4% of California’s 90,000 cops will be found responsible for misconduct that rises to the level of decertification each year. One of the POST advisory board’s members, Lizzie Buchen, told the San Francisco Chronicle that she finds the figure “pretty staggering.”
“If we have that many officers who have committed these very serious harms against the public, that’s really serious,” she said.
The commission submitted its estimate in a request for an additional $6 million in funding to deal with the massive caseload.
In the first five months of 2023, POST received more than 62,000 serious misconduct reports and suspended or revoked the certifications of 44 officers , including four from the LASD and one from the LAPD.
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Good get those tyrant, thug, pig, gang members off the street! Let’s start by getting all blue lives matter gang members or anyone with the blue lives matter paraphernalia on them or their vehicles!
Filing complaints doesn’t necessarily mean that there was any actual wrongdoing on the part of the officer. Many times, complaints are filed in an attempt to obfuscate the facts of an arrest/enforcement action, or are completely frivolous. Most agencies use a process that results in one of four conclusions.
As you can see, there is actually only one level of conclusion that should properly be used for consideration of whether or not certification should be revoked, and that would still have to be based on the nature of the complaint, i.e. “I didn’t like the way he talked to me” vs unnecessary/excessive force or untruthfulness.