Police Use of Force and Misconduct in California
In the summer of 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Department officer precipitated widespread protests and amplified calls for policing reform. This killing came after years of high-profile deaths of Black civilians—including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Stephon Clark, among others—during encounters with police, and refocused efforts among policymakers at all levels of government to increase police accountability and transparency.
At the federal level, Congress was considering major reforms related to policing practices and law enforcement accountability, though legislators were unable to reach an agreement on a final bill.(1) The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would have, among several other provisions, established national standards for police use of force, required state and local law enforcement agencies to report use-of-force data, and created a nationwide registry for police misconduct to make it more difficult for officers to change jurisdictions after committing misconduct.
In the last several years,