Law Enforcement

CA Senate wades into police videotaping controversy

Faced with mounting criticism over civil liberties abuses, lawmakers in Sacramento greenlit a so-called clarification of Californians’ right to videotape and photograph police officers on the job. Senate Bill 411, introduced by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, protects the practice so long

Is San Diego safest big city? Or having a police crisis?

Chris Reed March 9, 2015

This good news got prominent play in California’s second-largest city this weekend: For the fourth year running, San Diego had the lowest murder rate among the country’s ten largest cities. The department investigated 32 homicides, down from 39, giving San

Rose Bird’s ghost will kill CA death penalty

John Seiler January 22, 2015

Given that Gov. Jerry Brown was just elected to an unprecedented fourth term, it’s not surprising an old controversy would come up: the death penalty. As the Los Angeles Times reported, his recent appointments of three liberal justices to the

Auditor: CA courts not spending money judiciously

John Seiler January 14, 2015

California’s state and local courts commonly complain they don’t get enough funds to do their jobs. And if there’s one area where I would want more government spending, it would be to make the courts more efficient. Having to deal

New category of CA employees tries to sandbag pension fixes

Chris Reed January 5, 2015

When elected officials participate even very indirectly in a process that improves their compensation, the public goes wild. It’s powerful attack-ad fodder for candidates seeking to unseat such politicians. But when powerful bureaucrats engage in such in a maneuver —

CHP’s probe of CalFire yielded leads — unlike DA’s probe of CHP

Chris Reed January 3, 2015

The reports that suggest the California Highway Patrol did a solid job in handling the investigation of a prostitution scandal at CalFire’s training acadmy in Ione have a rich subtext. CHP gathered enough strong evidence that 16 CalFire employees were

San Jose police union stalls officer cameras, cites ‘privacy’

Chris Reed December 7, 2014

Basic concepts of police professionalism were more or less born in Northern California, courtesy of a reform-minded police chief, as a history of law enforcement notes: August Vollmer, police chief in Berkeley, California, from 1905 to 1932, advocated the hiring

Elected CA Dems duck issue of police treatment of minorities

Chris Reed November 29, 2014

As protests in Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego have shown, there are many Californians who are upset about what happened in Ferguson, Mo., with the police killing of an unarmed African-American youth. They’re also much more broadly concerned about

Trial lawyers seek and win extreme verdict they know won’t stand

Chris Reed November 25, 2014

An insane court ruling led me to write this for the U-T San Diego: At a recent federal trial in San Diego, lawyers for Rosario Juarez presented compelling, disturbing evidence that the San Ysidro resident faced repeated gender discrimination while working

Noted liberal pundit: CA ‘affirmative consent’ law a ‘radical experiment’

Chris Reed October 8, 2014

The problem of sexual violence and abuse on college campuses is a huge one. But California’s new “affirmative consent law,” which requires college students having sex to obtain “affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement … throughout a sexual activity,” is certain