California bill would create third-party oversight of police shootings

[petronius]

Police officers who fatally shoot suspects would be subject to an outside review under California legislation being introduced by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento.

The bill follows a number of intensely scrutinized police killings, both the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, which drew national attention, and the case of an Army veteran, Parminder Singh Shergill, felled by police bullets in Lodi.

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“Many times DAs run for office and have such high links with the local law enforcement, and work with them on a daily basis, that enough people ask the question: ‘Should they distance themselves when they actually have to review an officer-involved shooting?’” McCarty said.

Under McCarty’s Assembly Bill 86, a law enforcement panel, likely within the California Department of Justice, would study each case of a California police officer shooting someone and issue a recommendation. The goal would not be issuing indictments but ensuring the community trusts that fatalities are thoroughly reviewed, McCarty said.

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http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article5522112.html

[niyad]

1. guess that is a step in the correct direction.

[Cleita]

2. Good. Next how about oversight of police practices and abuses that can

be considered corruption of laws that were intended for the general good? For instance using traffic laws to raise revenue with speed traps, etc., instead of to get bad drivers off the road as originally intended?