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SAN FRANCISCO — A superior court judge on Friday ordered state Attorney General Xavier Becerra to turn over police investigation records requested by media organizations under a new state law, saying that an appeals court had already ruled that California’s new police transparency law applies to records created before this year.
Within hours, Becerra said he will comply.
Becerra had repeatedly said he wanted direction from the courts on whether the law, Senate Bill 1421, applied to records created before Jan. 1. Many local agencies across the state have declined to release records, citing Becerra’s argument.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Becerra said he accepted Superior Court Judge Richard B. Ulmer’s ruling.
“DOJ will now begin to produce documents pre-dating January 1, 2019,” Becerra wrote. “With this court’s ruling, my office now has much of the clarity we have sought in our efforts to appropriately follow the letter of the law.”
In a tentative written ruling he made final from the bench, Ulmer wrote that the question of whether law enforcement agencies needed to disclose older records was settled by the First District Court of Appeal.
Contra Costa County police unions had filed an appeal of a ruling by Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Charles Treat that found the law applied to documents created before Jan. 1. In a brief published last month, the appellate court rejected the appeal, writing the unions’ argument was “without merit.” Those two words, Ulmer said at the Friday hearing, were good enough for him.
Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Rosenberg, representing the justice department, argued that the retroactivity argument wasn’t completely settled because the appellate court did not conduct a hearing on it. But Ulmer rejected that argument.
“They considered the retroactivity (argument) and said it is without merit ” he said from the bench. “The court went out of its way to say (SB 1421) is retroactive. I tend to take people at their word.”
“It’s a win,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, which along with KQED News sued Becerra after he rejected public records requests for the records. “The attorney general’s stonewalling for five months has been put out to rest. They will have to produce records.”
The law, sponsored by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and signed last year by former Gov. Jerry Brown, makes records of officer-involved shootings and other uses of force resulting in serious injured, and police officer dishonesty and sexual assault public. They had been secret since the 1970s.
Ulmer did not order the justice department to immediately begin releasing records, instead ordering the lawyers involved to meet and work out a schedule. He scheduled a hearing on their progress for next month.
Production of a voluminous records will be “onerous,” he said, but he also rejected the idea that the justice department could withhold records because it would take too much work to censor and prepare them.
“It sounds to me like like you don’t want to do the work at the A.G.’s office,” he said to Rosenberg. He also told lawyers for KQED and the First Amendment Coalition, “you’re asking for a big hunk of records.”
The justice department possesses records both involving its law enforcement officers and from cases where it reviews or investigates the conduct of the officers who work for other agencies, including local police departments.
In the statement, Becerra said he disagreed with the judge that the DOJ must provide records for officers who do not work for the department. “Any other conclusion would result in duplication of efforts by local law enforcement agencies,” he said.
Ulmer said it shouldn’t matter whether people obtain records from local agencies or the justice department.
“We the people don’t care which taxpayer-funded agency pays the bill” for preparing the records, he said. The purpose is to get them to “mothers and fathers if people shot by the police” who want answers.
