LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced the proposed regulations for the collection of stop data that law enforcement agencies must report under California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, Assembly Bill (AB) 953. The proposed regulations are available at oag.ca.gov/ab953/regulations, and individuals are encouraged to provide comment on them at any point during the public comment period, which will last from December 9, 2016 through January 27, 2017.

“Racial and identity profiling weaken public trust and have debilitating effects on communities. These regulations and data will help law enforcement improve policing practices and strengthen accountability,” said Attorney General Harris. “The existence of bias in policing undermines our criminal justice system and hurts public safety. I am proud that California continues to lead the nation in leveraging data and technology to identify and address disparities where they exist.”

AB 953, among other things, requires local and certain state law enforcement agencies to collect data and report to the California Attorney General’s office information on each stop conducted by that agency’s officers. The law defines a stop as any detention by a peace officer of a person or any peace officer interaction with a person in which the officer conducts a search, including a consensual search. AB 953 delineates the minimum information that must be collected on each stop and requires the regulations issued by the Attorney General to specify all data to be reported.

In developing the proposed regulations, the Department consulted with a wide variety of stakeholders, including the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board established by Attorney General Harris in July, state and local law enforcement agencies and associations, civil rights groups – including individuals representing the LGBT, immigrant, disability and youth rights communities – community organizations, and members of academia.

The proposed regulations would require officers to record and collect information on the date, time, duration, location and type of stop; an officer’s reason for presence at the scene, meaning the circumstances under which the officer first encounters a person subject to a stop; the reason for the stop; actions taken by an officer during the stop; and the result of the stop. The proposed regulations also require officers to record perceived demographic information on the person stopped, including the perceived gender, race, and age of the person stopped, whether the person has limited English proficiency or a pronounced accent, and whether the person has a perceived or known disability. In order to better understand the context for each stop, the proposed regulations would also collect information on the officer’s type of assignment, in addition to their years of experience. The stop data submitted to the Department will connect stops by officer using a unique identifier in or der to preserve the anonymity of the officer.

Additionally, the proposed regulations outline the specific reporting requirements for stops in certain settings, including when and how to capture interactions with passengers in motor vehicle stops, interactions involving large numbers of people, such as mass evacuations or crowd control, and stops of students in K-12 public schools.

The proposed regulations further specify that reporting agencies must submit data to the California Department of Justice electronically and provide for the methods by which agencies will be able to submit this data. As specified by AB 953, each year the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board will issue a report with this data disaggregated by law enforcement agency, and the data will also be made available through the Department’s OpenJustice website, an unprecedented, first-of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative launched by Attorney General Harris in 2015.

Today’s announcement of the proposed regulations begins a public comment period, which will conclude on January 27, 2017. All members of the public are invited to submit a comment on the proposed regulations, and may do so in one of the four ways outlined below.

1. Submit written comment on the AB 953 Regulations webpage
2. Send written comment via email to AB953@doj.ca.gov
3. Send written comment to the address specified in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Action posted at https://oag.ca.gov/ab953/regulations
4. Submit written or oral comments at any of the three public hearings the Department will hold on the proposed regulations. These hearings will take place at the following dates and locations:

January 12, 2017
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
California State University, Los Angeles
Student Union Building
5154 State University Drive, Room 308 (Los Angeles Rm.)
Los Angeles, CA 90032

January 18, 2017
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Chabot Elementary School
Auditorium/Multi-Purpose Rm.
6686 Chabot Road
Oakland, CA 94618

January 26, 2017
2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Downtown Business Hub
Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation
1444 Fulton Street
Fresno, CA 93721

The proposed regulations, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Action and the Initial Statement of Reasons are available online at https://oag.ca.gov/ab953/regulations.

If you would like to receive notifications regarding these proposed regulations and on implementation of the Racial and Identity Profiling Act and activities of the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board, please subscribe to the AB 953 Mailing List.

In June 2016, Attorney General Harris announced the membership of the Racial Identity Profiling Advisory Board, which has met twice as a full board and held several subcommittee meetings to discuss and make recommendations to the Attorney General’s Office on the proposed regulations governing the collection of stop data.

Since January 2015, Attorney General Harris has taken several steps to strengthen the trust between law enforcement and California communities. These actions include:

• Directing the Department of Justice’s Division of Law Enforcement to conduct a 90-Day Review of its special agent trainings on implicit bias and use of force.
• Initiating a body camera pilot program for DOJ special agents.
• Convening law enforcement, youth, and community organizations to facilitate discourse about the best ways to cultivate trust and positive relationships.
• Creating the 21st Century Policing Working Group to foster discussion regarding implicit bias and building community trust, and to share best practices.
• Launching OpenJustice, a first-of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative that is releasing unprecedented information with a focus on being interactive and highlighting data stories.
• Training police executives from 29 different law enforcement agencies in a Principled Policing Course, a POST-certified training on implicit bias and procedural justice.