AB 2169, authored by Assembly Member Mike A. Gipson, passed Assembly Public Safety Committee with unanimous bipartisan support. This bill seeks to help undo the harm that undocumented victims of exploitation experience when they are criminalized due to their abuse while being trafficked.
California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) Chair Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) is calling on Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones to resign for “dereliction of duty” and for “breeding a culture of racism, hatred, and ignorance.”
America is still healing from several violent murders of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of law enforcement officers across the country. But that climate in the country, volatile and fraught with distrust and disagreement, did not stop members of the California Correctional Peace Officer Association (CCPOA) from placing a gun target on the photo of a Black lawmaker in California.
I have written about and discussed the notion that it takes just one person to misuse the law for public trust to erode and just one person to stand up to unjust actions to inspire change. The shooting and killing of Dijon Kizzee, Anthony Weber, and Andres Guardado by individual officers has further raised concerns and anger over the police culture, training, and interaction with people of color. Adversely, an individual took to violence against two sheriff deputies this past weekend seriously injuring both officers.
In the state of California approximately 56,000 youth are arrested every year, two-thirds of those arrests are for status offenses or misdemeanors such as: truancy, running away from home, curfew violation, underage drinking, and the alarmingly vague “incorrigibility”. Approximately 8 out of 10 youth arrested are referred to probation and of these youth, a quarter of them are detained, ultimately contributing to the School to Prison Pipeline.
Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager-Dove’s (D-Los Angeles) bill, AB 189 (Kamlager-Dove) that would designate autism professionals as mandated reporters passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee with unanimous support. The bill now heads to the Appropriations Committee. AB 189 clarifies that all Qualified Autism Service Practitioners (QASPs) are considered mandated reporters under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA). Mandated reporters are people who are required by law to report known or suspected child maltreatment.