California cities have to ID police officers involved in on-duty shootings unless there is specific evidence that disclosure would pose a safety threat, the California Supreme Court decided on Thursday.
Cities and police can no longer give blanket department policies to keep from disclosing the IDs, the court stated in a 6-1 opinion issued Thursday.
The state Supreme Court shot down the argument by the city of Long Beach and the Long Beach Police Officers Association that disclosing the names of officers involved in shootings could lead to “harassment of the officers and the city.” The justices said Long Beach and the association couldn’t offer specific evidence to support that argument.
The Los Angeles Times wanted the city of Long Beach to provide the names of officers involved in certain shootings while on duty, the court case states. The city of Long Beach refused to give the Times the names of officers involved in these shootings. The police union sided with the city.
In its decision, the court noted the 2004 law that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2004 to support its conclusions.
“In 2004, California’s voters passed an initiative measure that added to the state Constitution a provision the courts to broadly construe statues that grant public access to government information and to narrowly construe statues that limit such access,” the Justices pointed out.
LA Times Lawyer Comments
Kelli L. Sager, who represented The Times in the case, agreed that police agencies will have a “difficult burden to meet” if they try to withhold officer names.
“This is a matter of extreme public importance, and The Times has been litigating this issue with police departments throughout the state for many years,” Sager told the newspaper.
Law enforcement agencies in California for many years routinely released the names of officers who shot people on the job, the Times reported. The practice changed in 2006, when the state high court ruled that all records of police officer disciplinary proceedings must be confidential. Police unions argued the ruling also protected the privacy of officers involved in shootings.
But the court said Thursday that the 2006 decision applied to confidential personnel records and discipline matters, not the names of officers.
“When it comes to the disclosure of a peace officer’s name, the public’s substantial interest in the conduct of its peace officers outweighs, in most cases, the officer’s personal privacy interest,” Kennard wrote.
Long Beach Police Association and the city of Long Beach Disagree with the Decision
The Times reported that Lt. Steve James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn., called the ruling “very concerning.”
“What happens when we receive a credible threat after the name of an officer is released?” James asked. “We can’t get that information back.”
Long Beach Assistant City Atty. Michael Mais said the city was unlikely to ask the court to reconsider because it would probably be futile. He said Long Beach would now release officer names in all cases except when it can show a “particularized, credible threat” against an officer, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“It would be a situation where someone is making a direct threat to an officer immediately following a shooting,” Mais said. “If someone says, ‘I am going to go after that police officer when I find out who he is, and I am going to harm him and his family,’ the burden would be on the city to show that is a real threat.”
Court Documents Cite 2010 Shooting by Long Beach Officers
The court document cites the Dec. 12, 2010 incident where two Long Beach police officers responded to a call that an intoxicated man was brandishing a “six shooter” on neighboring property.
The suspect Douglas Zerby, 35, pointed an object at them resembling a gun. The officers immediately fired multiple rounds at Zerby, killing him, according to the court document.
It turned out that the object Zerby was holding was a garden house spray nozzle with a pistol grip.
LA Times Reporter Asked for Names of Officers
Three days after the shooting, Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Winton asked the Long Beach City attorney for the names of the officers involved in the Zerby shooting as well as officers involved in shootings from Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 11, 2010, according to court documents.