Principles for Public Safety Employment

maintain all disciplinary notices and investigation materials and that the City would notify the officer of any request to release his personnel records. The City received numerous CPRA requests from the media and produced record’s from the officer’s personnel file. The officer sued the City for its disclosure and the City moved to strike the officer’s complaint under California’s Anti-SLAPP statute on the grounds that it was required to disclose the records. The Court of Appeal held that the City’s disclosure of information from officer’s personnel file to media outlets in response to a CPRA request was protected speech in connection with a public issue. It further found that a “sustained finding” ” is established when an officer has had the opportunity to appeal, and not solely when an appeal is actually completed. The officer here was provided the opportunity to appeal his termination, and therefore his records concerned a “sustained finding” of dishonesty and were properly disclosed as required by the CPRA requests. 425

Finally, SB 1421 applies to peace officer records created prior to the January 1, 2019 effective date of the statute, in accordance with its stated goal of increasing transparency regarding incidents of peace officer misconduct. 426 Most recently, the California Legislature continued the trend of making several types of previously confidential peace officer personnel records publicly accessible when it enacted SB 16 on January 1, 2022. SB 16’s application goes even further than SB 1421 and removes Pitchess protection from the following records:  Records of sustained finding involving complaints alleging unreasonable or excessive force;  Records of sustained findings that an officer failed to intervene against another officer using clearly unreasonable or excessive force (SB 16 also requires that an officer “immediately” report all uses of force by that officer to the Employer);  Records of sustained findings that an officer engaged in conduct involving prejudice or discrimination on the basis of race, religious creed, color, national original, ancestry, physical or mental disability, mental condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender identity, or genders;  Records of sustained findings that an officer made an unlawful arrest or conducted an unlawful search SB 16 also make public any records where an officer resigns during an investigation of the above four categories, plus records of dishonesty and sexual misconduct noted in section C(2)(b), supra . It is also noteworthy that, if an officer committed misconduct that still falls within Pitchess protection, information about those allegations would be confidential; however, factual information about that officer that was relevant to a finding is not Pitchess -protected against another officer must be released. The Bill also precludes the use of the attorney-client privilege to deny release of information provided to an attorney during an investigation and prevents an Employer from destroying any

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