California enacts police transparency law inspired by San Jose cop scandal

A police transparency bill helmed by a Bay Area lawmaker and inspired by a sexual misconduct case involving a former San Jose police officer is now law, increasing the ability of law enforcement in California to reveal when an officer is fired for cause.

Senate Bill 400, authored by State Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Fremont, amends state law so that allow police agencies don’t need a public records request to announce when they fire an officer for misconduct and offer details about the termination within the bounds of existing police transparency laws.

“In partnership with law enforcement, this law bolsters efforts for transparency and accountability in law enforcement and reinforces trust with the public,” Wahab said in a statement.

One of the catalysts for the bill, which was signed Feb. 29 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was a 2022 scandal in which ex-San Jose Police Department officer Matthew Dominguez was arrested after allegations he was caught masturbating while working a domestic disturbance call. Dominguez was fired and put on a state decertification list that puts him on track to be permanently barred from being a police officer in California.

But the public revelation of the incident came after news media inquiries. Sexual misconduct is one of eight categories of police force and disciplinary records that can be released under SB 1421, a landmark 2019 transparency law that made a huge swath of records public after decades of stringent statutory protection.

Even so, there was no law compelling police departments to release them on their own, and by and large these agencies played it safe rather than incur the wrath of overlapping city personnel protections and potential claims of officer rights violations. The issue surfaced again recently after a now-former SJPD officer resigned after being implicated in a racist texting scandal last fall, after which Chief Anthony Mata voiced his support for modifying disclosure rules.

The City of San Jose ended being a major sponsor of Wahab’s bill. SJPD declined comment on the bill’s signing, but stated that the department and city “a seven-point plan to increase transparency.”

It should be noted that the impact of the law relies on a police agency’s willingness to disclose a termination and its reasons. But it does shore up a scenario where previously, one of the main ways for police to disclose high-profile and controversial firings — which almost entirely occur in non-public settings — is for that information to be leaked to news media so that they have enough specific detail to make a public-records request.