California Attempts to Eliminate Discrimination with an Anti-Police Bill Permitting Bias and Discrimination

Despite studies that debunk police discrimination of minorities, California legislates the disabused theory that anti-police bias by black jurors and other people of color is valid

May 20, 2024

white dome building surrounded by trees — Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

The presumption that police intentionally target and harass black and Hispanic citizens was codified into law with 2020 California Assembly Bill 3070. This law, presented as a remedy to a racial disparity, was pushed through at the end of the 2020 legislative session and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. What is the real problem? Minorities, especially black potential jurors were dismissed by preemptive strikes due to their stated bias against law enforcement.

This was by no means a grassroots movement. News flash: there is no uprising from jurors who weren’t selected. If you have ever been dismissed from jury duty, your sole complaint is that you weren’t dismissed soon enough.

Picking a jury generally involves a questionnaire and then the interview process of voir dire. The essential purpose is to identify impartial jurors. But in California, AB 3070, prevents the presumptive strike of a juror based on displaying bias against law enforcement. California’s grossly imperfect justice system just got a double dose of chaos.

This has led to unfair trial outcomes and tragedies.

Reality and research

Dr. Roland Fryer, who only needs a Nobel Prize to complete the set, is the best young economist of our day. I’ve followed his career since Freakonomics. In 2015 he was awarded the John Clark Bates medal by the American Economic Association. He began a study to end all studies, frustrated that the methodology was off in so many studies that concluded an absence of racial bias in policing.

Despite the most comprehensive and exhaustively peer reviewed study, instead of finding bias toward minorities, he found the opposite. In fact, you were marginally less likely to experience force, especially deadly force, from the police as a minority. His reward was the need for 24-hour security due to credible threats. Certain interests didn’t appreciate the findings of his work.

My favorite filmmaker, Rob Montz of

Good Kid Productions

, did a mini-doc asking Why Did Harvard Cancel its Best Black Professor, Roland Fryer? Link will be in the references but be advised: Rob’s videos are hard to quit watching.

Real world consequences

First, a juror bias against police officer is legalized in criminal cases.
Second, the theory that since police have a disproportionate of contact and arrest with BIPOC communities is codified into California law, despite evidence to the contrary.

The real negative consequences, the evil product of legislated discrimination, is blatant injustice. This came to my attention while listening to John Kelly’s Sometimes Heroes Need Help podcast with Meagen McCarthy. In retirement, she advocates for law enforcement and is also contributor on Fox News.

Former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Meagan McCarthy. Photo Credit:(Taras Dubenets/The Epoch Times)

McCarthy is a prematurely retired San Bernardino Deputy Sheriff who survived an attempt by a suspect to murder her in Victorville. Outsized by a manic who wants to kill her, they physically fight for several minutes. After depriving Deputy McCarthy of access to communications, the struggle for her weapons is on and during this time suspect disarmed her and pointed her gun directly at her head and pulled the trigger. But for the gun experiencing a malfunction, she would have been murdered by the suspect who confessed the same to anyone who would listen. There was also observer cell phone video that was broadly circulated.

The Epoch Times reported on this case:

“Many of the jurors that sat on the jury that heard her case expressed a bias towards police officers, and under the new law, they could not be removed from the jury just because they expressed a bias towards police,” Ms. Castronovo said. “Quite literally, the deck was stacked against her being the victim of a crime.”
“In its attempt to eliminate implicit bias, it’s actually codifying racial stereotypes,” she said. “They harkened back to some very ugly stereotypes in writing this law.”

The suspect was acquitted on all the serious felonies, including attempted murder of a law enforcement officer due to five jurors with an anti-police bias. When you are the victim of a crime, especially when you were horrifically injured as someone attempted to murder you, then treated with doubt by even the judge, an acquittal of this magnitude of injustice sparks a lot of questions.

One of the first of her questions answered was has this happened to anyone else? The answer sadly was yes. Two other deputies had been victims of violent criminals and had similar injustice in the same rural courthouse. Recent efforts to repeal AB 3070 have met with negative results. McCarthy is publishing a book soon. I’ll mention it when it comes out.

black vehicle on road close-up photography — Photo by Tim Meyer on Unsplash

Stand for the truth or fall for everything

Destructive measures like this are being introduced around the country. The lies being told by activists and repeated in mainstream media paint law enforcement violent primary aggressors. I’ve caught several friends in conversations improperly using the junk-science term ‘implicit bias.’ Justice professionals are saying it mistaking it for conscious bias but in doing so are validating the movement dedicated to reimagining the police.

Another lie is ‘low-level traffic infractions.’ If we aren’t going to stop cars for illegal tint, expired tags and falling bumpers, take the laws off the books. However, decreasing traffic enforcement during a time with rising traffic fatalities doesn’t make much sense.

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We’ve seen police officers lose qualified immunity or some degree of it in Colorado, Connecticut and New Mexico. Looming at the federal level is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, that has previously passed the House twice. It is effectively the end of local policing with every local agency falling under federal rules.

Last June, I quoted the New Democrat Coalition, as posted on the House of Representatives website, and the intention of this legislation is clear:

“The Justice in Policing Act would: 1) establish a national standard for the operation of police departments; 2) mandate data collection on police encounters; 3) reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs; and 4) streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. The language of the bill is identical to the version passed in the 116th Congress with the support of the entire Democratic Caucus and three Republicans.”

According to their proposal, there would be complete command and control of agency policies and procedures especially including discipline. Every occasion of a high-profile police use of force where President Biden weighs in, he insists that he will sign this bill as soon as it hits his desk.

California AB 3070 needs to be a wake-up call to policing nationally. There will be more negative consequences while efforts continue to have it repealed. It’s also a lesson that no one can cure fabricated discrimination by codifying authentic discrimination.

Please keep all our peace officers in your prayers, especially victors of nightmare fight-for-your-life scenarios like Meagan McCarthy!