California just passed two new laws to hold police officers more accountable

Police brutality protest.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Sunday signed two new laws intended to make investigations of police misconduct more transparent to the public.

Senate Bill 1421 gives the public access to internal departmental investigations of police shootings and other professional misconduct, like violence, sexual assault, and deception. Assembly Bill 748 is the state's first significant regulation of police body cameras, requiring departments to make public any audio or video of serious misconduct cases within 45 days of the incident unless doing so would undermine an active investigation.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.