SACRAMENTO – Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San José), and bill co-sponsors, Californians for Safety and Justice and Silicon Valley De-Bug, celebrate the signing of AB 572 (Kalra). AB 572 requires peace officers, prior to interviewing the immediate family of someone who has been killed or severely injured by a peace officer, to be transparent about the victim’s status and provide family members with information that could prevent a coercive interrogation.
“It has been an honor to work closely with impacted families these past two years and bring AB 572 across the finish line. I am thankful Governor Newsom signed the bill into law,” said Assemblymember Kalra. “In the aftermath of police violence, grieving family members deserve compassion and respect, not manipulation and coercion. AB 572 will hold our law enforcement agencies to a higher standard in their interactions with impacted family members, requiring not only transparency, but prohibiting threats and outright deception.”
Law enforcement agencies are taught techniques to extract information from families with the aim of protecting officers from legal repercussions and criminal allegations. An award winning investigative report exposed this statewide practice in a piece published by the Los Angeles Times in March of 2023.
"For more than two years, directly impacted families tirelessly crafted and worked on this bill in pursuit of justice for their loved ones, so that future families do not have to experience the pain they went through after their loved ones were harmed or killed by police. We thank Assemblymember Ash Kalra for his courageous leadership on behalf of families who are often unheard and made invisible. This is just one step in the larger effort for police accountability fueled by families who are turning their pain and trauma into actionable, urgent, and ultimately life-saving reforms,” said Charisse Domingo, organizer with Silicon Valley De-Bug.
AB 572 strikes a necessary balance by requiring law enforcement agencies to maintain a policy that requires a reasonable level of transparency and prohibits deception in these narrow situations where families of victims of police violence are most vulnerable. These policies will not obstruct urgent investigations where a reasonable officer believes there is a public safety risk, the family member is a suspect or under arrest, or when an officer comes into contact incidentally with a family member.
“We should never settle for anything less than full transparency from law enforcement officials, especially when interviewing the family of a person killed or seriously injured by police,” said Tinisch Hollins, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice. “Manipulating survivors by using tactics to extract information with the aim of protecting an officer erodes our collective safety by inflicting further harm on victims and undermining a community’s trust in law enforcement.”
###
Assemblymember Ash Kalra represents California’s 25th Assembly District, which encompasses the majority of San José, including downtown and open space areas in southeast Santa Clara County. He was first elected in 2016, becoming the first Indian American to serve in the California Legislature in state history, and was re-elected to his fifth term in 2024. Assemblymember Kalra is the Chair of the Committee on Judiciary and also serves as a member on the Housing & Community Development, Labor & Employment, Natural Resources, and Utilities & Energy committees.