Last week we shared information about pending legislation that was sitting on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk in ACTION ALERT: Help Us Tell Governor Newsom – Sign AB572 to Protect Grieving Families From Coercive Police Interrogations.

Turns out it’s good thing to proofread and edit our work, as we noticed the hyperlink to sign the petition wasn’t working, and that certainly doesn’t help the efforts to get the incredibly important legislation signed and put into law.

So we’ll do it right this time.

Please help us get to 1,000 signatures to deliver to Governor Newsom to urge him to sign AB 572 into law. —>>> Governor Newsom – Sign AB572 to Protect Grieving Families From Coercive Police Interrogations

The petition currently has 879 signatures – please help us kick that number over the 1000 mark.

More about AB 572 below.

Assembly Bill 572 is on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk.  This proposed legislation came from and was written by De-Bug families, who have been impacted by the criminal justice and immigration systems and who are actively involved in organizing and advocating for change through the organization Silicon Valley De-Bug. These families participate in “participatory defense” efforts, where they support each other in navigating legal systems and push for legislative and policy changes to end mass incarceration and unite separated families. 

AB 572 came out of their healing circles, when they began to talk about the painful and dark experiences of learning of their loved ones being beat, shot or killed by police, and the police swooping in to rob those moments of grief from families.  Taking advantage of the chaos and fog of sometimes not knowing the status of their loved ones, law enforcement would use a trained interrogation technique developed by Bruce Praet (an attorney who defends cops in civil proceedings) and Lexipol to squeeze information out of families in order to justify the harm done to their loved ones.

A quote from their training:
“You got about 5, 10, 30 minutes to get out there before word gets back on the street  —  that bad guy is either in the hospital, dead, jail or whatever.” – Bruce Praet, co-founder of Lexipol

As part of the legislation, before any initial interview of a family member of a person who has been killed or seriously injured by police, the officer or district attorney has to:

• Identify themselves to the family member
• Inform the family member of the status of their loved one
• Inform the family of the nature of the investigation
• Inform the family that they can have a trusted support person during the interview, and there is a choice of whether they can go to the police station or not for the interview.

Testimonies of families who have been harmed by this manipulative practice in the series “The Thin Blue Lie”:

• Sharon Watkins, mother of Phillip Watkins who was killed by San Jose PD on February 11, 2015
• Sam, Deanna, and Joshua, family of David Sullivan who was killed by Buena Park Police on August 19, 2019
• Leti and Christopher Vasquez, family of Marco Vasquez  who was killed by Los Angeles Sheriffs on October 6, 2019