Every day in California, we are seeing our civil rights erode before our eyes | Opinion
The degradation of human and civil rights now taking place in America is directly tied to our inability to routinely hold local law enforcement accountable.
As the nation continues a period of protest against federal raids on immigrants, everyday Americans will use their First Amendment rights to assemble and protest government overreach. Yet, as we have already seen, these protesters are subject to terrible violations of their civil rights.
In the past month, law enforcement, both local and federal, have responded by shooting protesters and journalists with rubber bullets. Mounted Los Angeles Police Department officers trampled demonstrators with their horses and used hundreds of rounds of tear gas canisters and other non-lethal projectiles to push back crowds.
Raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have escalated to the point where hundreds of agents marched through a popular Los Angeles-area park this week in a show of police force. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” increased the ICE budget by an extra $75 billion, making it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
Without redress locally, I fear these violations will become tolerated on a national level.
The erosion of our civil liberties has been well documented, but unfortunately, misbehavior and outright illegalities committed by law enforcement officers are rarely recognized by the public — much less by those officers’ commanders.
The mobilization of the California National Guard against the direct wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom is only the beginning of the Trump Administration’s plan to use unethical and unconstitutional force to, as the president wrote on Truth Social, “solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
This is a serious escalation of a military presence that could have been handled with far more grace and patience by local law enforcement on the ground.
Because, in practice, law enforcement often forgets that just because they legally can respond with force doesn’t mean they morally should.
Putting the ‘force’ in law enforcement
“The president is looking for any pretense to place military forces on American streets to intimidate and quiet those who disagree with him,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement. “It’s not just immoral — it’s illegal and dangerous.”
The National Police Accountability Project is one of just a few national organizations that focus solely on ending law enforcement overreach and abuse of power. The organization provides essential support to a network of more than 500 civil rights attorneys that file thousands of lawsuits against police departments, jails and prisons, holding officers accountable for misconduct.
“This kind of really aggressive, militarized tactics against people who are exercising their First Amendment rights have been struck down as unconstitutional, as illegal and as violative of the law time and time again,” said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project. “A lot of these tactics have been ruled to be unconstitutional,”
“Just because the federal government is saying (local police) have a legal obligation to help (them)… doesn’t mean that that’s actually what the law requires,” Bonds said. “In fact, they’re encouraging local law enforcement officers to break the law, and there’s a number of cases that make that very clear.”
As for what’s going on in LA, Bonds said she’s heartened by the state’s official response so far.
“There are opportunities for the state to step up, and we’re seeing that,” Bonds said. “I do think the state and local governments are holding their position and saying it’s within their discretion when and how they respond to local resistance.”
Efforts to increase transparency
The lack of consequences for crossing the line leads to unnecessarily forceful management of demonstrations. Americans’ right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances is in the First Amendment for good reason.
While the use of force is one of many tools afforded to officers to perform their duties, there are distinctions made when it becomes “excessive” or “unreasonable” given the circumstances of the situation, said the Public Policy Institute of California in a 2021 report.
“However, the delineation between reasonable and excessive force is not always clear,” the report states. “And there is no universal set of rules governing when or how officers should use force.”
In 2021, in an effort to increase transparency, Bonta announced that the California Department of Justice would be taking steps to accelerate the release of third-party peace officer use-of-force and misconduct records in the state Department of Justice’s possession.
An American police state
Earlier this year, Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, announced that the department would close several Biden-era investigations into police departments across the county, including investigations into cases of police misconduct in Phoenix, Memphis and Oklahoma City.
The DOJ retracted the government’s conclusions that those agencies had violated the Constitution, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
Under Trump’s rule, it’s clear that police departments across the nation will have free rein to commit constitutional violations without federal investigation; that makes the careful attention of legal professionals like Attorney General Bonta and Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho all the more important.
There is no doubt that a career in law enforcement is a difficult job. But it is also one that society must hold to a higher standard than other careers, due to the liberties officers are given in the field to make decisions regarding use of force.
Across the nation, communities have repeatedly failed to hold police accountable for violations of civil rights on the local level. This privilege and exemption for law enforcement have led to widespread acceptance of such actions.
The violent force we are seeing now in Los Angeles and across the country is directly tied to America’s inability to hold law enforcement accountable for their mistakes, over a period of decades, if not the whole of the last century.
I fear it is a widespread phenomenon that will grip the nation in police-state authoritarianism before this summer’s period of civil unrest is done, supported by Americans who fail to see that their unconditional support of law enforcement is part of the problem.
