California Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez, Democrat of San Diego. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP
As California lawmakers gathered in Sacramento Dec. 7 to take their oaths of office in socially distanced settings and prepare for the 2021-22 legislative session, members of the state Senate and Assembly also took the opportunity to introduce new legislation on many topics, and to reintroduce bills which hadn’t gotten all the way through the process in a schedule truncated by COVID-19.
Among those reintroducing legislation were authors of measures regulating policing who, after their bills didn’t reach the finish line, vowed they’d be back.
One was Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, author of a measure to create clear statewide standards on when law enforcement agencies could use projectile weapons and chemical agents during large gatherings, and to bar their use to disperse peaceful demonstrations.