Newsom’s AG pick fought police unions and the bail industry. Now he’s California’s top cop

Gov. Gavin Newsom gifted California’s liberal activists an ally in the attorney general’s office by tapping Assemblyman Rob Bonta to become California’s next top cop.

The Alameda Democrat’s legislative record includes writing or voting for bills to ban for-profit prisons and detention centers, impose a union-backed plan to increase taxes on millionaires and establish stronger renter protection measures in California.

“Over the last eight plus years as a California state legislator, I’ve had the honor of waking up everyday, hitting the ground running to do everything I can, to do my best, to transform the lives of Californians for the better,” Bonta said during a Wednesday press conference. “To pass critical reforms and to right historic wrongs. Like repairing our fundamentally broken criminal justice system, taking on big polluters, protecting renters and homeowners, as well as workers and consumers.”

His progressive reputation is most likely to delight criminal justice advocates who for the last several years have called for bigger changes to California’s law enforcement practices and policies.

Bonta co-wrote a 2018 bill to eliminate cash bail, and another in 2020 to require the attorney general’s office to more frequently investigate incidents of deadly force by police officers.

While former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, now the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, declined to independently investigate the deadly police shootings of Sacramento’s Stephon Clark in 2018 and Vallejo’s Sean Monterrosa in 2020, Bonta pushed a bill last year to compensate victims and families of excessive force incidents, an idea that ultimately did not pass.

Bonta also introduced a bill in October that would bar prosecutors from overseeing an investigation into police misconduct if law enforcement unions had donated to their campaigns.

“This is about trust in law enforcement, and trust in the independence of our elected prosecutors,” Bonta said in a statement at the time. “As people across our cities, states and our nation have come together to raise their voices and demand greater justice, we must cure the conflict of interest that gives, at minimum, the appearance that police are not held accountable due to the proximity and political influence of law enforcement associations and unions.”

Becerra also initially resisted releasing police misconduct records in compliance of a law passed in 2018 that Bonta supported.

Bail at $0

This year, Bonta wrote a bill to set cash bail at $0 for misdemeanors and low-level felonies, despite voters rejecting a ballot measure in November to implement the 2018 law that would have ended the practice of requiring people to pay fees before their release.

Bonta said ending money bail would “fundamentally reform California’s pre-trial justice system.”

“The money bail system penalizes poverty, setting a price on a person’s access to pre-trial release based on the size of their wallet, not the size of their risk,” Bonta said during a March 23 committee hearing to consider the proposal. “The jailhouse door should not swing open and closed based on how much money someone has.”

Bonta has also pushed for the rights of immigrants detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.

Last year, Bonta and a coalition of immigrant advocates sent a letter to Newsom urging him to halt the transfers of immigrants released from California prisons and jails to ICE custody during the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is something that is avoidable, something that is in the hands of California to change and something that we should change,” he said during a press conference last July announcing the effort.

Bonta also authored a law in 2020 that allows people to sue private ICE detention facilities that fail to comply with the standards of care and confinement under the facility’s operations contract.

Up for election right away

Bonta will be up for election as attorney general next year, and his left-leaning voting record could render him vulnerable to a more moderate candidate or a Republican as his competition.

Acknowledging this possibility, Newsom said Wednesday that he had talked with law enforcement leaders “across the spectrum” on what they wanted in the next head of the Department of Justice.

“I’m very confident in Rob’s capacity to bring people together,” Newsom said.

Bonta also said he understands the “need for dialogue” with law enforcement, but said it was critical to push for criminal justice reform in California.

“I will have those conversations with law enforcement,” he said. “They will have my respect. We will have dialogue, and we will have respectful disagreements. And that’s ok. Thats how we move important policy forward.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 1:45 PM with the headline "Newsom’s AG pick fought police unions and the bail industry. Now he’s California’s top cop."