Just as we’ve bid goodbye to the trash fire that was 2021, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge did the right thing and issued a temporary order barring the Inglewood Police Department from destroying records just ahead of a new law offering more transparency to Californians starting Jan. 1.

Senate Bill 16 was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. It expands the reports available to the public including cases of unreasonable force, acts of racism, bias, and excessive force, among other things. All the records must now be turned over within 45 days—unless the event took place prior to Jan. 1, in which case agencies have the right to hold them until Jan. 1, 2023. 

“This is a necessary first step to make sure those records are not destroyed,” Tiffany Bailey, an American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) attorney, told the Orange County Register. “But it doesn’t stop here. We now need the city of Inglewood to produce the records that are long past due.”

The Orange County Register reports that ACLU attorneys believed Inglewood intended to destroy records from 58 criminal cases before Saturday. 

This isn’t the first time the Inglewood Police Department has attempted a record destruction rampage.

In 2018, in the weeks before Senate Bill 1421 went into effect—a bill requiring public records to be available for inspection—the city of Inglewood destroyed hundreds of police records going back to 1991. 

“This premise that there was an intent to beat the clock is ridiculous,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said at the time

In 2019, the ACLU attempted to gain access to use of force and disciplinary records from Inglewood Police Department, but it was unsuccessful. The new law requires the agency to deliver those records. 

Although the state allows police departments to destroy some records, the ACLU alleges that the Inglewood Police Department is withholding records in obstruction of SB 1421. 

The Times cites the example of the case against the officers who shot and killed Kisha Michael and Marquintan Sandlin on Feb. 21, 2016. The department has yet to release a timeline of the events of the couple’s shooting death or why five officers unleashed a firestorm of bullets into the car where the couple was found. 

“This is a city that has not operated in good faith,” Bailey told The Los Angeles Times. “The City Council and city attorney have all been complicit.”

As The Root found, police departments around the country are equally opaque when it comes to keeping records out of the public eye. 

Several police departments around the state of New York have refused to hand over records to newspapers, even after the legislature repealed Section 50-A of the state’s Civil Rights Law in June 2020—a provision that was being used to block access to records. 

In New Hampshire on Wednesday, the state opened “Laurie’s List,” a secret list of police officers whose credibility could be called into question should they face a trial. 

The Press-Herald reports that the list includes officers from 50 agencies. 

The list’s official title is the “exculpatory evidence schedule.” It is often called “Laurie’s List” after Carl Laurie, whose murder conviction was overturned in 1995 after a court determined that defense attorneys were not told about poor behavior by a detective involved in Laurie’s confession.

As of the start of 2022, under Senate Bill 16, Californians will have access to a vast range of police records including, but not limited to: use of force that results in death or injury, complaints alleging unreasonable or excessive force, sexual assault of officers involving the public, and failing to interview against another officer.

The Times reports that Judge David Cowan agreed to the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order and asked both parties back to court on Jan. 18 to decide on whether the court order would be extended.