California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bill to enshrine rights for families of people shot by police

Robert Salonga, The Mercury News on Oct 14, 2025

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill authored by a Bay Area lawmaker and sponsored by San Jose civil-rights activists that compels due-process rights for families of people seriously injured or killed by police.

Assembly Bill 572, spearheaded by Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, and backed by fellow area legislator State Sen. Dave Cortese, will require police in the state to first inform family members of their loved one’s condition, then tell them of their right to have an advocate present, before a formal police interview can take place.

The genesis of the bill, which was initially introduced in the 2024 legislative session before it was pulled for lack of votes, is based in large part on the experiences of San Jose families who contend that police investigators leveraged their grief to extract information about their wounded or dead relatives that would later be used to help insulate officers from criminal and civil liability.

Jim Showman’s 19-year-old daughter Diana was shot and killed by a San Jose police officer in August 2014 after she called 911 while experiencing a psychiatric emergency, and purported to have an Uzi that turned out to be a power drill spray-painted black. Showman says in his desperation to know about Diana’s status, he outlined her mental-health history to police — which was later used to publicly justify the shooting — and only found out afterward that she was dead.

He has since become an advocate for families who experience police violence, and was one of several bill supporters to testify at the Capitol and help shape and get AB 572 across the finish line.

“For all of us, it’s a relief,” Showman said in an interview Tuesday. “Now they can’t consciously take advantage of us. They have to approach this in a more humane way … It makes it so law enforcement and public officials cannot vilify victims of police violence.”

Kalra said the bill, which gives police agencies in California until 2027 to create policies that fulfill the new law, is meant to be a deterrent against coercive police interviews of family members left highly vulnerable by the shooting or serious injury of their loved one.

“AB 572 will hold our law enforcement agencies to a higher standard in their interactions with impacted family members, requiring not only transparency, but prohibiting threats and outright deception,” Kalra said in a statement.

Messages seeking comment from statewide police associations, and the San Jose Police Department — whose officers have been involved in several of the shootings that inspired the bill — were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Last year’s incarnation of the bill fell short amid strong opposition from police associations and lobbying groups, who were concerned about it impeding critical and urgent investigations, and too closely resembling Miranda requirements. That presented the possibility of downstream legal consequences for violations and other complexities including the fact family members of people shot by police are not presumptively accused of any crimes.

The second take was rewritten to address those concerns, and now a formal Miranda reading — which requires probable cause for a crime — exempts police from being subject to the new law.

Additionally, the legislation includes an exemption for “when a reasonable officer believes that delay would result in the loss or destruction of evidence or pose an imminent threat to public safety.” Kalra’s office added that the law involves formal interviews, and will not apply when an officer “comes into contact incidentally with a family member.”

“For more than two years, directly impacted families tirelessly crafted and worked on this bill in pursuit of justice for their loved ones, so that future families do not have to experience the pain they went through after their loved ones were harmed or killed by police,” said Charisse Domingo, an organizer with the South Bay civil-rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, a chief sponsor of the bill. “This is just one step in the larger effort for police accountability fueled by families who are turning their pain and trauma into actionable, urgent, and ultimately life-saving reforms.”

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