SF Supervisors Move Closer to Vote on 'CAREN' Act, Banning Racially Biased 911 Calls

This story includes a correction.

San Francisco supervisors moved a step closer to voting later this month on a local measure that would bar anyone in the city from filing improper, racially biased police reports.

Introduced by Supervisor Shamann Walton in July, the Caution Against Racial and Exploitive Non-Emergencies (or “CAREN”) Act would amend the city’s police code, in a nod to a series of recent high-profile confrontations, captured on video, of white people calling the police on African Americans for generally innocuous behavior. A committee approved the measure Thursday, paving the way for the full board to vote on it within a few weeks.

From the 2018 “Barbecue Becky” incident, when a white woman called the police on two black men who were barbecuing by Lake Merritt in Oakland, to the white couple who in June threatened to call the police on a Filipino in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, Walton contends these calls weaponize the police against people of color.

“Black, Indigenous people and people of color suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of law enforcement violating their rights to everyday normal activities based on fraudulent 911 calls by an individual with racial bias,” Walton said at a September committee meeting on the measure.

As it stands, the bill would make it unlawful for anyone to “contact a person with the specific intent to discriminate against the person on the basis of the person’s race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, national origin, place of birth, sex, age, religious affiliation, creed, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity, weight, or height.”

The legislation states that 911 calls of this nature violate the constitutional rights of the targeted person. It would allow victims of purportedly biased police calls to sue the caller in civil court for at least $1,000 in damages.

“911 calls and emergency reports are not customer service lines for racist behavior and should not be weaponized as so,” Walton said at the September meeting.

The state is taking up the issue as well. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1775, which increases financial penalties and potential jail time for those who use the 911 system for any reason besides an emergency (although the law has much less specific language on racial discrimination as compared to San Francisco’s measure). The state law also allows victims of false police reports to seek restitution of up to $25,000 under the Ralph Civil Rights Act.

Oct. 9: The original version of this story contained inaccurate information. Although the full Board of Supervisors is likely to take up the measure before the end of October, an actual vote has not yet been scheduled.