REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 1

REIMAGINING

COMMUNITY SAFETY
Riverside County

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 2

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHORS
Eva Bitrán
Senior Staff Attorney
ACLU of Southern California
Jacky Guerrero
Director, Equity in Community Investments
Catalyst California
Elycia Mulholland Graves
Director, Research & Data Analysis
Catalyst California
Melanie Ochoa
Director of Police Practices
ACLU of Southern California
Chauncee Smith
Senior Manager, Reimagine Justice & Safety
Catalyst California

DATA ANALYSIS
Elycia Mulholland Graves
Director, Research & Data Analysis
Catalyst California
Jennifer Zhang
Senior Research & Data Analyst
Catalyst California

BUDGET ANALYSIS
Jacky Guerrero
Director, Equity in Community Investments
Catalyst California
Myanna A. Khalfani
Senior Research & Policy Analyst
Catalyst California
Kianna Ruff
Justice Reinvestment Manager

COMMUNICATIONS, EDITING
& ADMINISTRATION
Juliana Castillo
Executive Assistant
Catalyst California
Luis Nolasco
Senior Policy Advocate and Organizer
ACLU of Southern California
John Dobard
Vice President of Policy and Programs
Catalyst California
Jenna Pittaway
Creative Director
ACLU of Southern California
Roxana Reyes
Senior Digital Communications Associate
Catalyst California
Michael Russo
Vice President of Policy and Programs
Catalyst California
Ronald Simms, Jr.
Associate Director of Communications
Catalyst California
Chauncee Smith
Senior Manager, Reimagine Justice & Safety
Catalyst California
Adrienna Wong
Senior Staff Attorney
ACLU of Southern California

COVER ART & REPORT DESIGN
Caylin Yorba-Ruiz
Graphic Designer

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 3

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS
This report was jointly produced by Catalyst California (formerly Advancement
Project California) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Catalyst California (formerly
Advancement Project California),
alongside partners, dismantles racial
injustice and redesigns systems for
access and equity. We do this by
shifting and building power with
movement leaders in communities of
color who are making real change. With
the collective impact of community,
data, and policy, we make the California
Dream inclusive and available to all.
With a mix of audacity, analysis, and
action, we foster justice and create
equitable futures for everyone in our
state. We translate complex ideas about
communities into narratives that inspire
action with the racial equity movement.
To achieve our vision of a world where
justice thrives, we uphold the truth
through deep research, turn policies into
actionable change, and shift money and
power back into our communities.
We are a catalyst for systems
transformation, ensuring that
community-driven action, research, and
policy foster an equitable future. We are
willing to venture into the unknown for a
cause, because to get to where we need
to go, we need to do things in ways we
have never done before.

CATALYST
CALIFORNIA

Advancing Racial Just ice

The American Civil Liberties Union of
Southern California defends the
fundamental rights outlined in the
United States Constitution and the Bill
of Rights. These include the right to
freedom of speech and assembly, the
right to religious freedom, due process
of law, equality before the law, and the
right to privacy. The ACLU SoCal also
relies on state constitutional provisions
and federal and state laws that further
these and similar rights.
The ACLU SoCal is committed to helping
re-envision an approach to public safety
that is fair and free of racial bias, keeps
communities safe and respects the
dignity and rights of all who come
into contact with it. We strive to end
overcriminalization; ensure fair and
constitutionally sound treatment
of all people; remove barriers to reentry;
and increase government transparency
and accountability. The ACLU SoCal
works with community and
organizational partners to reform
California’s community safety
approaches to end harsh policies
that result in mass incarceration;
achieve effective communitybased solutions and opportunities;
and prioritize rehabilitation and
transformative justice over punishment.

100

ACW

SoCal

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 4

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS
Thank you for providing insight through regional and statewide stakeholder meetings.

ACLU of Northern California

Dignity and Power Now

ACLU of San Diego &		
Imperial Counties

Fund for Guaranteed Income

ACT-LA
AIM SoCal
All of Us or None
Alliance for Community Transit Los Angeles (ACT LA)

Inner City Struggle
Justice2Jobs Coalition
LA Forward
Liberty Hill Foundation
Million Dollar Hoods

Black Alliance for Just Immigration

Pillars of the Community

Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles

Promoting Unity, Safety & Health Los Angeles (PUSH LA)

Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition
California Black Power Network

Sacramento Area Congregations
Together

California Immigrant Policy Center

Soledad Enrichment Action

Check the Sheriff Coalition

Starting Over, Inc.

Congregations Organized for
Prophetic Engagement

White People 4 Black Lives

Decarcerate Sacramento

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction .........................................................................................................................................7
II. Analysis .................................................................................................................................................11
a. RCSD’s Patrol Practices are Wasteful ........................................................................................11
b. RCSD’s Patrol Practices are Racially Biased,		
Especially Against Black People in Riverside County ................................................................17
c. Riverside County Devotes a Massive Portion of its Budget
to RCSD’s Policing of Traffic and Minor Infractions ...................................................................18
d. The Costs to Riverside County for RCSD’s Practices Extend
Beyond the Patrol Budget ............................................................................................................20
e. Communities Bear Additional Economic, Physical,
Psychological and Social Costs of Policing ...............................................................................21

III. Conclusion and Recommendations .......................................................................................26

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 6

Continuing to fund policing practices
that are demonstrably harmful and
ineffective rather than investing in
empowering and solution-oriented
social interventions undermines,
rather than contributes to, our
collective wellbeing.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 7

I. INTRODUCTION
Communities are safe when every person
is healthy, secure, and supported.
Riverside County’s budget, which, in
many ways, is a statement of what
it most values—does not reflect this
fundamental truth. Rather, the County
fails to sufficiently invest resources in
programs that advance those interests
and instead allocates an overwhelming
amount of money to the Riverside County
Sheriff’s Department (“RCSD” or the
“Department”). In so doing, the County
underwrites practices that harm people of
color and undermine community safety.
RCSD’s patrol unit spends 87.6% of the
hours they spend stopping members
of the public on deputy-initiated stops
for traffic violations—not, as one might
think, responding to the public’s requests
for service.1 Those stops rarely result in
deputies recovering evidence of a crime
or in arrests for serious crimes. To the
contrary, out of all of RCSD’s 58,292
stops in 2019, only 3.6% led to an arrest.2
What often occurs is harassment and
physical injury; documented emotional
and psychological harm for both the
individual and communities where these
stops are concentrated; and significant
costs to the County (and, in turn, its
residents) even beyond the enormous
dollar amounts reflected in the
Sheriff’s budget.

Riverside County’s approach to public
safety is wasteful because it directs
resources away from policies that have
been shown to improve community
safety—such as investments in
transportation, healthcare, and housing.
It is also harmful because policing
materially worsens financial and
social outcomes for Riverside County
residents and the overall public health
of the County. This harm is not equally
distributed but is rather concentrated
in communities of color, especially
Black and Latine3 communities. As
Attorney General Rob Bonta noted when
announcing a civil rights investigation
into RCSD in 2023:
“When some communities don’t
see or feel they are being treated
equitably by law enforcement, it
contributes to distrust and hurts
public safety. Unfortunately, it
is clear that — amid concerning
levels of in-custody deaths and
allegations of misconduct — too
many families and communities in
Riverside County are hurting and
looking for answers.”4

Continuing to fund policing practices that
are demonstrably harmful and ineffective
rather than investing in empowering and
solution-oriented social interventions
undermines, rather than contributes to,
our collective wellbeing.

RCSD
Riverside
County Sheriff’s
Department

LATINE
A gender-inclusive
term used in this
report to replace
the terms
“Latina(s),”
“Latino(s),”
“Latinx(s),” and
“Hispanic.”

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 8

This report builds upon Reimagining
Community Safety in California: From
Deadly and Expensive Sheriffs to
Equity and Care-Centered Wellbeing,
a joint publication by the ACLU SoCal
and Catalyst California. Reimagining
Community Safety analyzed selfreported stop data5 from California
law enforcement agencies, publicly
available budget information, stories from
community-based organizations, and
public policy research.6

It found that the patrol practices of
Sheriffs’ departments across the state
waste public dollars, devastate people
of color, and undermine community
safety.7 This report takes a closer look
at those issues specifically for RCSD. It
encourages the County to respond to real
community needs by changing its funding
priorities and allocating County funds
to the policies and programs that allow
County residents to thrive.

STOP
An interaction in
which a deputy
detains an
individual such
that they are not
free to leave,
or conducts
a search.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 9

The County’s Investment in RCSD Does Not Further Community Safety
The Riverside County Sheriff’s
Department says that it contributes to
public safety through “the suppression
and prevention of crime, and the
reduction of criminal recidivism.”8
This is clearly false.
First, RCSD fails at “suppress[ing],”9 or
solving, crime because it spends the vast
majority of its deputies’ time—87.6%—
on officer-initiated contact, not on
responding to the public’s calls for help.
When the agency does respond to the
public’s calls for service, its actions
are ineffective by its own standards.
Clearance rates, for example, measure
the difference between the number of
crimes a law enforcement agency reports
within its jurisdiction and the number of
cases resolved through an arrest or other
means. In 2020, of 932 violent crimes
reported to the California Department of
Justice, RCSD cleared just 359, or 38.5%.
Of 37 rapes reported to the California
Department of Justice, RCSD cleared
only four, totaling just 10.81%. RCSD’s
clearance record for property crime is
even worse: the department cleared
just 3.56% of property crimes, including
7.19% of vehicle thefts and just 2.26%
of larceny thefts.10 Thus, even as it fails
to effectively respond to incidents that
have a more direct relationship to overall
community safety, it spends thousands of
deputy hours policing traffic.

Second, RCSD’s focus on crime
“prevention”11 through “proactive”
policing—forcing encounters with the
public to uncover criminal activity—is
similarly ineffective. Ninety-two percent
of officer stops, totaling 83.7% of
officer time, concern traffic violations.
In Riverside, only 2.7% of stops (7.8% of
officer time) is devoted to interactions
where officers allegedly suspect ongoing
or past criminal conduct.12 Rather than
helping the public, as will be discussed
below, proactive policing causes
psychological harm both to individuals
stopped and to the communities RCSD
polices most aggressively.
Finally, RCSD’s practices run counter
to empirically proven methods for
“reduc[ing] criminal recidivism.”13 The
Riverside County Board of Supervisors
funds RCSD at extraordinary rates.
In Fiscal Year 2020, Riverside County
allocated $795,311,294 of its $6.7 billion
budget—more than 11%—to RCSD.14
In contrast, the County appropriated
$88,611,984, or less than 1.5%, to
Housing, Homelessness Prevention,
and Workforce Solutions.15 Because of
RCSD’s outsized share of the budget,
its practices extract resources from the
community, detract from the policies and
programs proven to keep people safe, and
are more likely to increase participation
in crime.16

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 10

The Sheriff’s narrative on public
safety enshrines racism as a tolerable
byproduct of policing. It ignores both
the substantial harm incurred by people
subject to policing—including direct
physical injury resulting from police
uses of force and consequences that
arise from being stopped or arrested.
These consequences include the welldocumented physical and mental health
impacts experienced by the individual
stopped as well as by those experienced
by members of communities where such
stops are prevalent, economic harms
like lost wages, and other personal
costs like loss of child custody or
impairment of immigration status.17
Many of these harms are most likely
to be experienced by people of color,18
and the Black community in particular.
These communities—which are often
most impacted by crime and violence—
also suffer the most from the County’s
decision to invest in police rather than
funding both proven and innovative
solutions to improve community safety.

The Sheriff’s narrative also ignores the
tremendous financial costs incurred by
the government after police intervene,
whether or not a stop results in
prosecution. This includes time and
money expended by other County
agencies such as the District Attorney’s
and Public Defender’s offices, court
salaries, the cost of jail and prison beds,
and funds spent because of lawsuits
filed against the County arising out of
RCSD misconduct. The County must
consider all of the costs—both human
and economic—as it decides how to
spend its finite funds to best serve 		
its residents.

PEOPLE OF
COLOR (POC)
This term
specifically
encompasses
those identified
as: Asian,
Black/African
American,
Hispanic/
Latino(a), Middle
Eastern or South
Asian, Native
American, and
Pacific Islander.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 11

II. ANALYSIS
RCSD’s Patrol Practices are Wasteful
Most of RCSD’s Time is Spent in Deputy-Initiated Traffic Stops
In the media, the Sheriff’s Department
pushes the narrative that having deputies
on the street is necessary to protect
the public from violence, which in turn
justifies the Department’s requests for
greater funding.19 However, the data
shows that this narrative does not
reflect the reality of how RCSD spends
its time, and correspondingly, its budget.
The vast majority of the time deputies
spend stopping members of the public is
devoted to contact deputies themselves
initiate: 87.6%. Only 12.4% of RCSD
deputies’ time is spent on calls
for service.20

Most of the time RCSD deputies spend
on deputy-initiated interactions is in
response to traffic violations—not, for
example, interceding to stop violent
crime, as the RCSD suggests. A whopping
92% of deputy stops, totaling 83.7% of
deputy time, concern traffic violations.21

Figure 1.
Percent of Time Spent by RCSD Deputies

Response to
Service Calls
12.4%

Officer-Initiated
Stops
88.8%
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Data analysis by Catalyst California. Methodology available in "Reimagining Community Safety in California," (Catalyst California & ACLU SoCal October 2022).

100%

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 12

To the extent RCSD uses traffic
enforcement as an entry point to
investigate offenses it deems more
serious, this strategy is a failure. Pretext
stops “occur[] when an officer stops a
person ostensibly for a traffic violation
or minor infraction but with the actual
intention of using the stop to investigate
based on an officer’s hunch that by
itself would not amount to reasonable
suspicion or probable cause.”22 Police
often justify their excessive use of
pretextual stops for minor violations on
the theory that this is an effective means
to identify more serious criminal conduct.
But the data shows this is wrong. In reality,
extremely few of these stops predicated
on minor infractions result in arrests for
anything more serious. In Riverside, less
than one percent of people stopped for
traffic violations are arrested.23

Nearly 20% of traffic stops result in
either no action at all or a warning, and
75% of these stops result in simply a
traffic citation.24
Nor are RCSD deputies finding large
numbers of contraband or weapons
through these pretext stops—or, indeed,
in any stops. For example, deputies
searched the person they detained in
just 2.1% of all stops.25 Out of 58,292
stops, deputies seized property in 525
(less than 1%),26 found drugs in 237 stops
(0.4%),27 and seized firearms in only 9
stops all year.28

PRETEXT
STOP
A traffic stop
occurring under
the guise of a
minor traffic
violation but
that provides
deputies an
opportunity
to investigate
an unrelated
suspicion.

The data disproves RCSD’s argument
that they must actively engage the public
to uncover crime. Instead, the numbers
show just what an astounding proportion
of deputy time is spent on conduct that
infringes on the public’s liberty without
any justification at all.

Figure 2.
Percent of RCSD Stopes that Resulted in Seized Contraband

Seized Property (0.9%)
Drugs (0.4%)

Out of 58,292 stops, deputies seized property in 525 (less than 1%), found
drugs in 237 stops (0.4%), and seized firearms in only 9 stops all year.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 13

The Vast Majority of RCSD Stops are Unrelated to Serious Offenses
In addition to the failed strategy of
“proactive” policing described above,
RCSD also purports to respond to alleged
crime in the community. But the amount
of time RCSD spends on stops where
the deputy allegedly has reasonable
suspicion29 that a person is engaged in
criminal activity is truly minimal. Overall,
reasonable suspicion accounts for less
than 4.7% of all deputy stops.30 If we
focus on stops initiated by deputies,
only 2.7% of those31—totaling only
7.8% of deputies’ time32—are based on
reasonable suspicion.

In other words, when RCSD deputies
try to “proactively” address crime by
initiating contact with the public,
just over 3% of stops are based
on a deputy’s suspicion that
the individual is engaged in
criminal activity.

This means that 97% of the time, RCSD
deputies detain someone on their own
initiative, they do so without reason to
believe the person has acted unlawfully.
Stops based on reasonable suspicion are
more likely to occur in response to actual

Figure 3.
Percent of RCSD Time Spent on All Stops by Reason

1.7% (129 hours)
Other Reason
1.5% (194 hours)
Parole/Probation
2.5% (194 hours)
Consensual Search
2.8% (214 hours)
Outstanding Arrest Warrant
7.8% (600 hours)
Reasonable Suspicion

83.7% (6,442 hours)
Traffic Violation

Data analysis by Catalyst California. Methodology
available in "Reimagining Community Safety in California,"
(Catalyst California & ACLU SoCal October 2022).

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 14

Stops based on reasonable suspicion
are more likely to occur in response to
actual calls for service from the public
rather than when officers initiate the
stop themselves. Over 60% of the stops
that arise out of a member of the public
calling to request deputy assistance are
based upon reasonable suspicion.34 In
other words, to the extent RCSD’s goal
is to encounter people they reasonably

believe might be engaged in criminal
conduct, they are more likely to achieve
that aim in the less than 13% of stops
that are in response to direct requests
for assistance. Their “proactive” crime
prevention efforts are less likely to result
in detecting possible criminal activity
than their responses to the
much more limited set of public
requests for assistance.

REASONABLE
SUSPICION
A particularized
and objective
basis for
suspecting
a person is
involved in
criminal activity.

Figure 4.
Percent of People Stopped by RCSD by Reason

8.9%

13.2%

94.1%

14.1%

OfficerInitiated
Stops

3.0%

Response
to Calls
for Service

Warrants
3.1%

60.8%

1.2%
0.8%

•

Traffic Violations

•

0.7%

Reasonable Suspicion

•

Consent Search

•

Warrant

0 Other Reason

Supervisory Stop, Truancy,
School or Education Violation

Data analysis by Catalyst California. Methodology available in "Reimagining Community Safety in California," (Catalyst California & ACLU SoCal October 2022).

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 15

A closer look at the much smaller fraction
of deputy-initiated stops allegedly based
upon reasonable suspicion further
undermines the Department's narrative
that deputies primarily stop individuals
engaged in serious violent crime. In
Riverside County, 81% of people stopped
based on a RCSD deputy’s reasonable
suspicion were for suspected infractions
or misdemeanors.34 An infraction is
“a relatively minor violation of law,
which cannot result in imprisonment
or loss of liberty.”35 Most infractions in
California are vehicle code violations,
but this category also includes nontraffic behavior like loitering, jaywalking,
or sitting down in a public space. In
Riverside County, where 7.5% of people
stopped for reasonable suspicion were
stopped based on a suspected infraction,
deputies most frequently stopped people
for the infraction of making a loud or
unreasonable noise.36 Misdemeanors,
which led to stops for 73.5% of those
stopped for reasonable suspicion, are
crimes for which the maximum sentence
is no more than one year in county jail.
And among these misdemeanor stops,
the most common suspected violations
were trespassing and disorderly
conduct.37

Only 18.1% of all people RCSD stopped
based on reasonable suspicion were
stopped based on conduct that could be
classified as a felony.38 So, of the 4.7%
of people stopped based on reasonable
suspicion, only 18.1% were for crimes
that could result in anything more than
a fine or one year in county jail. Stated
differently, of the 58,292 total stops
that RCSD reported in 2019, only 487
of them—or less than one percent of
stops—were for suspicion of a crime that
is classified as a felony.

Figure 5.
Percent of Stops

Less than 1% (487 stops) of total stops in 2019
(58,292 stops) were for suspicion of a crime
that is classified as a felony.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 16

Even these tiny numbers give the
Department too much credit: that 487
stops, less than 1% of deputies’ stops,
are based on reasonable suspicion of
a felony does not mean that each of
these stops actually involves serious
offenses.39 The officer may be wrong:
there may be no crime occurring at all.
In fact, only around 31% of all stops
based on reasonable suspicion result in
an arrest—a number that includes the
nearly 6% of reasonable suspicion stops
that result in an arrest pursuant to an
existing warrant, and are thus likely to
be unrelated to the conduct that led to
the stop. In contrast 28% of reasonable
suspicion stops resulted in no action
and 24% in only a verbal warning.40 This
strongly suggests that a deputy’s initial
assessment that a crime was occurring
was, in fact, wrong.41

Finally, of all RCSD’s 58,292 stops in
2019, only 3.6% led to an arrest. More
than 96% of the instances where a
person was stopped and temporarily
detained by deputies led, at most, to
a ticket.42 This again undermines the
Sheriff Department’s narrative that
they must insert themselves into the
community via low-level stops to uncover
serious crime.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 17

RCSD'S Patrol Practices are Racially Biased—Especially Against
Black People in Riverside County
Black people in Riverside are
policed at higher rates than any
other racial group across all
categories of police activity.

They experience the highest stop rates
across stops for traffic violations,
reasonable suspicion, consensual
encounters, and searches. For example,
RCSD stopped over 58 Black individuals
per 1,000 for traffic violations, versus
approximately 40 white individuals
per 1,000.43

And while all groups are overwhelmingly
stopped for alleged traffic infractions,
Black people in Riverside County are
targeted for non-moving violations, i.e.
technical or equipment violations, at
a higher rate than other groups. While
white people were stopped at a rate of 6
out of 1,000 for moving violations, Black
people were stopped 34 out of every
1,000 Black people residing in the county
for moving violations.44

Figure 6.
Stop Rates by Race and Stop Reason
Black

3.9

White

2.2

Latine

7.1
33.7

4.1
24.2

3
3.3

NHPI

1.7

Asian

0.7
1.7

AIAN

47.2

0.3
0.4

21.5
3.3
15.2

■
■

1.8

■

Moving
Equipment
Non-moving, incl. registration

1.4
Two or
More Races 0
0.1

0%

20%

40%

60%

per 1,000 people of same race
As further discussed on page 19, the data on stops involving Latine individuals likey obscures the extent to which Latine people are stopped by LASD deputies.
Data analysis by Catalyst California. Methodology available in "Reimagining Community Safety in California," (Catalyst California & ACLU SoCal October 2022).

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 18

Riverside County Devotes a Massive Portion of its Budget
to RCSD’s Policing of Traffic and Minor Infractions
In Fiscal Year 2019-2020, Riverside
County allocated $795,311,294 of its
$6.7 billion budget—more than 11%—to
RCSD.45 Forty-nine percent of that
budget, or $392,991,903, went to RCSD’s
patrol unit, whose 2,051 full-time
employees conduct the vast majority of
the Department’s stops.46
For this report, we considered the cost
to the County of the patrol division
alongside the proportion of time that
RCSD deputies spend policing traffic
and other minor offenses. This permits
us to estimate how much each of the
Department’s practices discussed above
costs the County. This estimate assumes
that the share of stop time devoted to
a particular issue is the same as that
practice’s share of total patrol costs.47
It is likely to be conservative, because
it does not account for costs incurred
outside of the patrol division, such as
time spent by those outside of the patrol
division for duties triggered by stops or
arrests made by patrol deputies.
As stated above, over 87% of deputies’
time is spent on stops they initiate.48
A little over 83% of deputy time is
spent on traffic.49 Using a one-toone correlation between budget and
patrol time estimates, an equivalent
proportion—83%—of the RCSD patrol
budget is $326 million.50 While there is
no way to definitively allocate each dollar
spent by RCSD to a specific practice or

outcome, this $326 million is a rough
estimate of what the County spends
to allow the Department to conduct its
massive traffic enforcement effort.
Another way to conceptualize the
costs of RCSD’s policing practices
is to consider the total amount the
Department—or more narrowly the patrol
division—requires to operate, and to
compare those costs with the results
obtained. RCSD does not assert that
the primary purpose of its deputies is to
patrol traffic; to the contrary, it argues
that its value is in protecting the public
from serious crime. But consider that
out of more than 58,000 total stops by
deputies, less than 500 involved stops of
individuals that deputies even suspected
of committing any activity that could be
classified a felony.51 If RCSD’s purpose
is to address potentially serious crime
and it requires more than $392 million
dollars for patrol officers to make 487
stops on suspicion of felony activity,
then averaged across the patrol division
budget each felony stop costs more
than $806,964.52 The actual cost to the
County of each of these stops may be
even greater. If RCSD asks the County for
$795,311,294 to function for one year, and
in exchange for that, deputies make 487
stops that may involve possible felonylevel activity, the cost the County incurs
is actually over $1.6 million for each of
these stops.53

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 19

Similarly, the proportional cost to the
County for RCSD to locate and remove the
nine firearms it recovered over a single
year averages to more than $43 million
per firearm—and that’s if we consider
only the cost of the patrol division.54
In contrast, in Fiscal Year 2020-2021 the
County allocated $88,611,984 to Housing,
Homelessness Prevention, and Workforce
Solutions—about what it invested in
recovering two guns.55

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 20

The Costs to Riverside County for RCSD’s Practices
Extend Beyond the Patrol Budget
The numbers above are stark, but they
still fail to fully capture the extent of the
County’s investment in RCSD’s policing
of traffic infractions and minor offenses.
For instance, beyond patrol costs, for
every stop that results in an arrest, the
County incurs additional charges, such
as booking fees and a daily maintenance
cost for all people detained. The 20202021 County budget also allocated
approximately $273,389,317 to fund its
corrections operation for one year.56
RCSD deputies often cost 		
County residents significantly
more than just the cost of their
paychecks. In 2019, Riverside
County spent at least $12,321,200
on judgments and settlements
arising from litigation against
the Riverside County Sheriff’s
Department, with an additional
$3,183,347 on litigation costs
related to these cases.57

In 2020, those numbers were $4,644,430
and $3,855,747 respectively.58 The County
was additionally responsible for litigation
expenses, paying legal counsel to defend
RCSD deputies in these suits. These
costs—which have not lessened between
2019 and the present—are often directly
tied to deputies’ behavior on patrol.
Putting these costs in the context of
RCSD’s policing practices, which largely
amount to traffic stops unrelated to
serious criminal activity, demonstrates
the wastefulness of investing hundreds
of millions of dollars into RCSD as a
means of preventing or responding to 		
serious criminal activity or advancing
public safety.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 21

Communities Bear Additional Economic, Physical,
Psychological, and Social Costs of Policing
The error of this approach to community
safety—devoting billions of dollars
to police conduct that is, at best,
tangentially related to the safety
concerns that RCSD purports to
address—is most apparent when we
consider the myriad harms incurred
by those who are the subject of these
policing activities. In addition, while
RCSD and other policing agencies often
defend their practices as integral to
increasing public safety, the ironic reality
is that their tactics have been shown to
have a direct negative effect on various
measures of well-being, including
an increased likelihood of future
involvement in criminal activities.
As a result, RCSD’s “proactive” policing
may actually be responsible for
decreasing the public’s safety and overall
public health.
Individuals experience acute physical
and psychological harm from policing.
We would be remiss not to mention
that from 2019-2020, RCSD reportedly
shot at people 41 times.59 In 31 out of 41
cases the victim was not perceived to
be carrying a firearm.60 Even though Los
Angeles County has four times as many
residents as Riverside, in 2019 RCSD
closely followed the Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department in the number of
fatal shootings by deputies.61 In 2021,
RCSD deputies killed 14 people, its
deadliest year in a decade.62

Attorney General Bonta expressly noted
“deeply concerning allegations” relating
to RCSD’s “excessive force” as one of his
Department’s motivations in opening its
investigation into RCSD.63
In Riverside County, a deputy encounter
also puts individuals at risk of landing
in RCSD’s custody—and therefore, in
some of the deadliest jails in the state.
The County’s “concerning levels of
in-custody deaths,”64 in the words of
Attorney General Bonta, peaked in 2022,
when 18 inmates (most of whom were
legally innocent, detained pretrial) died
in jail.65 These deaths are the subject
of a lawsuit detailing the deplorable
unconstitutional conditions in the jails.66
Spending any time in these facilities risks
immeasurable harm.
Even when an encounter with RCSD does
not culminate in deadly force—or involve
any force at all—it can still have a lasting
detrimental effect on the individual’s
mental and psychological wellbeing.
Studies show that people subject
to policing show an increase in
sleep deprivation, social stigma,
and post-traumatic stress.67

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 22

People who have more police contact
also experience greater anxiety and
display more signs of trauma, with
more frequent and more intrusive stops
resulting in even higher anxiety and
greater frequency of PTSD symptoms.68
These effects are especially stark
for Black Riverside County residents.
Scholars studying the public health
effects of racially discriminatory
policing have observed a wide range of
negative impacts on Black Americans,
including injuries arising from violent
confrontations and adverse health
consequences caused by experiencing
perceived threats or vicarious harm.69 A
study of Black individuals confirmed that
merely seeing police leads to increased
anxiety, and that police encounters
correlate to increases in anxiety, distress,
depression, and trauma.70 Black people
who “experience police mistreatment are
at increased risk of a range of negative
psychological effects, including higher
levels of suicidal ideation, paranoia,
anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic
stress, as well as negative physiological
effects including premature aging and
cardiovascular disease.”71 The more
“assaultive” a police encounter is (i.e.,
whether the contact led to physical
violence, harassment, or neglect), the
more intense and longer-lasting the
psychological consequences on the
individual will be.72

The protective steps individuals take to
avoid negative and unnecessary police
encounters such as being stopped
or questioned when merely standing
in a public place or being pushed or
having a gun pointed at them by an
officer—also cause harm. For instance,
a study of young Black men aged 18 to
44 demonstrated that when individuals
force themselves to alter their routines
or engage in protective conduct to
avoid police contact, such as not going
outside or not traveling in a car with
male friends, it increased their likelihood
of experiencing symptoms associated
with depression.73 Thus, even when
not actively being stopped by police,
the pervasiveness of police stops and
the fear of future harassment has a
deleterious effect on the mental health of
the Black people who are frequently and
disproportionately the subject of police
action, and who live in communities
where these actions are common.74
Aggressive, or “proactive,” police
tactics impact the social fabric of
the community and the wellbeing
of community members.

A study of New York residents during the
stop-and-frisk era concluded that the
city’s culture of police surveillance was a
public health issue because it created a
community-wide high-stress environment
and led to decreased community
activities.75 Another study focused on
a Baltimore neighborhood with high
arrest rates found that police presence

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 23

contributes to community fragmentation
and leads to worse health outcomes
within communities.76 Residents
described the chilling effect that police
presence in their neighborhood had on
community activities, dissuading them
from spending time in public places.77
This fragmentation causes chronic stress
and is associated with poor health
outcomes on a community level.78
Further, communities that are
aggressively policed show greater
levels of distress—both as a result
of the hypervigilance expended in an
attempt to avoid being targeted and
because such treatment is observed
and experienced by the community as
unfair or discriminatory.79 Communities
with higher rates of stops and searches
and uses of force display higher levels
of non-specific psychological distress
(including feelings or nervousness and
worthlessness), especially among men.80
Communities with high incarceration
rates also show higher levels of
depression, anxiety, and asthma.81
Finally, the effect of police stops may be
even more significant for youth. “Such
encounters are pivotal life events that
can have repercussions for the mental
health of the stopped youth . . . [and] [t]
he stress related to police stops may
even exacerbate pre-existing stress and
can be particularly elevated in cases
where stops are violent, intrusive and/
or result in physical injury. Moreover,
individuals subjected to police officer

intrusiveness during a previous
encounter may fear being stopped again
at a later point, thereby prolonging
stress related to the anticipation of
future stops.”82 Both vicarious and
direct exposure to police stops were
associated with sleep deprivation and
low sleep quality for youth, which are
both significant hazards to adolescent
health and development and linked to
depression, obesity, and heightened
risk-taking, as well as delinquency.83
Indeed, another study observed that
actual delinquent behavior was less likely
to predict future delinquency than was
being stopped by the police.84 In other
words, “prior law-abiding behaviors did
not protect boys against future police
stops, yet being stopped by police was
associated with increased engagement in
delinquent behavior.”85 The study found
that in part because of the psychological
stress caused by the stop, as well as
the practical effect of being “labeled”
criminal by the act of being stopped by
police, these stops actually contributed
to future delinquent behavior rather than
prevented it.
Arrests, unsurprisingly, can have
additional negative effects on an
individual’s well-being. People face
costly financial harm as a result of their
contact with the police, in addition
to devastating psychological harms.
There are several measures of the
economic costs to individuals who
are arrested and detained—even pretrial—or incarcerated. For instance, one

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 24

study estimates that detained people
lose income at a rate of $85 per day.86
Additionally, 23% of individuals detained
based on a misdemeanor charge will
lose approximately $1,565 because of
forfeited or new deposits for housing as a
result of their detention.87
Crucially, these costs are often
incurred regardless of whether
the individual is actually
convicted, or even charged.

Losses persist even beyond the length
of a person’s detention: studies
demonstrate that having an arrest over
the course of a person’s lifetime “dims
the employment prospects more than any
other employment-related characteristic,”
with employers significantly less likely
to hire an individual who admitted to any
criminal justice involvement, whether
it was spending time in prison or jail,
currently being under supervised release,
or simply ever having been arrested,
regardless of outcome.88 Individuals
who have spent time in prison suffer
significant economic harm, with their
annual earnings reduced by an average of
52%, but even those who are convicted
of misdemeanors—violations that cannot
possibly result in incarceration over
one year and in many cases lead to no
incarceration at all—will still see their
annual earnings reduced by an average
of 16%.89 Further, past incarceration was
found to reduce an employed individual’s
annual employment by 9 weeks.90 Black
and Latine people experience these
economic consequences even more

acutely. One survey found that formerly
incarcerated Black and Latine workers
saw wage reduction at twice the rate of
white people.91
These losses continue far into the future:
according to one survey, more than 60%
of formerly incarcerated people remain
unemployed even one year after release,
26% after 5 years.92 Only 40% were
working full time after 5 years 			
of release.93
Finally, contact with the criminallegal system can have devastating
consequences on immigrants. Certain
arrests and convictions can make
immigrants ineligible for permanent
residency or citizenship and can place
them in the deportation pipeline.
For example, the Riverside Sheriff’s
Department transferred 88 people
in 2018 and 48 people in 2019 from
the county jails to ICE custody upon
completion of their sentences.94 These
intertwined systems work a cruel double
punishment on community members
who face immigration consequences in
addition to all the other harm stemming
from their arrests.
In sum, the cost of aggressive
policing tactics, including
RCSD’s “proactive” strategy
of conducting thousands of
low-level stops in hopes of
discovering more serious crime,
must include the impact to the
individual and community that
results from being the subject of
these policing activities.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 25

As the County develops its
annual budget, we urge the
Board of Supervisors not to
continue to waste billions on the
ineffective and harmful RCSD.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 26

III. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Riverside County Sheriff’s
Department wastes billions of County
dollars harassing Riverside County
residents—especially Black people—via
deputy-initiated traffic stops. Contrary
to the popular narrative that law
enforcement keeps communities safe
from violent crime, RCSD overwhelmingly
targets community members on
suspicion of, at most, traffic violations or
infractions and misdemeanors.
The Department’s time allocation and
clearance rates demonstrate that it does
not prioritize responding to community
members’ actual requests for help
or solving more serious crimes. And
the costs of policing do not stop with
RCSD’s already-massive budget. They
also include expenses incurred by other
County actors like the District Attorney’s
and Public Defender’s Offices. Other
costs include maintenance of the County
jail system where people arrested for
minor violations are housed; settlements
arising from deputy misconduct during
stops; and the mental, physical, and
financial harms disproportionately
inflicted on people and communities that
are policed. In this way, RCSD’s policing
practices are not just wasteful, they are
actively harmful—they waste County
dollars while damaging the financial,
physical, social, and psychological health
of residents. They leave the County
unable to fully fund the supportive
services needed to address those harms.

As the County develops its annual
budget, we urge the Board of
Supervisors not to continue to
waste billions on the ineffective
and harmful RCSD.

Instead, the County should invest in
services and infrastructure that can directly
and meaningfully improve the quality of
life and safety of Riverside residents.
Studies have shown that a reduction in
policing budgets primarily impacts an
agency’s ability to devote substantial
hours to the unproductive policing
activities that constitute the bulk of
RCSD patrol deputies’ time.95 As policing
agencies receive more money, they arrest
more people for low-level offenses;
as their budgets shrink, they make
fewer misdemeanor arrests, without a
significant impact on felony arrests.96 A
public safety approach that increases
contacts with the criminal legal system—
including by facilitating stops, searches,
and misdemeanor arrests—actually
increases crime. A true investment
in community safety requires funding
strategies that prioritize health services
and minimize contact between law
enforcement and the public.”97

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 27

RECOMMENDATIONS
The County should dramatically reduce the funding spent on RCSD. It should invest
instead in the services and structures that meet community- and individual-level
needs prior to any engagement with the criminal legal system. It should fund non-lawenforcement first-response programs proven to keep people safe. And it should seek
additional input from advocates, organizations, communities of color, and professionals
who have identified more productive uses of the County’s finite budget. These necessary
reinvestments include:

1

Removing traffic enforcement functions from law enforcement and placing
authority instead with civilian county employees.
•

2

Removing deputies’ authority to stop individuals not engaged in activities
that pose a significant threat to public safety.
•

3

This includes empowering non-law-enforcement specialists to address social
issues (like homelessness, mental illness, and addiction) currently under the ambit
of RCSD.

Supporting the California Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation 		
into RCSD.
•

5

This includes decriminalizing bicycling activities and equipment violations, as well
as violations related to camping and loitering in public spaces.

Addressing public health needs with trained and well-resourced experts,
not law enforcement.
•

4

Any remaining traffic enforcement should be vested with civilian employees to the
extent possible.

This includes cooperating fully and proactively with investigators and, ultimately,
working to implement and enforce any orders or recommendations the Department
may issue.

Supporting community members’ request for a state legislative audit on funding
and spending practices for RCSD.
•

This includes providing formal support for the initiation of an audit and ongoing
participation with any requests from lawmakers in connection with any audit.

IV. ENDNOTES

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 28

1

Catalyst California and ACLU of Southern California, “Reimagining Community Safety in California,”
October 2022, at p. 14, available at https://catalyst-ca.cdn.prismic.io/catalyst-ca/126c30a8852c-416a-b8a7-55a90c77a04e_APCA+ACLU+REIMAGINING+COMMUNITY+SAFETY+2022_5.
pdf (last accessed February 4, 2023) [hereinafter Reimagining Community Safety]. For a full
discussion of the methodology used in these reports, see the appendix, available at https://
catalyst-ca.cdn.prismic.io/catalyst-ca/daec1d0a-4637-4e85-8264-d1ae1102ebc0_APPENDIX_
Catalyst+California+%26+ACLU+REIMAGINING+COMMUNITY+SAFETY+2022.pdf.

2

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

3

“Latine” is a gender-inclusive term used in this report to replace the terms “Latina(s),” “Latino(s),”
“Latinx(s),” and “Hispanic.”

4

Press Release, “Attorney General Bonta Launches Civil Rights Investigation into Riverside County
Sheriff’s Office,” February 23, 2023, available at: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/
attorney-general-bonta-launches-civil-rights-investigation-riverside-county.

5

A “stop” for purposes of the RIPA data is defined as an interaction in which a peace officer detains
an individual such that they are not free to leave, or conducts a search. 11 CCR 999.224(a)(7), (14).

6

Reimagining Community Safety.

7

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 14.

8

Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Mission Statement, available at: https://www.
riversidesheriff.org/27/About-Us.

9 Id.
10

California Department of Justice, OpenJustice Data Portal, Crimes & Clearances, available at:
https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/exploration/crime-statistics/crimes-clearances.

11 Id.
12

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 18.

13 Id.
14

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 11.

15

County of Riverside, Fiscal Year 2020-2021, Adopted Budget, p. 34, available at: https://rivco.
org/sites/g/files/aldnop116/files/About%20the%20County/Budget%20and%20Financial%20
Information/Financial%20Information/FY-20-21/FY20-21_Adopted_Budget_Volume_1.pdf (last
visited May 19, 2023).

16 See Beck, Brenden et al., “The Material of Policing: Budgets, Personnel, and the United States’
Misdemeanour Arrest Decline.” The Journal of British Criminology, Vol. 63 No. 2, 2022, pp.
1-18, available at https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjc/
azac005/6568129?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
17 See Reimagining Community Safety, pp. 27-28.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 29

18

This report uses the term “people of color” to encompass the non-white racial categories as
designated in the 2015 Racial and Identity Profiling Act and its implementing regulations, at pp.
6-7, available at https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/ripa/stop-data-reg-final-text-110717.
pdf. Based upon these regulations, the term specifically encompasses those identified as: Asian,
Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino(a), Middle Eastern or South Asian, Native American, and
Pacific Islander.

19

See, e.g., Tom Coulter, “Board moves closer to approving Riverside County budget, with an
additional $27 million in spending,” Desert Sun. June 14, 2022, available at: https://www.
desertsun.com/story/news/2022/06/14/board-oks-27-million-more-spending-riverside-countybudget/7629720001/.

20

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 14.

21

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

22

Racial and Identity Profiling Act Advisory Board, 2022 Annual Report, p. 13, available at: https://
oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/ripa-board-report-2022.pdf [hereinafter 2022 RIPA Report].

23

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

24 Id.
25 Id.
26 Id.
27 Id.
28 Id.
29

30

“Reasonable suspicion” in this context refers to the legal standard that must be met under the
Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for an officer to require a member of the public
to submit to a stop to allow an officer to investigate potential criminal activity. “Reasonable
suspicion is defined as a particularized and objective basis for suspecting a person is involved in
criminal activity,” and therefore should require an officer to be able to point to specific, objective
facts about the circumstances that suggest criminal activity. People v. Parrott, 10 Cal.App.5th 485,
494-95 (2017) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). This is a lower standard than the
“probable cause” standard that is required to justify an arrest.
ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

31 Id.
32

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 16.

33 Id.
34

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

35 People v. Kus, 219 Cal.App.4th Supp.17, 21 (2013). For further discussion of non-traffic infractions
and the impact they have on individuals cited, see Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 30

San Francisco Bay Area, “Cited for Being in Plain Sight: How California Polices Being Black,
Brown, and Unhoused in Public,” September 2020, available at https://lccrsf.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/09/LCCR_CA_Infraction_report_4WEB-1.pdf.
36

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

37 Id.
38 Id.
39 Id. This includes all stops where deputies provided a single outcome for the stop, and does not
include a small number of incidents where deputies included multiple, sometimes-conflicting,
outcomes.
40 Id.
41 Id.
42 Id.
43

Catalyst California RIPA Analysis.

44 Id.
45

County of Riverside, Fiscal Year 2020-2021, Adopted Budget, available at: https://rivco.org/
sites/g/files/aldnop116/files/About%20the%20County/Budget%20and%20Financial%20
Information/Financial%20Information/FY-20-21/FY20-21_Adopted_Budget_Volume_1.pdf (last
visited May 19, 2023).

46

Reimagining Community Safety, p. 11.

47

Patrol costs are calculated to include the direct costs of patrol duty officers as well as indirect
costs for administration, supervision, and other tasks that make patrol operational, as reflected in
the Riverside County budget. See Reimagining Community Safety, p. 14.

48

Id. at 15.

49

Id. at 17.

50

Id.

51

ACLU SoCal RIPA Analysis.

52 Id.
53 Id.
54 Id.
55

County of Riverside, Fiscal Year 2020-2021, Adopted Budget, p. 34, available at: https://rivco.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 31

org/sites/g/files/aldnop116/files/About%20the%20County/Budget%20and%20Financial%20
Information/Financial%20Information/FY-20-21/FY20-21_Adopted_Budget_Volume_1.pdf (last
visited May 19, 2023).
56 Id. at p. 273.
57

Figures based on documents provided by the Riverside County Office of County Counsel in
response to a public record act request filed by the ACLU of Southern California.

58 Id.
59
60

California Department of Justice, “URSUS Data 2019-2021,” available at https://openjustice.doj.
ca.gov (last accessed May 19, 2023).

Id.

61

Evan Wyloge and Colin Atagi, “Including Costco case, Riverside County has one of highest rates of
fatal officer-involved shootings,” Desert Sun. June 21, 2019, available at: https://www.desertsun.
com/story/news/2019/06/21/including-corona-costco-case-riverside-county-near-highest-ratefatal-officer-involved-shootings-cal/1530480001.

62

California Department of Justice, “URSUS Data 2019-2021,” available at https://openjustice.doj.
ca.gov (last accessed May 19, 2023).

63

Press Release, “Attorney General Bonta Launches Civil Rights Investigation into Riverside County
Sheriff’s Office,” February 23, 2023, available at: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/
attorney-general-bonta-launches-civil-rights-investigation-riverside-county.

64 Id.
65

Emily Elena Dugdale, “18 People Died in Riverside County Jails Last Year. Advocates Urge State
Action,” LAist. February 9, 2023, available at: https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/riversidecounty-jails-sheriff-deaths-custody-los-angeles.

66

Keri Blakinger, “18 people died in Riverside County jails last year. Now one family is suing, and
others may too,” Los Angeles Times. March 25, 2023, available at: https://www.latimes.com/
california/story/2023-03-25/18-people-died-in-riverside-jails-last-year-now-one-family-is-suingand-others-may-too.

67

Jackson, Dylan B., et al., “Police Stops and Sleep Behaviors Among At-Risk Youth.” Sleep Health,
Vol., 6 No. 4, 2020, pp. 435-441, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32305306/.

68

Geller, Amanda, et al., “Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men.” American
Journal of Public Health, Vol. 104, No. 12, 2014, pp. 2321-2327, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232139/.

69

Laurencin, Cato T., and Joanne M. Walker. “Racial Profiling Is a Public Health and Health
Disparities Issue.” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2020, pp. 393-397,
available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7231642.

70

McNamarah, Chan, “White Caller Crime: Racialized Police Communication and Existing While

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 32

Black.” Michigan Journal of Race and Law, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2019 pp. 335-415, 366, available at
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol24/iss2/5/.
71 Id. at 366-67.
72

DeVylder, Jordan E., et al., “Association of Exposure to Police Violence with Prevalence of
Mental Health Symptoms Among Urban Residents in the United States.” JAMA Network Open,
Vol. 1, No. 7, 2018, pp. 3-4, available at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/
fullarticle/2715611.

73

Bowleg, Lisa et al., “Negative Police Encounters and Police Avoidance as Pathways to Depressive
Symptoms Among US Black Men, 2015-2016.” American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 110,
No. S1, 2020, pp. S160-S166, available at https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/
AJPH.2019.305460.

74 Id.
75

Kwate, Naa Oyo and Shatema Threadcraft, “Dying Fast and Dying Slow in Black Space: Stop and
Frisk’s Public Health Threat and a Comprehensive Necropolitics.” DuBois Review: Social Science
Research on Race, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2017, pp. 535-556, available at https://www.researchwithrutgers.
com/en/publications/dying-fast-and-dying-slow-in-black-space-stop-and-frisks-public-h.

76

Gomez, Marisela B., “Policing, Community Fragmentation, and Public Health: Observations from
Baltimore.” Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 93, Suppl
1, 2016, pp. 154-167, 161, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753881/.

77 Id.
78 Id.
79

80

Sewell, Abigail A., et al., “Living Under Surveillance: Gender, Psychological Distress, and StopQuestion-and-Frisk Policing in New York City.” Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 159, 2016, pp. 1-13,
2 available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27155224/.

Id. at 8.

81 Id. at 2.
82

Jackson, Dylan B. et al., “Police Stops and Sleep Behaviors Among At-Risk Youth.” Sleep Health,
Vol. 6, No. 4, 2020, pp. 435-441, 435, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32305306/.

83 Id.
84

Del Toro, Juan, et al., “The Criminogenic and Psychological Effects of Police Stops on Adolescent
Black and Latino Boys.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America, Vol. 116, No. 17, 2019, pp. 8261-8268, 8267, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/30962370/.

85 Id.

REIMAGINING COMMUNITY SAFETY IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY / 33

86

Baughman, Shima, “Costs of Pretrial Detention.” Boston University Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 1, 2017,
p. 16, available at: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=scholarship.

87

Id.

88

Decker, Scott, et al., “Criminal Stigma, Race, Gender, and Employment: An Expanded Assessment
of the Consequences of Imprisonment for Employment.” Final Report to the National Institute of
Justice, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, 2014, p. 52, available
at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/244756.pdf.

89

Craigie, Terry-Ann et al., “Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings.” Brennan Center for
Justice at the New York School of Law, 2020, p. 6, available at https://www.brennancenter.org/
media/6676/download.

90

PEW Charitable Trusts, “Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility.” 2010,
p. 11, available at https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2010/
collateralcosts1pdf.pdf.

91

DeVuono-Powell, Saneta et al., “Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families.” Ella Baker
Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, Research Action Design, 2015, p. 21, available at
http://whopaysreport.org/who-pays-full-report/.

92 Id. at 20.
93 Id.
94

California Department of Justice, California Values Act Transfer Data, available at https://dataopenjustice.doj.ca.gov/sites/default/files/dataset/2022-08/SB54%20Transfers%202018-2021.csv
(last accessed Feb. 4, 2023).

95

A recent study of hundreds of U.S. cities and towns covering 29 years found a strong
correlation between funding levels and numbers of misdemeanor arrests. See Beck,
Brenden et al., “The Material of Policing: Budgets, Personnel, and the United States’
Misdemeanour Arrest Decline.” The Journal of British Criminology, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2022, pp.
1-18, available at https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjc/
azac005/6568129?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

96 Id. at 6, 13-14. The authors found that “[w]hen cities decreased their police forces of budgets,
both misdemeanour and felony arrests declined, but misdemeanour arrests declined more,
meaning police concentrated more on serious crime relative to low-level offences. Conversely,
increasing staffing and spending increased misdemeanour more than felony enforcement.”
Moreover—just as detailed above—this study found that in these same jurisdictions, police
funding brought about a wide range of individual and community harms associated with
misdemeanor arrests, including decreased school attendance and difficulties finding employment
and housing. See also Beck, Brenden, “We Analyzed 29 Years of Police Spending in Hundreds of
Cities,” Slate.com, April 14, 2022, available at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/
increased-police-spending-leads-to-more-misdemeanor-arrests.html.
97 Id. at 3.