Will this end police brutality? No, but it's a huge effin deal.

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a law making California the first state in the country to ban the secretive grand jury process in cases where police use lethal force.



SB 227, authored by state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), makes California the first state to ban the use of grand juries to decide whether law enforcement should face criminal charges in use-of-force cases. The ban, which will go into effect next year, comes after grand juries failed to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, last year, heightening scrutiny of the process. Mitchell argues that the grand jury process, during which evidence is presented to a panel of civilians in secret, fosters a lack of trust in the system.

This legislation will force decisions to prosecute police out into the open in California. District attorneys can no longer present a highly skewed case to a grand jury, and then when the grand jury opts not to indict, hide behind the jurors for political cover. While this doesn't address the often cozy relationships between police departments and district attorneys, it at least gives us the peace of mind, in the largest state in the country with the highest number of people killed by police, to know that the process should be more clear and transparent.

This is a significant step in the right direction. It's one of 25 reforms or so needed in each state, but we must celebrate victories as they come.