Don Thompson

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a new state law that will stop police from arresting people for loitering for prostitution, an issue that divided sex workers and advocates during a rare nine-month delay since state lawmakers passed the bill last year.

“To be clear, this bill does not legalize prostitution,” Newsom said in a signing message. “It simply revokes provisions of the law that have led to disproportionate harassment of women” and transgender adults, he said, nothing that Black and Latino women are particularly affected.

The bill will bar police in California from arresting anyone for loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. Sen. Scott Wiener and other supporters said such arrest decisions often rely on an officer’s perception.

While Newsom said he agreed with the intent of the repeal, “we must be cautious about its implementation.” He said his administration will track crime and prosecution trends “for any possible unintended consequences” and, if so, work to correct them.

“For far too long, California law has been used to profile, harass and arrest transgender and gender-nonconforming people simply for existing in public spaces,” Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGTBQ rights group Equality California, said in praising the repeal.

The measure also will allow those who were previously convicted or are serving sentences to ask a court to dismiss and seal the record of the conviction.

Similar legislation became law in New York last year in what Wiener said is part of a broader effort to end violence toward and discrimination against sex workers.

“Everyone — no matter their race, gender or how they make a living — deserves to feel safe on our streets,” Wiener said in a statement thanking Newsom.

Wiener, Newsom’s fellow Democrat, used a parliamentary maneuver to delay Newsom’s consideration for months after the bill passed the Legislature in September. He hoped the pause would give proponents time to build more support, including by signing an online petition.

Opponents like the California Family Council countered with their own online petition as part of a monthslong tug-of-war.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California sought the legislation along with several groups backing transgender sex workers and others in the sex industry. It has support from public defenders, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and numerous criminal justice reform groups. Voters recently recalled Boudin amid a campaign labeling him as soft on criminals.

The loitering law allows police “to criminalize otherwise legal activities like walking, dressing or standing in public,” the ACLU said.

Moreover, workers who fear arrest for loitering “are more vulnerable to exploitation and violence, and face greater barriers to accessing safe housing and legal employment,” the group argued.

The nonpartisan National Center on Sexual Exploitation took the opposite view, saying that ending the law would make it easier for traffickers and sex buyers to exploit vulnerable people.

Homicides in California jumped 31% last year, making it the deadliest year since 2007, and Black people accounted for nearly one-third of all victims, according to reports released Thursday.

The 2,202 homicides last year were 523 more than in 2019, while the rate increased by a similar margin — from 4.2 to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people.

That’s the most slayings since 2,258 people were killed in 2007, and the rate is the highest since 2008. Black people make up 6.5% of California’s population but accounted for 31% of all victims last year. Hispanic people accounted for 45%, while 16% were white.

Last year saw such a stark increase in homicides in part because the number and rate of homicides the year before were so low.

California’s 2019 homicide rate was the lowest since 1966, and violent and property crime rates in 2019 generally were among the lowest since the 1960s, four experts from the University of California, Berkeley’s California Policy Lab said in a related review focusing on cities with more than 100,000 people.

California cities generally did better than those in other states that saw bigger per capita increases in homicides and aggravated assaults, experts said.

Yet last year, California had nearly 300 more homicides than the next most deadly year in the last decade — 2016, which had 1,930 slayings, according to annual reports from the state attorney general’s office.

The jump in California homicides comes amid an erratic year for crime, with a less than 1% increase in overall violent crime and a 7.7% drop in property crime during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the state reports.

The pandemic and its accompanying stay-at-home orders and other restrictions led to erratic changes in crime patterns last year, the experts said in a report to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code.

“Social dislocations, stresses, and alterations to our collective daily routines due to the pandemic have impacted crime rates in California and across the country,” they said.

Property crime also fell more in California cities compared with others nationwide that reported their rates to the FBI. However, the vehicle theft rate was higher in California cities for reasons the experts could not explain.

They cited reduced social interactions from the stay-at-home orders as the likely reason for drops in robbery, rape and larceny.