California – In May 2020, just two days after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a seemingly routine police encounter in La Mesa, California, turned into a local flashpoint in the national reckoning over racial justice. Twenty-three-year-old Amaurie Johnson was waiting for friends outside an apartment building when La Mesa police officer Matthew Dages approached him. The encounter quickly escalated, culminating in Dages forcefully grabbing Johnson’s shirt, pushing him onto a concrete bench multiple times, and arresting him.
Body camera footage captured Johnson’s reaction as he protested the officer’s actions: “Stop touching me, bro.” The video of the arrest quickly went viral, triggering protests in La Mesa that ultimately erupted into riots. Despite the aggressive nature of the arrest, Johnson was never charged with a crime. Dages, however, was later fired after an administrative investigation revealed he had made false statements in his police report—claiming Johnson was smoking in a nonsmoking area and had taken a fighting stance.
In the past, officers like Dages could leave one department and find employment elsewhere, a phenomenon widely known in police reform circles as the “wandering officer” problem. However, under Senate Bill 2 (SB 2), a law passed in 2021, Dages lost his certification, permanently barring him from serving as a police officer anywhere in California…