Flora’s Child Protection Bill Goes to Governor

A bill introduced by local Assemblyman Heath Flora aimed at protecting children from child abuse and human trafficking has officially headed to the governor’s desk after passing both chambers of the state legislature.

AB 1892 was inspired by Flora’s experience when she worked with the Sacramento County Sheriff on a major undercover operation to track and arrest criminals who targeted children for sexual exploitation.

“We asked the sheriff and his team what steps we could take at the state level to address the problem of child sexual exploitation and trafficking,” Flora said. “Getting tough-on-crime laws passed in the California Legislature can be challenging, but we’ve made serious progress in 2024 to correct the course. AB 1892 is just one example.”

Current law allows a judge to authorize the interception of electronic communications with probable cause, where the suspect is committing or about to commit certain crimes, related to murder, kidnapping and other serious crimes. However, sexual exploitation of children is not on this list of crimes.

“Some of the text messages and other electronic correspondence that we saw between suspects who were planning to sexually exploit children were extremely disturbing,” Flora said of the undercover operation. “These people, if you can even call them people, are talking openly and in explicit detail about what they plan to do to these innocent children.”

AB 1892 would add child pornography and exploitation-related crimes to the list of crimes eligible for expedited search warrants if a judge finds sufficient evidence of guilt. This would expand the options but preserve judicial discretion.

“To keep it simple, AB 1892 gives judges the authority to expedite search warrants if there is probable cause that child exploitation is taking place,” Flora explained of the bill. “We had another similar bill that didn’t make it out of the Senate, but AB 1892 did and we really hope the governor signs it into law.”

The bill would expedite the search warrant application process, allowing the court to issue a warrant to intercept the telephone or electronic communications of child sex offenders if a judge finds there is sufficient reason to believe that a person is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime that violates certain laws relating to child pornography and exploitation.

Assemblyman Heath Flora represents the communities of Acampo, Copperopolis, Del Rio, Denair, Empire, Escalon, Farmington, Galt, Hickman, Hughson, Ione, La Grange, Lathrop, Linden, Lockeford, Lodi, Manteca, Oakdale, Rancho Murieta, Ripon, Riverbank, Salida, Waterford and Wilton.