Bill > A07215

This bill, known as the "False Reporting Survivors Act," establishes new crimes of aggravated falsely reporting an incident in the first, second, and third degrees, which occur when someone intentionally falsely reports an incident with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, or alarm another person based on their race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ethnicity. These new offenses are classified as felonies, with increasing severity corresponding to the degree of the crime. The bill also mandates that police officers must arrest individuals if they have reasonable cause to believe these aggravated false reporting crimes have been committed, but with specific conditions, including requiring independent evidence of fabrication and verification by the Attorney General's office, and that local law enforcement cannot act on such complaints without authorization from the Attorney General. Furthermore, the bill amends existing laws to include these aggravated false reporting offenses as hate crimes, allows for civil actions against those convicted of these crimes, establishes a public database of individuals convicted of aggravated false reporting, requires prosecutors to provide detailed reports to defendants upon dismissal of such cases, removes the statute of limitations for prosecuting these aggravated false reporting felonies, and extends the timeframe for victims to file civil lawsuits for damages resulting from these convictions, allowing for additional time in cases of hardship.