Public Comment

Last May, in my daughter’s Berkeley High School music class, a fellow classmate, Herbert, walked out the door with my daughter’s laptop computer, iPod, Timbuktu bag and cell phone. The other students said, “Oh, he is always stealing.” She saved for a year working at the Pacific Center and back stage at school to buy the laptop; I am a single mom. The teacher witnessed it and reported it to the school security guard.  

I was told the next day by the security guard that no police report was made. The school on-site officer was unavailable. Three days later no report had been made and I had to call the central police station and make the report myself. It took four months to get a copy of the police report. The offender was a juvenile and no one at the police station could figure out how to give me the report without compromising his identity.  

Furthermore, it took several months to get the report completed by the reporting officer—he wrote my name down incorrectly, etc. Finally, after five Friday visits to the Police Department on my day off, I suggested that they use white-out to eliminate the name and address of the offender. I also had to enlist the help of the Internal Affairs Department. Finally I got the report and submitted it to my insurance company. Five months later and after paying a $250 deductible (that I didn’t have) to my insurance, my daughter got another computer. Meanwhile, Herbert spent a summer unfettered by investigating officers.  

I know the Berkeley police are busy but maybe once a month they could have visited the offender’s home—he is 15 years old—to find and arrest him. No charges had apparently been filed despite his committing grand theft. School started again this fall and Herbert reappeared, stating to the vice principal that he would return the laptop if he could stay in school (he actually didn’t have it, he was just bargaining). Hearing that this child had committed grand theft on the grounds of Berkeley High School and now was attending school frustrated me, to say the least. I contacted the principal’s assistant who informed me that no warrant was issued for his arrest. Then I contacted the youth services officer assigned to the case, and left messages three times, with no return call. A month later, I was able to contact him in person on the phone. He stated that there should be a warrant out for this child and he reassured me that the on-site officer would find the child. The on-site officer apparently interviewed him last week—Herbert again confessed to the crime.  

Well, Herbert is still walking around Berkeley High School today ready to steal the next classmate’s belongings. The on-site officer says no warrant has been issued. Probably because he “ammended” the report to state that Herbert had actually admitted to the crime-even though it was witnessed last May: videotape documentation as well. The on-site officer could not tell me what would happen next: “It’s probably on the desk of a probation officer,” and gave me the name of his sergeant to contact—the same sargeant who didn’t return my call several months ago when I was trying to find out the disposition of the case. I’ve left another message. I await a call from the principal’s assistant regarding my questioning of Berkeley High’s policy of allowing a student to attend classes after committing grand theft on Berkeley High School property. He was never suspended or expelled. He said he would call me back with an answer. Surely there is a written policy he can refer to?  

Meanwhile, my daughter has learned that she just has to adjust to being a victim. That the law is useless if it is not enforced and she has watched her mother appeal to the enforcers without advocacy or accountability on their part. It appears that there is no accountability. It is also humiliating to pay some of the highest property taxes in the state, as a single mother, and have this kind of service from these two institutions. I cant even try to recoup my $250 deductible from the child’s mother in small claims court because the time involved in getting the demographic information to serve papers on a juvenile (confidential) is beyond my limit. The lessons that have been taught to both my daughter and this young thief are so wrong. I would have thought that in a supposedly enlightened city like Berkeley themes such as justice and advocacy for victims would be held in high regard. Think again. 

Ellen Mates is a Berkeley resident.