Editorials

At the top of the bad news on Monday morning: Vallejo’s about to capture the dubious distinction of being the first California city to declare bankruptcy, mainly because of the huge increases built into its public safety salaries and pensions. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg, with many others likely to follow. Sharp-pencil citizens and Planet reporters have documented Berkeley’s on-going liabilities in this department several times in these pages, and they’ll do it again, particularly as election-time draws near and city administrators’ plans to add more tax increases to the ballot are firmed up. Liberals that we are, Berkeleyans very seldom say no, either to our city or to our schools, but as the recession deepens into what some are already calling a depression, it could happen. 

At the same time Ron Dellums is under fire for not having abolished crime in the streets of Oakland after a whole year in office. The San Francisco paper’s twin bully-boys, the ones with the schoolyard nicknames of Chip and Chuck, are recommending from their safe journalistic perches that more stick and less carrot will solve all problems, whether it’s homeless people begging on the median strip (just gun’em down) or drug wars. 

No one seems to be able to put two and two together and come up with four. Yes, the police budget is bankrupting our cities, but the only solution citizens can suggest is more police. Yes, the prison budget is bankrupting the state, but the only solution the governor can propose is cutting out parks and schools. Is it possible that more of the same might just be throwing good money after bad? 

Two recent Berkeley examples show how to waste money and get little in return. The show of force surrounding the pro-marine turnout at the last City Council meeting cost a cool $100K, including lavish police overtime, and it was almost completely unnecessary. Neither side, with the exception of a few skateboarders, showed any real inclination to make trouble.  

My own encounter with the BPD that day was illustrative. I was trying to cross Martin Luther King Jr. Way from City Hall to talk to the people in the park. I went around to one end of the police line, which at that point was double ranks, not quite but almost corner to corner. At my chosen crossing point, I was stopped by a polite female officer who told me not to walk there. I started to ask where I could safely cross, and she had started to answer, but our conversation was broken up by an overbearing male officer yelling “Move on, move on, obey the order.” Completely chauvinistic, and totally unnecessary to boot. The female officer was doing her job, competently, but the male was overkill on overtime. 

A more serious instance was the weekend shooting of a probably intoxicated woman by an officer responding to a family dispute. There are at least two victims in this story, the woman herself and the policeman who shot her. These are the calls police men and women (my cousin is one) dread most. Why? Because they know that they’re not the right people and don’t have the right tools to do the job. All you can do with a gun is shoot someone, which seldom is the best solution.  

It’s a “bad block,” which must have been a factor in the police response. When we went there at about 10 on the night after the shooting to take pictures of the shrine neighbors had erected on the porch where Anita Gay died, we saw what were obvious drug deals taking place in the street, with no police anywhere in sight. Friends who live not far away report that this is common, and Berkeley police must know it’s going on. 

Officer Rashawn Cummings’ previous assignment was the drug detail. He was probably on edge when he responded to the domestic violence call, which is not an excuse but an explanation of his action.  

The dead woman was well known by neighbors, both her virtues and her problems. She obviously could have benefited from the attention of trained mental-health professionals, both before and during the emergency situation. If the officer had any such help available to him, it hasn’t been reported, and he probably didn’t. Yes, he could have used non-lethal force if he’d been so equipped, but that’s a hard split-second decision. Early intervention by someone who knew the woman and was trained to talk her down would have been much better.  

The literature is full of glowing descriptions of teamwork between armed police officers and unarmed community workers in situations like this one, and many Berkeleyans probably believe that it’s our public policy. At election time politicians in the East Bay cities we know best are wont to speak glowingly of community-involved policing, but it’s largely fantasy. A few of our neighborhoods have beat cops who understand their turf and the people in it, but even there emergency response is often from armed strangers.  

It’s past time for the Berkeley officials who are responsible for public safety to develop a more nuanced and more effective way of handling the broad range of emergency situations such peaceful demonstrations and domestic disputes. Sending out sworn officers with guns strapped to their hips is very expensive, and it’s not an effective solution for many problems. Let’s save the trained cops for when we really need them.