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New: Berkeley Council workshop on Saturday to discuss police

Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Wednesday January 14, 2015 - 08:22:00 PM

The Berkeley City Council will hold a special workshop meeting on Saturday on improving police and community relations following recent anti-police brutality protests. 

The council will not be able to take any action at the special meeting because it is listed as a workshop. 

Protests have taken place in Berkeley and in many other cities across the country in response to recent grand jury decisions in Missouri and New York to not charge police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men, and to other officer-involved deaths.  

Because many people are expected to attend the special meeting, a follow-up to a Dec. 16 council meeting on the protests in Berkeley and the city's response to them, it won't be held at the council's chambers. Instead it will be held at the Ed Roberts Campus at 3075 Adeline St. beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday.  

Berkeley officials said in a statement that the meeting "will consider how we can improve community and police relations, address our response to what occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, and beyond, and produce positive steps the city council can pursue." 

They said, "The agenda is designed to hear from a wide range of voices and move our community conversation forward." 

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, have been invited to participate in the meeting but their attendance hasn't been confirmed. 

Among the other people who have been invited to participate are John Powell, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who is director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, Jack Glaser, a UC Berkeley professor who recently wrote a book on racial profiling, and Sheila Quintana, the principal of Berkeley Technology Academy, an alternative high school.