Editorials

Updated: Berkeley panels discuss police issues on Saturday

Becky O'Malley
Friday January 16, 2015 - 10:10:00 AM

Update on Wednesday January 28: The do-nothing Berkeley City Council has again done nothing on this urgent matter. They nattered on until the proposed ordinances, near the bottom of the agenda, had to be postponed once more, now until February 10. They should be ashamed of themselves.



P.P.S. on Friday, January 23: I'm leaving this editorial up for a while longer because there have been so many additions to it, and the videos of the meetings are STILL not posted on the city's web site. If you want to get a better idea of what happened last Saturday, there's a good report from Frances Dinkelspiel, complete with short videos of speakers (including me) on the Berkeleyside site.
 

Afterword on Monday: Just call me Cassandra. As quasi-promised below, I went to the Berkeley City Council’s special meeting on topics racial which took place at the Ed Roberts center on Saturday, and as predicted it was pretty much of a shuck. 

Reliable estimates from several people I knew there called the audience at about 200—not much over the 123 or so seats in the regular council chambers, and not nearly as many as the number comfortably accommodated in the halls of Old City Hall with loudspeakers on occasion. This gathering could have been held there, and could have been streamed online, with decent planning.

There were many, many empty seats. As expected: no students except for an ASUC guy who confirmed that they're still out of town. Black students were at a long-scheduled conference in conjunction with the MLK holiday.

And yes, it was hard to see (councilmembers and panelists sat at floor level, not on a platform) or hear (unless you sat in a straight line in front of the portable speakers of the inadequate sound system.) Experts and politicians, fine folks all of course, said pretty much what I expected they would. County Supervisor Keith Carson did show up to give a rousing speech (though I had trouble hearing it), mysteriously however not as part of the politicos’ panel.

State Senator Loni Hancock wrung her hands. Both Congresswoman Barbara Lee and State Assemblymember Tony Thurmond spoke forcefully about legislative opportunities, using their hand-held mikes expertly so they could be heard by all. Unfortunately, although Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan was physically present during their talks, he sat at the very back of the audience and conversed audibly, loudly even, throughout both of their presentations.

City Manager Christine Daniel was barely visible, cowering in a corner at the left of the councilmembers. She said nothing. Newby District 8 councilmember Lori Droste didn’t say anything either, though all of her fellow councilmembers spoke up in predictable ways at the end of the meeting.

No video of the proceedings has yet been posted online by the city clerk—perhaps after today’s holiday one might appear, or not. Tomorrow the council will again take up related topics, starting with a 5:30 discussion of recommendations from the Peace and Justice commission.

Here's what I predicted last Friday, followed by a brief report of what happened on Tuesday:
 


It’s profoundly ironic that when the people who run Berkeley wanted to blow off civic anger about how the Berkeley Police handled the December 6 protests they re-scheduled the discussion for the Martin Luther King birthday weekend. (We’ll leave for another day an in-depth analysis of who these people might be.)

Monday is a holiday for Berkeley city employees and also for the Berkeley schools. A three-day weekend, right? So a lot of folks who might want to attend might also want to be out of town. Too bad for them.

One excuse for postponing the discussion in December was that U.C. students were out of town, but would be back by January 17. Sorry, most classes don’t start until next week, after the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, so we probably won’t see a huge student presence tomorrow either.

To add insult to injury, the chosen venue is on the very southwesternmost periphery of the city, just this side of the Oakland border. It will be held in a facility, the Ed Roberts Campus at 3075 Adeline St., which lacks the capacity for streaming or broadcasting the meeting for the home viewer—which would have been possible in the regular city council chambers and several other locations they could have chosen instead. The city clerk’s office told me they thought a video might be made of the gathering (billed originally as a “workshop”, lately as a “public town hall”), but they weren’t sure when or whether it would be posted online.

The people at the ERC tell me that the gathering is booked for their Osher room, which holds about 100 people but can be opened up to the center lobby. I’ve been to meetings and even operas in that space—the acoustics and sight lines leave something to be desired.

And how about the purpose of the get-together? There seems to be a bit of mission creep. 

 

 

Recall that Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates cancelled the first city council meeting after police teargassed and clubbed protesters on Telegraph on December 6. Here’s how Emilie Raguso reported (on berkeleyside.com) what happened at the subsequent scheduled council meeting on December 16, which was transferred to a school site: 

 

 

An emotional crowd nearly shut down the Berkeley City Council multiple times Tuesday night during a public comment period that lasted the better part of four hours. About 50 people spoke to council — and many more were in attendance — to share concerns about racial profiling as well as the actions of police on Saturday, Dec. 6, when officers used tear gas, projectiles and baton hits to control and clear a crowd that refused to disperse from Telegraph Avenue after several hours of demonstrations around the city. Council members considered but rejected the possibility of scheduling a special meeting this month to discuss the events of Dec. 6, and how police should interact with protesters going forward.
Now, finally, this gathering is taking place, but the published agenda indicates that it could easily turn into a whitewash. (And yes, the choice of metaphor was deliberate.) Since it is not a real, official council meeting, councilmembers will be unable to make decisions about solutions, should they want to, which they probably don’t. 

 

 

From the agenda: “ Improving Police and Community Relations: Discuss possible ways to improve community and police relations and addressing our response to what occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and beyond that will result in positive steps the City Council can pursue. “ 

Thank You for Sharing, and Have a Nice Day. 

Tempers will have cooled by now. Many Berkeleyans who were outraged at how this protest was handled will have moved on to deal with other pressing causes, all passion spent. That’s undoubtedly what the Mayor and his city manager hoped would happen. 

The first item on the agenda is “Public Comment”. If it follows the usual Bates scenario, it will be a series of one-minute rants from citizens more or less sane on a variety of related or unrelated topics of their choice. They will be largely ignored by the majority of whichever councilmembers deign to show up. 

Then there will be what was once pitched as a panel of “experts”, now called a Facilitated Panel Discussion: 

 

 

  • John A. Powell - UC Berkeley Professor of Law and Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society
  • Jack Glaser - UC Berkeley professor and author of the recently published book Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling
  • Sheila Quintana - Principal of Berkeley's alternative high school, Berkeley Technology Academy
  • Jinho "The Piper" Ferreira - Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy and writer/performer in a solo show, "Cops & Robbers".
Next, a panel of politicos. According to the latest press release, these will be the Mayor’s wife, State Senator Loni Hancock, Assemblymember Tony Thurmond (newly elected without the blessing of the Bates/Hancock apparatus) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee. According to the first press release from the city, these were invited but not confirmed, though some guy in the mayor’s office told me on Wednesday that they’re coming. Congresswoman Barbara Lee is probably dealing with the immigration struggle in D.C. but the latest update says she’ll come. Longtime Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson seems to have bailed since Wednesday. 

 

 

None of these estimable panelists, on either roster, have any jurisdiction over the Berkeley Police. They are being given the opportunity to express sentiments no one could disagree with—and will not know or say much about specific Berkeley complaints, I imagine. 

Serious questions about the Berkeley Police’s violent response to the December 6 protests most likely will be sloughed off. Berkeley City Manager Christine Daniel, who was presumably in charge that night, might or might not be in attendance. (Bates and Hancock were attending a testimonial dinner for old Sacramento buddy Bill Lockyer in South County.) Police Chief Michael Meehan, who presumably was issuing the orders, might or might not be there. You can be sure that neither of these two will be subjected to pointed questioning from panelists or audience. 

If this incident of police misconduct is not dealt with, it will happen again. Somehow Daniel and Meehan have missed the memo on how Berkeley should deal with protests, so they’ll make the same mistakes in similar situations in the future if they’re not instructed to do otherwise. 

In spite of the apparent futility of accomplishing anything in this context, you should show up if you can, particularly if you were a victim or a witness on December 6. I’d love to be proved wrong about the scenario, but I’d be very surprised. If you go, please send your observations to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. If I go, I’ll post mine. 

There’s also the matter of other instances of questionable behavior by the Berkeley police department: things like eight police officers taking over a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon on the pretext of investigating a baseless child abuse charge, the death of a mentally ill person in police custody, and other problematic situations which haven’t been addressed by the city’s multiple but impotent review processes. 

For next week’s regular Berkeley City Council Meeting, Councilmember Jesse Arreguin has placed a couple of proposals on the action agenda which, if enacted, could make a difference. 

One proposes to enact a list of changes to the police department’s standing orders on the use of force, following a model recently adopted in Oakland. 

Specifically, the item asks the council to “adopt a motion declaring as a temporary City of Berkeley policy that the use of chemical agents (tear gas etc.), Specialty Impact Less-Lethal Weapons (“projectiles” or rubber bullets, wooden dowels, stinger grenades, rubber bullets) and over the shoulder baton strikes, are prohibited uses of force in responding to crowd situations, until such time as an investigation is conducted as to the Police response to the December 6, 2014 protests, and a review of General Orders C-64, M-2, and U-2 is completed.” 

The second asks the council to sponsor an independent investigation of December 6 events: 

“Direct the City Manager to initiate an independent investigation into the police response to protests on December 6, 2014 and to return to Council as soon as possible, but no later than 60 days with a contract to hire a qualified independent investigator. In considering who to select to conduct the investigation, the City Manager should give preference to former police chiefs or law enforcement officials with experience conducting internal investigations. To avoid the appearance of or possibility of conflicts of interests, the City Manager should avoid selecting an individual or firm who previously worked for the Berkeley Police Department or who previously or currently worked for any law enforcement agency in the San Francisco Bay Area. The City Manager shall ensure that the selected individual or firm has no apparent conflicts of interest.” 

If the council were to pass either or both of these proposals, it might prevent the December 6 situation from recurring the next time there’s a protest. But, as I say all too often, don’t hold your breath. The Bates Bloc is most likely to vote both down with little discussion. Watch Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday to see what they do. 

 

 


POSTSCRIPT: What did they do? Nothing, nada, zilch. Videos of the Berkeley City Council have not been posted for three meetings now, the one on January 17 and the two on January 20. None of these meeting were live-streamed either. The City Clerk's office cites "technical problems". Uh-huh.  

 

 

Thanks to KPFK radio online, I heard the tail end of the evening meeting on the 20th, and deduced that Councimember Arreguin's proposals were postponed until the next council meeting, now scheduled for next Tuesday,January 27. Again, however, don't hold your breath in hopes that this do-nothing council will do anything then.  

Policing in Berkeley? No Problem. Oh sure: As brother Jimmy used to say: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time".