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City meetings were light this week and two were cancelled and rescheduled. The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission will be April 27 and the Council Worksession of the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety is supposed to happen April 21 though it is not posted. 

April 14^th , the evening we were supposed to hear the response to the presentations on reimagining public safety, Chris Hayes started off his MSNBC evening show with the questions, “What is policing for? What do we want policing to do? What does safety in this country look like?” 

Those questions are the framing that was missing from a year of community meetings with the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the consultants from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR), though they picked at them in pieces. The consultants gave the City a final report filled with acronyms, EPIC (Ethical Policing is Courageous), ABLE (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement), HALO (Highly Accountable Learning Organization), intended to “fix” policing in Berkeley under the banner of “Reduce, Improve, Reinvest.” 

It always felt at the community meetings that the consultants never broke through the defensive protective shell around the police department, and meeting agendas were controlled to produce predetermined results. Whether that was the limit of what the consultants had to offer, or whether micromanagement flowing from the City Manager’s office stalled a deep dive, is unknown to members of the public like me. However, I sense it is the latter. 

When the yearlong process was rolling to the end, the Reimaging Public Safety Task Force was told in absolute direct terms in full view of the public that they were to format their report as a response to the consultants, not an independent assessment. The task force did their real work in their subcommittee meetings, and that is what we saw in their blistering response to the NICJR Report at the March 10^th special council meeting. The task force’s final 149 page report and four and a half hour meeting gives this warning in the letter to the community, “…if this process focuses too narrowly on internal police policies and protocols… [and] neglects to address the multi-dimensional inequity that creates patterns of crime, violence, poverty and social disconnection – then it will fail.” Revised material (Supp 2) 

As we await the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety, policing issues before council Tuesday evening began with Councilmember Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model and other applicable community engagement models. Several residents from District 2 spoke in support, with anxious voices, of gunfire in their neighborhood and their fear for themselves and their children. Others expressed opposition, with concern that this policing model will be a return to saturation policing: a throwback to the long ugly history of the war on drugs and looking at every person of color as a criminal. Others said in support the Berkeley Police were doing a fine job. The flex team proposal passed on consent without debate. 

Council moved on to the City Auditor’s report on the use of overtime in the Berkeley Police Department and the lack of contracts with outside entities. An example of both problems, overtime and lack of contracts, is the practice of staffing uniformed officers outside the Fourth Street Apple store. There is no contract with Apple, not terms, not conditions, not even a set billing rate. According to Police Chief Louis, who extolled the benefit of providing security for Apple, the company’s Corporate Headquarters simply calls in a request. And according to the audit, officers choose and signup for overtime from postings hanging on a cork board, a process which only gains importance as there is no apparent control over the number of overtime shifts for any one officer or which overtime opportunities get picked off first. Parking a police vehicle in front of Apple and standing nearby watching shoppers certainly has the appearance of cushy overtime versus being in the bicycle patrol or patrolling a neighborhood. 

There were lots of questions and comments from councilmembers regarding the auditor’s report. Harrison, as did others, commented on the toll on officers of working endless overtime shifts. Kesarwani stated that all work for outside entities like Apple should cease immediately until there were contracts in place and then backed off of that reasonable request. Harrison asked about bike patrols, with the obvious question: Are uniformed Berkeley police acting as a security officers for Apple instead of being in the bike patrol for the downtown? The Mayor asked about the timing to have contracts in place and the content of the contracts coming before council. The City Manager said that the content and the conditions of contracts was completely within her purview, not council’s. 

The current billing for security services, according to Chief Louis, is for the officer assigned at that officer’s overtime pay rate. It does not include overhead, equipment, vehicle costs or the cost of replacement for other assignments. When payment is made by outside entities it is credited to the City general fund and not tied to the police overtime account. This maneuver makes for slushy accounting and at the same time sets up the Police Department to demand a bigger budget. And because the Police Chief neglects to include the total cost of staffing outside entities, the City is not properly reimbursed. 

The council voted to accept the auditor’s report and requested the City Manager to report back on the status of recommendations by September 29, 2022 and every six months thereafter, and set a goal of September for the City Attorney, City Manager and Police Department to have contracts in place. Goals have a habit of sliding, as do requests for reports, and the basic question of “ What do we want Berkeley police to do?“ remains unanswered. 

In Chris Hayes’ segment on policing, Hayes showed a chart of declining success in solving cases of the crime of murder as now being down to 54 percent nationwide. 

Over the years in all the crime reports from the Berkeley Police Chief to City Council, I never heard the success rate for solving those crimes. And, for all the bluster around the importance of surveillance to deter and solve crime that also isn’t included, something we might want to ask on April 26^th when the surveillance report is presented to council. 

The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) addressed one topic Wednesday afternoon: regulating plastic bags. There was good attendance with representatives from the Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market and enthusiastic UCB students supporting Beyond Plastics, but Martin Bourque from the Ecology Center had the most telling comment. He said they eliminated plastic bags at the Farmers’ Markets years ago. When Councilmember Harrison asked about the process, Bourque said they provided notices well in advance, but found it wasn’t until implementation that people pay attention. 

At the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, when Nancy Radar saw she didn’t have the votes, she pulled her proposal to use Measure FF funds for vegetation management and the removal of eucalyptus trees on private property. Commissioner Paul Degenkolb had expressed his feeling that the property owner is responsible and said, “Every time something comes up as a property owner I have to pay.” He went on to say Monterey Pines are native trees and he saw the Monterey Pine go up like a torch and the Eucalyptus next to it didn’t burn. Commissioner Weldon Bradstreet was concerned that using Measure FF funds on private property would “poison the well for future city funding.” 

One phrase you may have heard me say over and over is people age at different rates. Some people are old at 50 and others young at 90. There are so many factors that go into aging, genetics, lifestyle, environment, exercise and what we put into our bodies. Bob Williams made the front page of the Chronicle sports section, still golfing and mentally sharp at age 100. Then there is yet another report that Dianne Feinstein, who turns 89 in June, is no longer mentally fit to serve. 

Some of you reading this like me have seen someone we know deteriorating mentally. I remember joining friends who told me their mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s. For the first minutes of greetings and exchanges she was able to pull off a perfectly normal, engaging, coherent interaction, but as the afternoon wore on the decline was obvious. Even people who are in deep mental decline will have a brief moment when the synapses connect and glimmers of their former selves shines through. 

Feinstein’s response to the latest article was that she is fine with no plans to step down. As mental decline progresses, the ability of the person to recognize it also slips away. This is difficult. Her term doesn’t end until January 2025 and as the saying goes in a 50/50 Senate we need all hands on deck fully capable of doing the job. 

Last Saturday afternoon as my walk partner and I were crossing Center Street the group marching toward us was chanting, “Abortion on demand without apology.” It is the same chant I heard in 2013 from another group that was traveling around the country where access to abortion was threatened. 2013 was the 40^th anniversary of Roe v Wade and the year I had t-shirts printed for volunteers of the national juried art exhibition Choice with “Make 2013 the last year women lose more rights than we gain.” It was a burst of optimism and a call to action that never happened. It was a time when young women couldn’t imagine losing access to a right they always had and being shamed for using it. In these nine years later, women are being trampled with a wave of anti-abortion laws. 

When I turn on the television and see women leading in so many fields that were out of reach when I was a child, it brings a sense of pride and joy. There was no access to reliable birth control when I was young and it will be again if the most extreme have their way. Thirty-nine is the average number of child-bearing years between onset of menstruation and menopause. As a teenager I saw friends’ dreams crushed by pregnancy, lives almost lost with illegal abortions and in my own life on edge worrying that each late period would be an unwanted pregnancy. 

With Roe v Wade hanging by a thread and likely to die this June, I picked up the audiobook The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager. Prager said in the author’s note that he spent eleven years researching and writing the book he wanted to write. 

The Family Roe tells the story of Roe v. Wade through the lives of Norma McCorvey, her three daughters, McCorvey’s partners, family, friends, the attorneys, and the pro-life activists who exploited Norma to bolster their cause and condemned her life as a lesbian. There is good reason why The Family Roe is listed as the 2021 finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, one of NPR's Best Books of 2021, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, one of TIME's 100. 

My walk partner’s newly married nephew sent her a text a few weeks ago: he had his vasectomy. Not everyone wants or needs to be a parent. Losing access to abortion has real consequences for women. Women who live in states / areas where birth control and abortion are easily accessible are in better health, have higher earnings and face less discrimination. 

No matter what happens in June it is not the end. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995 is in my reading stack. When I finish it, I have to track down the woman who loaned it to me.