Comparison and comment
On November 5, 2025, Berkeleyside.com published a revealing article by Alex Gecan titled “Civilian oversight of Berkeley police is hitting a wall.” Berkeley Speaks appreciates the Berkeleyside investigation.
In our article below, we compare selected passages from the Berkeleyside article with our own reporting.
Part One: Police refusal to turn over records to Police Accountability Board as mandated by city charter.
Berkeleyside reported:
Several times in the last year, the city’s police department refused to turn over records to the Police Accountability Board (PAB) and police accountability director unless subpoenaed.
Accountability board members spent years reviewing racist, anti-homeless text messages between members of a Berkeley police unit.
Berkeley Speaks comment:
It is good that Berkeleyside continues to follow this story.
The refusal of City staff to turn over information requested by the PAB or the Director violates the plain language of the city charter. The charter is the highest level of municipal law. The police accountability structure was voted in by a very high margin–almost 85% of the electorate.
There is some confusion about why the PAB and the Director cannot get the BPD data it needs for its investigation. Some point to the ongoing, seemingly unending negotiation between the city management and the police association. This “meet-and-confer” process is about establishing the PAB’s permanent regulations. It is NOT the reason for delay in the Department turning over files for the texting scandal investigation. Let’s break this down.
The PAB, and the Director as well, have two main duties under the law. One is to investigate and make advisory judgments on charges of officer misconduct and discipline. The second is to conduct policing policy investigations. PAB regulations are specifically concerned with officer misconduct investigations. They have nothing to do with policy investigations.
The information that the police department would not turn over was for their policy investigation. That kind of investigation examines whether the BPD is following its own policies, and if so, whether department policies need to be changed. Policy investigations do not lead to officer discipline. Therefore the officer association has no role in that discussion and there is no need for a meet-and-confer with them. And the PAB’s regulations do not apply to policy investigations.
No, the difficulty getting information from the City for use in policy investigations is entirely on City staff: the Department, the city management, and probably the City Attorney’s Office.
On the other hand, regarding officer misconduct, there is a separate issue. The problem here is that the PAB was prevented from conducting any disciplinary investigation of the texting scandal at all. (We’ll get into that in a folllowing section.)
There is an apparent conflict of interest in city management, which oversees the police department, having veto power over what information is disclosed about the department’s practices, to an oversight body. That’s particularly the case when the oversight body, the PAB, has unconditional authority of this access guaranteed by the city charter.
It is interesting to hear that city management began cooperating with the PAB’s request for information when PAB issued a subpoena. According to the charter a subpoena should not be necessary, but its success indicates a path for the Board’s future investigations, in cases where there may be a need for both officer misconduct and policy investigations:
The officer investigation is the most time-critical, because there is generally a limit of 120 days, about four months, after the City’s discovery of the alleged misconduct for the City to complete its investigation.
Therefore in the future, it would be best of the PAB first, move as quickly as possible to initiate the officer misconduct investigation; second, request all the relevant information from the City; third, if the City does not immediately comply, PAB should issue a subpoena; fourth, conduct the disciplinary investigation; and fifth, establish and conduct a policy investigation.
The police accountability structure, composed of the Board and the office of the Director, must be seen as a part of the public safety system.For the administration to refuse to comply with the charter is not only self-serving but illegal. It is also harmful to public safety.
Part Two: Never-ending story of meet-and-confer on permanent regulations
Berkeleyside reported:
“Meanwhile, the accountability board has been trying for more than two years to negotiate its own working rules with the city police officers union. Without them the board has been working under interim regulations since 2021.
“And now the City Council, which several PAB members have accused of ignoring their oversight work and recommendations, has waded into the negotiations to tell everyone involved to hurry up and get the regulations done.”
Berkeley Speaks comment:
Some context is important here.
Berkeley Speaks wrote in September 2023, in “Berkeley City Administration Absolves Itself of Racial Bias in Policing; Denies Practicing Arrest Quotas”:
“In short, the biggest obstacle to civilian oversight of the police in Berkeley at this time is the City’s delay of the permanent regulations intended to express the will of the voters who overwhelmingly approved the charter amendment in 2020. For police accountability to finally come to Berkeley, the City Attorney’s Office and city management will have to unblock the process.”
By spring of this year, nothing seemed to have changed. We wrote in May 2025 in “The Police Texting Scandal Ends with No One Held Accountable”:
“Unfortunately, the City’s will to empower the Police Accountability Board (PAB) seems absent. While meet-and-confer between city management and the police association, now in its third year, trundles on in secret, the Board is denied its Charter powers.
“These include the power to accept complaints from non-involved community members, and to receive information from City departments related to policy investigations.”
Let’s unpack this process. Meet-and-confer is a state law-mandated labor management process. It is a conversation, in this case, between city management and the police association.
There are important misunderstandings about the meet-and confer process. First, it is only mandatory to meet about management decisions involving wages, hours, or other terms and conditions of employment. The disciplinary process may be considered a condition of employment, but not decisions about use of force policy.
Second, there is no obligation for the two parties to agree. The City must negotiate in good faith, with a sincere desire to reach an agreement, but it is not required to ultimately reach a final agreement or make concessions.
Third, if the parties reach an impasse where further negotiations will not be productive, the City may be permitted to implement its last, best and final offer, even if the police association doesn’t like it.
Fourth, meet-and-confer may not be used to frustrate the city’s ability to implement management decisions. The process is designed to promote communication and resolve disputes, not create an indefinite veto power for the police association over core governmental functions.
Bringing the discussion back to Berkeley, the meet-and-confer was prompted by the overwhelmingly approved charter amendment. Full implementation of the amendment has been frustrated by the very limited interim regulations forced on the PAB pending the negotiation on the permanent regs. This puts the City in an untenable situation, compounded by the extremely long conferring, now at three years.
To blame the PAB for the length of the meet-and-confer is deceptive, as it is not the management body. The responsibility is on the City Manager to protect the decisions of the electorate in the charter amendment, hold the conversation for a reasonable amount of time, then pull the plug on meet-and-confer if it comes to an impasse. That should have happened years ago.
It bears repeating, as we wrote in October of 2024, “that the entire text of Measure ii (the charter amendment creating the PAB) was negotiated for over a year in a previous meet-and-confer process starting in 2018, meaning that much of the proposed permanent regulations had already been negotiated with the police association, before the Measure went to the voters.”
Part Three: The frustrating sidelining of the Police Accountability Board
Berkeleyside reported:
“‘It’s sometimes frustrating that our recommendations are not accepted, sometimes feel dismissed, but we are an advisory board, so they can take our advice or leave it,’ Kitty Calavita, who has been on the board since its inception, told Berkeleyside in a phone interview.
“‘That advice comes from board members with lifetimes of experience in policing and oversight,’ Calavita added.
“‘We have attorneys on our board, we have Ph.D.s on our board, we have people with a lot of relevant experience, so it is often frustrating that our advice is not taken.’”
Berkeley Speaks comment:
The frustration is understandable.
We wrote in our May 2025 article:
“The investigation of the Downtown Street Team / Bike Force texting scandal has come to a dead end. On April 15, 2025, the city council voted overwhelmingly to completely reject the PAB’s investigative report and its recommendations.
“Community members who went all out to pass Measure ii in 2020 were stung by the blunt rejection of the PAB report, first by the council’s Public Safety Committee and finally by the full council. Committee members accepted the staff position that there were no larger problems outside the Bike Team, that the BPD does not tolerate arrest quotas, and that there are no continuing problems. As police officers often say, ‘Move along, nothing to see here.’”
“The Council did approve, on a vote of 8-1, a mild statement offered by Council Member Brent Blackaby. This resolution condemns “any and all racism and misconduct….and affirms its strong opposition to arrest quotas and supports BPD’s existing practice against using arrest quotas.” It urges the state legislature to extend the prohibition on arrest quotas to from the vehicle code to apply to all types of arrests in California.”
Our article then details a number of serious but unaddressed questions that may never be answered due to the abrupt rejection of the PAB report. We concluded with the following:
“City management and the council appear content to rely on formalities such as stated policies to assure the public that there is no issue with the conduct of policing in Berkeley. Council and management are the only bodies with the authority to ensure truly fair and impartial policing.”
Unfortunately, this conclusion still stands.