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…
by Tracy Rosenberg The 2025 California state legislative session wrapped up on October 13, 2025. As Berkeley Speaks readers know, we are in a time of a severe backlash to the justice concerns raised so effectively in the earlier years…
By Micky Duxbury In 2021, Maurice Monk lay motionless for three days in his Alameda County jail cell. Body camera videos showed sheriff’s deputies and nurses from Wellpath, the for-profit jail healthcare company, throwing his meals and medications through a…
May 2025 marks five years since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, spurring the national examination of race and policing, and a movement to reimagine public safety. As we’ve reported in this space in previous issues (see “Berkeley…
by Micky Duxbury Yuri Brand had a lengthy history with Alameda County Sheriff’s Office as he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had several encounters with the criminal justice system often related to his serious mental illness. After breaking into a…
In our last edition (Volume 1, Issue 3, September 2023), we continued our coverage of the Berkeley Police Department racist and anti-homeless texting scandal. At that time the external investigation of the downtown bike team had concluded. Though it was…
By John Lindsay-Poland, American Friends Service Committee Please join advocates on Tuesday October 29 at 10:00 am and give a two-minute public comment to ban scattershot weapons, and to change authorized uses for projectile weapons to better protect our community. In person:…
Half a year after a set of scandals beset the police department in Berkeley, threatening to derail the appointment of interim chief Jen Louis as the new permanent police chief, city leaders moved recently to put the episode behind them.…
Pamela Price is the new District Attorney (DA), or chief prosecutor, of Alameda County. She was just elected in November 2022, and has been in office barely half a year. She is a reformer, one of many “progressive prosecutors” across…
Berkeley has a council/manager form of government, as opposed to a “strong mayor” government as bigger cities like Oakland and San Francisco have. This means that power is divided between the city council, which includes the mayor, and the city…