As Spring 2023 approaches, how goes the process of putting Reimagining public safety into practice? In our last issue (November 2022), we explained the landscape of change that emerged from the Reimagining process. In this issue we report on the status of a number of initiatives that the city council has committed to since 2020.
It is exciting to see some of the Reimagining Public Safety recommendations close to coming online, or already in place. These include:
- The Specialized Care Unit (SCU) to provide non-police responses to mental health crises will be up and running by the summer, in the interim bridge services were funded for peer outreach and services, substance use interventions and recovery options, and outreach to encampments.
- Police officers are now barred from searching civilians on parole or probation for nonviolent offenses, except for reasonable suspicion of a crime.
Other initiatives, however, have been spinning their wheels for months or even years.
- The violence prevention program called Ceasefire, which does not depend on police intervention, was granted $2 million in city funding in June 2022, but at this point it is described by a Council aide as “stalled.”
- BPD’s attempt to meet the Council’s mandate to end pretextual traffic stops is flawed. (See our article on the Tainted BPD Bike Unit in this issue.)
- Progress on the Early Intervention System (EIS), a program to uncover over-policing of civilians of color and other officer issues, needs to be understood better. (See the Bike Unit article.)
These changes, if implemented, could have a huge impact on eliminating racial disparities in stops, searches and use of force. In so doing, they would help relieve the negative legal, physical, financial, psychological, and other burdens carried particularly by African American and Latinx community members.
Berkeley Speaks Recommends:
Berkeley Speaks newspaper calls on the city’s leaders to move without delay to make sure that neither the Bike Team, nor any other unit of the BPD, are practicing biased policing against unhoused people, particularly using illegal arrest quotas.
The Berkeley community needs a strong voice with which to influence civic leaders to follow through on their commitments to reimagine public safety and to eliminate racial disparities in policing, including:
- Find out what is stalling the violence prevention program (Ceasefire) and tap into the $2 million allocated in June to finally get the program going;
- Direct the city manager to revamp BPD stop policies to bring them in line with emerging standards to prevent racial profiling;
- Fully implement the Early Intervention System (EIS) to identify and re-train outlier officers.
This paper recommends that we keep the Warming Center open year-round until we have enough shelter beds or housing affordable to very poor people. We also recommend that Consider the Homeless be awarded $50,000 for their part in the homeless industry’s successes and shortcomings.
And on the state level:
Berkeley has an outsize influence in the state government in Sacramento. In this issue we begin a column about pending legislation of particular interest to social justice in Berkeley. One state bill stands out this year as must-pass legislation, along with one that should not pass.
State Senator Steven Bradford’s SB50 would halt pretextual police stops that promote racial profiling, and by doing so, jump-start Berkeley’s journey to fair and impartial policing.
A matched set of Republican anti-homeless bills, SB31 and AB257, would criminalize sitting or lying within a thousand feet of many facilities. These offenses are crimes of poverty. They are scapegoating, they are wrong-headed, and unfortunately, they attract the support of Democrats as well as Republicans.
Contact your legislators and Governor Newsom to say yes on SB50 and no on SB31 and AB257.