Is The Reimagining a Farce?
Berkeley’s reimagining public safety efforts appear to be fundamentally broken. Is the city truly committed to this or have we been paid lip service? Can our city leadership be trusted to carry out this vital process?
The facts:
At the July 29 meeting of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force (RIPST), nine of the eleven commissioners present agreed that the reimagining process thus far has been “sorely inadequate” and “one sided.” In addition, trusted sources believe that the City Manager’s office is in “outright opposition to reform.”
Let’s back up a few steps.
Last summer after massive public outcry, the Mayor and City Council tasked the City Manager with reimagining public safety and promised a “robust community engagement process.” A consultant was hired. A task force was created. Meetings convened.
Guess who received the only funds thus far appropriated for reimagining public safety? Yep, you guessed it: the police. A check for $1M to the BPD has likely already been cashed, while service providers who alleviate the urgent crises on our streets still have no reimagining funds allocated.
The police have also had a dominating presence in the RPSTF meetings. In fact, over ⅓ of the task force meeting time has been spent listening to presentations by the BPD. We understand these presentations have been “thrown down their throats” by the City Manager.
But what about the Community Engagement Survey?
Well, the survey was accessible only online, raising the question if people with disabilities, unhoused folks, and those with no access to technology were even reached at all. Not surprisingly, the results were skewed as the respondents were overwhelmingly white women over 40 from affluent neighborhoods. The consultant’s draft report states, “The survey sample was not representative of the Berkeley population with regard to race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, zip code, and age… [emphasis added] The results of this survey are likely to be biased and may not truly reflect community impressions of safety.”
Oh well, so much for the survey.
At least there were townhall and neighborhood meetings to get as many people, especially those most impacted by police, involved in this process, right?
Wrong.
The consultant’s draft report sampled only 55 “stakeholders’’ to represent the entire Berkeley community. This small sampling revealed that Black residents, youth, system-impacted students, and low-income residents experiencing housing/food insecurity “…shared a common perception that policing in Berkeley is racist and classist. They said that they do not look to the BPD for protection and instead feel targeted and unsafe when in their presence.”
There will (supposedly) be district meetings to give feedback to the draft Final Plan, but will our feedback be taken seriously when most of the community continues to be ignored? Will we get ample notice in order to attend these meetings when past RIPST meetings have been so difficult to access?
Meanwhile, trusted sources believe that the City Council is not serious about reallocating the police budget to community services and to proven crime prevention initiatives, and that the City Manager is obstructing this process.
Remember last summer when thousands of people marched to Civic Center Park chanting “Black Lives Matter” and demanding police funds be reallocated? If you were sincere a year ago, now is the time to re-engage in civic involvement. Reconnect with what inspired you to action last summer. Your voice is needed.
Let’s demand the Mayor and Council keep their promise to the people and ensure an authentic reimagining of public safety. We need transparent and accountable leadership of this process, and we need it now.
This article was first published in the Berkeley Times on August, 26, 2021.
