Racial Profiling by Berkeley Police Worsens
History continues to repeat itself in Berkeley. This will not stop unless there is a shift from what’s comfortable to what’s just, a shift from lip service to courage and integrity, a shift from racist policing, to true public safety.
For over eight years, Berkeley’s leaders claimed to champion eliminating racial disparities in policing. In 2018, they created the Fair & Impartial Policing Task Force to address the gross racial disparities found in the Center for Policing Equity’s report about BPD stop data. The report found that “Black persons in Berkeley were about 6.5 times more likely per capita than White persons to be stopped while driving, and 4.5 times more likely to be stopped on foot.”
Unfortunately, according to the 2022 BPD stop data, racial profiling has gotten worse, not better. Black people are now 7 times more likely per capita than white people to get stopped while driving, and almost 9 times more likely to be stopped on foot.
How did this happen?
In 2015, a coalition of community and student groups (including the Berkeley NAACP and UC Berkeley’s Black Student Union) released an initial analysis of BPD stop data that showed gross disparities in stops. Then, the Center for Policing Equity released a report in 2018 that was even more damning. In response, the Mayor’s Fair & Impartial Policing Task Force was created.
In December 2020, as the task force was preparing to release its roadmap of recommendations to create racially just policing in Berkeley, a key accountability clause was rejected by a majority of the task force, including the mayor. A few task force members were concerned that without it, their collective vision was doomed.
What was the accountability clause? “If the City Manager does not ensure that the Police Department implements the plan in accordance with the timeline, the City Council should replace the City Manager.” Fair enough. The buck has to stop somewhere if change is going to happen. The task force had already concluded that the city manager had failed in her essential responsibility to implement the overwhelming majority of previous city council directives to address racial disparities in Berkeley policing. In fact, a number of task force members issued a statement that said, “This lack of implementation by the city manager was one of the central reasons for the creation of this working group.”
In February 2021, the city council unanimously approved a sweeping list of recommendations from the Fair & Impartial Policing Task Force, and it was the city manager’s job to implement these recommendations. But without the accountability clause, as expected, efforts to reduce racial profiling in Berkeley failed.
On May 9, the council is scheduled to vote on whether to promote Interim Police Chief Louis to permanent chief. The city manager wants this promotion. She wants us to disregard the racial profiling that worsened under Louis’ leadership. She wants us to continue to ignore the substantiated allegations of Louis’ sexual misconduct. She wants us to ignore the ongoing investigations that paused Louis’ confirmation last November.
We say enough is enough. If not now, when? If not us, who? Let’s change Berkeley TOGETHER!
NO to Jen Louis, YES to Community Safety ~ JOY & Justice! Rally before City Council Meeting
May 9th ~ 4:30pm ~ 1231 Addison Street
And contact your councilmember and say NO to Louis, YES to courage, integrity and equity!
This article was first published in the Berkeley Times on April 27, 2023.
