Reimagining Public Safety: The Good, the Bad and the Possibility
On April 21 at a special City Council meeting, after 20 months of work by a dedicated task force and a hired consultant, the City Manager presented her recommendations for reimagining policing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the task. The task was to reimagine public safety; however, the City Manager has consistently shown no interest in that. In fact, she often referred to this process as “reimagining policing.” Her presentation even included new objectives for the process — such as “renewed trust in the BPD” — breaking alignment with the original mandate from the city council (not to mention the task force and the consultant she hired). She also changed one of the three primary goals from “Reduce” (the police footprint) to “Reimagine.” No surprise that her bottom line recommendation was that over 90% of her requested funds goes to the BPD.
Mayor Arreguin wasn’t having it. He spoke of the original vision from July 2020: transforming public safety from police-centered to community-centered by reducing the scope of policing. He went on to say that most of the recommendations don’t align with what the council unanimously voted for in the omnibus bill that initiated this reimagining process.
Half of the council agreed with the mayor that this needed to be a reimagining of public safety and not a reimagining of police. Surprisingly, though, Councilmembers Wengraf, Kesarwani, Droste and Taplin expressed support for ignoring the council’s 2020 mandate and moving the goalposts at the end of the process.
One of the recommendations — to fund a Specialized Care Unit (SCU) pilot program — was unanimously celebrated. The SCU will consist of trained crisis specialists who will respond to behavioral health and substance use crises without the police. This is good news. That said, this is not new. Those funds were already allocated in the FY22 budget last summer.
So what can the council do to fulfill the vision of community-centered public safety? One example is to create a Ceasefire or Advance Peace program now. $200,000 was approved in November, 2021 and nothing has happened. If we start now, in one to two years it could be thriving, with gun violence in Berkeley dramatically on the decline.
Unfortunately, the City Manager wants to go in the opposite direction. She wants to create a special police unit — one to two years from now — to potentially oversee a ceasefire program. Meanwhile, the Berkeley police department continues to abuse its budget, with provenly terrible overtime accountability, undocumented corporate security outsourcing, and growth that significantly outstrips the rate of crime in the city (according to city expenditure records and BPD-provided historical crime data).
Adding layers of bureaucracy and years of delay is dangerous to our community. It would be disrespectful to disregard the community’s outcry for change in the weeks following the murder of George Floyd and it would make a farce of this entire reimagining process. We cannot allow that to happen.
Mayor Arreguin will present his recommendations at another special council meeting on May 5th. That is when the direction of the reimagining process will be clear and funds will be allocated to the FY23/24 budget.
Starting immediately, through May 5th, please call and email your council member — it makes a difference. Also, attend city council meetings to make a non-agenda public comment (especially on May 5th). This is a powerful way you can play a direct role in transforming public safety in Berkeley.
Here is some of what needs to be included in a true reimagining:
Fully fund a community based violence reduction & prevention program — such as Ceasefire — that is not under any BPD direction, to begin work immediately. Failure to do this continues to put our community in harm’s way.
Complete a police staffing assessment and beat structure analysis before approving any new BPD hires.
Implement an SCU pilot program (which is already funded).
Implement the Fair & Impartial Policing recommendations with oversight (there is no oversight in the City Manager’s proposal).
Establish a sobering and crisis stabilization center in our city.
Move school crossing guards out of BPD and into another department.
Continue to advocate at the state legislature for BerkDot.
TOGETHER we can ensure that everyone feels safe when they are in Berkeley! Please do your part. Thank you.
This article was first published in the Berkeley Times on April 28, 2022.
