Berkeley council to consider police oversight, accountability reforms

BERKELEY — More than two years after “racist” texts among some Berkeley Police Department officers were exposed, the Police Accountability Board is seeking clearer support from the council to conduct investigations and update police department policies to prevent similar violations from occurring.

The Police Accountability Board, which includes nine members of the public appointed by the city council, has put forward four recommendations.

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They ask that the council affirm the body’s ability to access documents and records as part of investigations; adopt a resolution “ensuring full and meaningful accountability” of officers who engage in misconduct on or off duty; direct the city manager to work with the police department, Police Accountability Board and the Office of the Director of Police Accountability to create a public database of substantiated officer misconduct; and to call on the state to expand prohibitions on arrest quotas.

“Our intent is not only to identify specific shortcomings in (Berkeley Police Department) policies and practices, but to provide concrete steps toward rectifying them,” read a July 2024 report by the Police Accountability Board which outlines and justifies the recommendations.

The council is slated to consider the recommendations during its next meeting on April 15. That discussion will come almost two months after the council’s Public Safety Policy Committee, made up by councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Shoshana O’Keefe and Brent Blackaby, gave the proposal a negative recommendation during a Feb. 25 committee meeting.

Police Chief Jennifer Louis has already responded to the Police Accountability Board’s recommendations in a letter dated Feb. 18. She said the department intends to work collaboratively with the Police Accountability Board and the Office of the Director of Police Accountability.

Louis noted the city is in conversation with the Berkeley Police Officer’s Association regarding how much access the Police Accountability Board has to department records as part of creating permanent regulation for the board’s handling of investigations and complaints.

On increasing training on stay-away orders, an issue a former officer said was abused to boost arrests, Louis said updates to the department’s training program are driven by legal mandates, data analysis, audits, timely legal updates and early intervention efforts. Citing an independent investigation by law firm Swanson & McNamara and internal assessments, Louis said additional stay-away order training measures are not warranted at this time.

What recommendations are ultimately pursued will require robust stakeholder engagement, funding and alignment with existing practices to avoid interruptions to the delivery of “core services at the high standards set by the council, the community and ourselves,” Louis said.

“Our department remains committed to effective oversight, accountability, and continuous improvement,” Louis wrote in the response. “We believe these efforts must be rooted in our core departmental priorities and established practices to enhance public safety and operational efficiency.”

The recommendations and related ongoing conversation between policy makers and the police department stems from revelations made in November 2022 regarding controversial text messages sent between members of the department’s Downtown Task Force Bike Unit.

The text messages contained “racist attitudes, animosity towards the unhoused” and “more or less explicit, perhaps informal, seemingly jocular” pressure to reach arrest quotas, according to the Police Accountability Board’s report.

Former Berkeley Police Officer and task force member Corey Shedoudy and the nonprofit Secure Justice publicly shared the texts after a termination process against Shedoudy commenced. The texts were later authenticated during the investigation by Swanson & McNamara, according to the Police Accountability Board report which notes a report on that investigation has not been made public.

A statistical analysis by the Police Accountability Board of arrests by the Downtown Task Force between October 2019 and November 2022 – the period when the texts were sent – show the task force far exceeded the arrest numbers of other department officers and that those arrests disproportionately affected Black residents.

Alternatively, Swanson & McNamara’s investigation found the department did not have arrest quotas or a practice of racial bias, according to comments shared by city spokesperson Matthai Chakko which were cited in the Police Accountability Board’s report.

Ultimately, the Police Accountability Board argues reforms and proper oversight would prevent similar “harmful incidents” from occurring in the future and the council’s support would be of “great symbolic value.”

“These policy reforms are one important step,” the Police Accountability Board report read. “However, policy reforms are only meaningful to the extent that they are fully understood, implemented, and robustly enforced.”