Meeting of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ Ad Hoc Committee on Urban Area Security Initiative, charged with reconstituting and rethinking Urban Shield.
The committee was established by the Board of Supervisors in March 2018 in response to sustained community concerns about Urban Shield, which is funded in part by UASI grants from the Department of Homeland Security, and coordinated by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
The Board of Supervisors decided in March, 2018 that 2018 would be the last year the county would approve Urban Shield, as currently constituted, and asked the Ad Hoc Committee to make recommendations to the Board on the UASI-funded emergency preparedness training and exercise in 2019 and beyond.
The agenda will include a presentation and Q/A with county emergency preparedness officials (from ACSO, Public Health, and Social Services); a discussion of criteria for weighing recommendations; and a presentation about community-based emergency preparedness initiatives.
More information.
Agendas and materials for each meeting are posted at http://www.acgov.org/board/calendarcom.htm
Facebook Event:
After forays to Fremont and Castro Valley, the task force charged with implementing the transition from the “last Urban Shield as we know it” to a different kind of emergency preparedness training, will be meeting in Berkeley in the City Council chambers on the 19th.
The task force is countywide, so any Alameda resident is welcome, although the intent of meeting in each supervisor’s district is to make it easier for local constituents.
For more on the task force’s work, the meetings to date and the long process to transform the police militarization expo: https://www.afsc.org/story/alameda-county-emergency-preparedness-uasi-and-post-urban-shield-resources
The task force has to deal with a funding cycle in process, Alameda’s desires to both retain the funding and to transform the event, and the Department of Homeland Security, so the challenge is not small.
Oakland Privacy, a regional citizens group that protects privacy and works on surveillance and overpolicing issues, made some recommendations to the task force here: https://oaklandprivacy.org/2018/10/25/rebooting-alameda-county-emergency-preparedness/
A report back from the 2018 event from MA director Tracy Rosenberg, who attended the last urban Shield as we knew it.
https://medium.com/p/67bfeaaeeaba
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