Berkeley Police Review Commission – Report on December Protests by Police Chief

Categories:

When:
May 27, 2015 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
2015-05-27T19:00:00-07:00
2015-05-27T21:00:00-07:00
Where:
South Berkeley Senior Center, near Ashby Bart
Ashby Avenue & Ellis Street
Berkeley, CA 94703
USA

UPDATE

On Wednesday night, BPD Chief Meehan disclosed to the Police Review Commission that he will not be ready to present the results of their internal investigation on the December police response next week (May 27) as they had promised. He didn’t give any explanation except for saying that they have not finished their report, which they had said would be done by the end of April. Instead, they now say they will present two weeks later, on Wednesday June 10 (more than six months after the fact). So, please save that date.

The PRC is meeting almost every Wednesday for the next couple months, focused on the investigation of the December 6 protest response.

Next week on Wednesday, May 27 the PRC has summoned Chief Meehan to appear and answer our questions.  The questions are extensive and pretty pointed.  They can be found in:

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Police_Review_Commission/Commissions/4-22-15%20PRC%20Minutes%20Approved.pdf

<http://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Police_Review_Commission/Commissions/4-22-15%20PRC%20Minutes%20Approved.pdf>

These minutes also contain the approved PRC Policy Investigation Plan, including the meeting dates through July.

Chief Meehan also promised to release the long-awaited internal report on December and there will probably be questions about that.

I highly recommend people come to this meeting.  In general, public attendance has dwindled to almost nothing.  That’s too bad, because this is a setting in which important questions about how to constrain police behavior are being publicly debated.

A couple weeks ago the PRC voted to recommend more restrictions on the Suspicious Activity Reporting  to the NCRIC fusion center.  This puts more explicit language about constitutional protections in the BPD General Order N-17 on SARs.  It is not the abolition of ties to NCRIC that many people have sought, but it is an opening to talk about this domestic spying network that Berkeley participates in.  And unlike the other item, on crowd control, this one is a final recommendation that is on its way to the city council.

For the current policy, see

http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/uploadedFiles/Police/Level_3_-_General/GO%20N-17_18Sept12.pdf

<http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/uploadedFiles/Police/Level_3_-_General/GO%20N-17_18Sept12.pdf>

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