Hello, everyone.

Good afternoon.

I'm calling to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council today.

It's Tuesday, November 18th, 2025.

And Clerk, could you please start us off with role?

Certainly.

Councilmember Kessarwani is absent.

Kaplan is absent.

Bartlett is absent.

Trigum.

Classan.

Oh, Keith.

Here.

Blackaby.

Here.

Here.

Humbert.

Present.

And Mayor Ishi.

Here.

All right.

Thank you very much.

So this is a special meeting.

So we just have one item on our agenda, the 2024 Police Accountability Board and Office of the Director of Police Accountability Annual Report.

And so I'm going to just turn it over to you all.

Just so folks know the way we're going to do this is they're going to make a presentation and then we'll ask questions and then we'll do public comment if there's any public comments only on this item.

And then any comments that we have left, we'll come back to the council.

Okay.

Alright, turning it over.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of council, colleagues who are tuned in, uh, present in Zoom and members of the public.

We appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

Uh my name is Hansu Aguilar.

I'm the city's director of police accountability.

To my right, uh, you have our our chair of the police accountability board, Joshua Caetano.

And to my left is uh Jose Murillo, he's our policy analyst for our office.

Uh and just tuned in at the office, ready to be on standby with tech support on our end.

We have our uh investigator Dan Weinberg in our data analyst, um Sae Medie.

And we also have uh one of our UC Cal um uh interns for the year, Esther Fan, uh they're back in uh the office.

We appreciate the opportunity to come before you.

The city charter in section 12516 requires us to do an annual report and the structures it very specifically.

So this is our second iteration under the new model, uh, and we're going to just outline to you what we're gonna discuss today.

Uh, next slide, please.

So we're gonna do uh a gentle overview of the PAB and the ODPA's uh powers and duties, our investigative processes, procedures, complaint data, overview of the PABs policy work, uh, our outreach that we've done uh in the last year, uh, and we'll discuss the BPD transit patterns in vehicle and pedestrian stops and other enforcement activities, and also some challenges and recommendations.

Uh next slide, please.

Uh, one of the things that just a gentle reminder is important that we have uh a hybrid system of of oversight in in here, which is um uh was purposeful under the um enhanced oversight program.

So when we went from the police review commission, uh both the staff and the commissioners were housed under this one entity, the police review commission.

Now we have the police accountability board, which is our nine appointed community members, and the office of director of police accountability.

We're interdependent entities that work together to do uh oversight of the Berkeley Police Department.

Our uh jurisdiction is of the sworn police department officers.

Uh the department does have civilian um employees in our office does not have authority or jurisdiction over um their personnel activities.

Um it's important to note the different um purposes of both the PAB and the ODPA.

The PAB is has a broader sort of mandate and policy practices procedures review, and our chair's gonna go over that of some of the activities they've been doing.

Uh, our role as the office, uh, we're the um investigative arm, uh, but we're also the administrative arm of the um the entity here of the oversight system, and we provide a day-to-day work uh that supports the PAB, and we work together, just checks and balances uh between our entities.

Uh next slide, please.

Good afternoon, council members.

First, I just want to acknowledge and apologize that this report is coming in November 2025 when it is the 2024 annual report.

Um so there may be things that um bridge from 2024, but are still relevant today, just to acknowledge that um up front.

In terms of the PAB's powers and duties, we really do have two primary um duties and one power.

The first duty is to make recommendations on policy, and I think that all counts the council has seen that um over the course of this year, and I wanted to highlight a few of those things later on in this presentation about what we did in 2024 with respect to that um duty.

The second is to make findings on allegations of misconduct, um, and with that we pair with the director of police accountability.

He presents findings to us and we make recommendations to the chief of police, and if there's a disagreement, we submit those um to the city manager for a final determination.

And our primary power, which is identified in the charter, is to access records of city departments to compel attendance of sworn employees of the police department, and to exercise the power of subpoena as necessary to carry out our functions, which includes both our oversight responsibility, all of our oversight responsibilities, including the ability to make recommendations on policy.

Okay, and back to me again.

Our office also has uh enumerated powers and duties.

Uh, one of the things that I just emphasize here, um, although we are separate entities, um, our role is also to ensure that the board is being supported.

Uh, there is uh sort of clause in the um in the charter that I think is important to highlight um that the office and director uh we it shall carry out the work of the board as described therein and include the day-to-day operations.

Uh, but it also has this uh very interesting clause that says the operations of the board office and staff.

Um, so the board office uh it's it's just very interesting.

Uh clause there because uh there is no separate board office.

Uh, the office of director of police accountability has been the de facto board uh staff.

So that um has uh in from time to time um also limited our ability to to provide them more um of the the sort of support that they need to carry out their important uh policy procedures function.

Uh additionally, one of the again, I'll emphasize that our personnel investigations is one of our main functions and powers and duties here.

And the language here is uh timely, thorough, complete objective and fair investigations into the complaint.

Uh I'll also just take the note here that we did receive some questions uh before this meeting, and I'll um be uh providing some responses uh after the fact, and all we're also happy to provide uh responses to any questions that may come uh from this presentation.

But uh I highlight there that that um language of timely thorough complete objective and fair investigations because it will be something that will come up later today.

And um the other function of our office is to meet periodically with stakeholders, uh, including but not limited employee organizations, representative officers, organizations promoting civil rights and liberties and organizations representing communities of color and solicit them input solicit their input uh regarding the work of the police accountability board and officer directory.

Next slide, please.

Okay, and now we're going to give a gentle overview of our investigative uh process procedures uh and complaint data.

Our uh policy analyst, Jose Murillo is going to just uh walk us through that.

You uh good afternoon, mayor council members.

Um, as the director mentioned, my name's José Moria.

I'm the policy analyst with our office.

Um, along with the director, I've been um within this position for a little bit over three years now, so I've gotten um quite familiar with our investigations process.

Um, just as a quick overview, uh, we are a complaint-driven system, which means that we have to receive uh complaint from a member of the public, and we don't have the uh current authority to self-initiate complaints uh that could lead up to personal investigation, which is different uh from our policy review process where the board can self-initiate um investigations or reviews into policy.

Um, so with that noted, um complainants have to submit their complaint to us within 180 days of the alleged misconduct.

Uh, we notify officers within 28 days of receiving that complaint.

Uh, what proceeds is an investigation that we're allotted 120 days uh with the opportunity for uh an extension up to 190, if I'm correct, 195.

Um, which during that time we'll be interviewing our complainants, um, involved officer or involved sworn officers, um, any additional witnesses along with the material such as body warrant camera, um, any incident reports and other relevant material.

Um, and that whole process is completed within the 240 day uh period.

This year, in terms of our the complaints received, just a quick overview of what the year was like for us.

Uh, we received 53 complaints or 53 complaints.

Uh, within those complaints, there are 459 allegations which were investigated.

Um, and out of the 53 complaints received in 2024, 51 of those complaints were closed.

Of those allegations, in 2024, 97 of them were also reviewed by the chiefs of police after board consideration.

Of the 97 allegations reviewed, six of them resulted in sustained findings by the board.

And the chief agreed with one of those leading to a sustained rate of 16.67%.

In terms of the allegations that were elevated to the city manager's office as part of our process, when there's a disagreement between the findings of the PAB and the Chief, seven of those were made to the city manager's office, and the city manager sustained three, which led to an agreement rate of those findings of 42.86%.

And I'll now hand it back to Chair Cayetano for the overview of the PEP's policy practice and procedures work.

Could you just go back one slide?

So I just wanted to point out for the council two things.

Um the first is that the agreement rate between the city manager and the PAB is 42.86%.

Last time that we presented our annual report, that was at zero.

And so I think that that signals more of an alignment between the city manager's office and the PAB's findings than was there previously.

Um the second thing I wanted to note is that we have received 97 out uh allegations, but there are a number of policies that are actually very difficult for complaint complainants to actually submit um an allegation of a complaint.

So for example, if if if an officer, we mentioned this earlier at a previous council meeting, if an officer improperly muted their body worn camera, or improperly didn't or did not act activate their body worn camera when policy says they were supposed to, there's no way for a complainant to actually identify that because they don't have access to the body camera right now.

And so these things are uh evade um public review, um, and so these things might not be captured by the SATA right here.

There are there are a whole swath of other policies, um, and if the council's interested, we could provide that information to you.

Okay, let's get to the next slide.

Thank you.

So I wanted to highlight for the council um some things that were only cursorily mentioned in the report, um, and that is our and just to flesh it out a little bit for you.

The the POB does a ton of policy work, and in 2024, we did a lot.

Um, but our policy work is in general constrained by bandwidth by the members of the board who are volunteers.

And we in 2024, I believe we had six active board members, and today we also have six.

Um, and a couple of those board members who are who are very active are constrained within our regulations negotiations process.

Their band, their bandwidth is almost completely taken up by that.

Um, but in terms of the 2024 policy work that we did, next slide, please.

Next slide after that.

Um, one of the first items um that we submitted in 2024 was the texting offenses report.

And the council heard this um in April, I believe, of this year.

And I just wanted to highlight that in 2024, the PAB used its subpoena power for the first time time to access the underlying records for the texting offense, and also um the final report that was submitted to council um and that was reviewed by the city attorney's office.

We didn't have access to that for about a year, and it took us about a year or two for the board to actually step up and um uh assert its subpoena power to access those records.

So after that happened, we then submitted our final report, and um it wasn't until this year actually that the council heard the findings of that report, and I wanted to acknowledge that there was a resolution that the council issued um condemning any and all racism and misconduct, affirming the city council's opposition to arrest quotas and asking the California legislature to extend the prohibition on arrest quotas, which are currently limited to the California Vehicle Code.

And at that council meeting, um, as a follow-on from the 2024 report, um, the council also signaled maybe an interest in a future arrest quota policy.

And um at our last meeting, the the deputy chief Tate actually proposed language to us that I I personally support, and I would ask um, and and I would expect that would be coming before this council at a future meeting to you.

Um, this language specifically would introduce into BPD policy that no member of the department shall establish or enforce any quotas for arrests or citations.

And that is a recommendation that was directly a product of our 2024 report.

Next slide, please.

We also, another milestone achievement was um the fair and impartial policing report, which was the product of a task force that was initiated in 2021 in response to a 2018 report and the unrest in 2020, and that identification that Berkeley actually had huge racial disparities in 2020 that it needed to address.

And so, in response to that um report, BPD implemented a number of strategies around traffic enforcement, and um we and council heard um and actually received a joint recommendation this year um accepting BPD's policy policy changes.

But one thing that was a recommendation in our fair and impartial policing report that we still um recommend this count action that it's still um pending action that we recommend council take is to really measure the effectiveness of BPD's three-pronged approach because we understand that it's been put into policy, but narrowing the racial disparity gaps should is a goal of that policy, and it should be measured against the policies that BPD implemented.

I also want to acknowledge that one of the one of the implementation pieces from this fair and impartial policing report was the early intervention system, which the council approved in um earlier this year and is currently set to be rolled out um next month, I believe.

And there is an entire um policy that will be dedicated toward identifying and supporting officers before misconduct could even take place in a non-punitive manner.

And I I appreciate the council for supporting that measure as a result of this report.

Next slide, please.

The next is our regulation negotiations, which um believe it or not, we're also continuing in 2024 and in 2023.

Um, just for a little bit more historical context, we passed our final regulations, our draft final regulations in April 2023, and we began to engage in the meet and confer process in June, November 2023, all the way through November.

Um, and then in November, um we the city let go.

Our first labor negotiator dismissed him, and in March, the city hired a second labor negotiator, March 2024, excuse me.

After the second labor negotiator was hired, um, there there began a different process, and the PAB entered a different process where we began internal city stakeholder negotiations, not with the union, but also with um internal city stakeholders, including the city manager's office, the chief of police, and the HR department, in order to come to a more consensus-driven model.

Um, and you know, I really would encourage um council to set the closed session that will decide some issues that even the city's internal city stakeholders um are struggling with right now because right now our members are meeting you know two days a week, three-hour meetings each, um, and it really hampers our ability to get other policy work done, which I think is important to the city as well.

Um, and so I know that council is aware of the prolonged negotiations, and um I'm looking forward to um passing the final regulations when they come before you.

Next slide, please.

We also did two other pieces of um work um of policy work.

The first happened in our policy subcommittee, and I wanted to highlight this because I thought it was a great example of the PAB and BPD working together.

For nine months, BPD and PAV met to revise um BPD 307 vehicle proceeds policy, and we really came to um a meeting of the minds on most of the provisions, in fact, all but one provision in the in the policy.

And I thought that there was a very productive um discussion where it was an exchange of reasons, exchange of best practices, um, and we really developed a trust in that in that in that in that relationship.

Um, and this was all this all happened before BPD actually issued its policy 307.

So it didn't issue this policy until it had gone through you know in this case nine months of um discussions with the PAB at the end of that process um we the PAB had one recommendation around um the use of forcible pursuit intervention techniques um that this year the PAB submitted to the city manager's office um and I expect that we will you know come back to that in the future um because the recommendation that came out of out of these negotiations was really to heighten um to heighten the standard before which Berkeley police officers could initiate a forcible inter pursuit intervention technique on the streets of Berkeley um because right now it's subject to a reasonability um balancing test which is very difficult to apply in the heat of the moment instead we just our the PAB in 2024 we recommended that BPD adopt what many other jurisdictions including San Francisco adopted and that is applying the use of deadly force standard so if there's an immediate apprehension of reasonably of um about of reasonable excuse me apprehension of bodily injury or a death something like that um and so that recommendation um will likely be coming before council in the future as well the other recommendation that we made was came out of our budget subcommittee which one of the council members was actually on um council member blackaby um and we um recommended uh a transparent budget process because one of our one of our powers um permissive powers is to review BPD's budget now the difficulty with that is that every budget cycle only the additions to BPD's budget are actively reviewed by council and so we really um looking forward to ask council to um allow the PAB to review not just the additional requests but also the other 99.5% of BPD's budget um that isn't normally reviewed year to year in order to make um a recommendation in light of resource constraints that the city is facing turn it over uh that's me again our office again uh you could advance and well I'll just quickly over there that was um was that take back tonight or what um what event was the deal we call it national night excuse me uh this was uh I was at the national night out event um this one of our former investigators Keegan and myself um we uh make it an effort to be out the community events um even considering our restrained um you know personnel resources want to make sure that community members know about our office uh in and the work that we're doing and they feel comfortable coming to us so that's usually our setup that you see um at these events um we Juneteenth is another keynote event that we that might actually be GT that I think about it but um those are the events that we try to be at with the community members and have a dialogue and conversations with them uh I'll briefly also just highlight a few of the engagement activities that we did um one thing that we need to celebrate and the council did celebrate with us well excuse me uh was that uh we're 50 years into our program uh in even this year uh council um passed uh the um the recognition of the police accountability day which we'll celebrate on April 16 moving forward or April 15th rather uh moving forward uh in with 50 years in a lot of communities uh not only in the Bay Area in California but across the region or across the country rather reach out to us because of our expertise in in our experience in civilian oversight and I think we um it's important to um emphasize that which tradition that we have here um the other thing that we did uh last year um in preparation for our annual review of the use of force policy we had use of forced forums uh we didn't during the summer uh be transparent they weren't well attended but they gave us the opportunity these virtual forums to have conversations and go over the policy on use of force.

And I would say there's uh there's a a lot of uh I think areas where we're leading the way and use of force.

We have one of the most robust use of force policies in comparison to other communities.

In fact, at our recent NACO conference, um, former commissioner uh George Perez Valez uh was highlighting how robust our use of force policy here at Berkeley is.

So again, we in that regard, I think we are national sort of model for other uh police departments and oversight entities to look at.

Uh we have participated in different conferences, both regionally and nationally, and presented at them.

Uh, one of the uh unique opportunities we got presented this uh past year was uh I got uh the opportunity to sit in uh to uh collaborate with other um public safety practitioners, police and practitioners uh with the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training, which is post uh on uh learning domain um on uh uh police officers' interactions with diverse communities uh and it was focused uh particularly in our LGBTQ community and police officers and uh I was really proud of the work we did there.

That uh work is actually used at book product to train officers across the state.

So uh our office gets tapped into those opportunities and want to make sure that we're representing the city well.

Uh, we're continuing as you see there, uh Lucky who's not present with you before today.

My mom's in town, so we spend some time with her.

Uh, he's our therapy animal.

We're happy to keep expanding on that program.

We keep taking him to a community outreach.

Uh, he was at this uh post-training as well, and um there was a lot of uh peting that was taking place there and continuing to expand the uh work on animal assisted interventions.

And I'll go ahead and now turn it over to another meeting part of our report, which is our BPD trends uh analysis on patterns in vehicle uh pedestrian stops and other enforcement activities.

Again, this is charter uh bound um language that that we uh uh we're required to report on for our uh annual report.

And I would say uh again to uplift another uh element of our oversight duties that this work is done uh uh very this is one of the areas of the work that is done um uh uh more uh with less effort because the data is very available through the transparency hub.

So that's very helpful.

I've been in other jurisdictions and I know other practitioners that uh when it comes to getting basic data, uh, they they really struggle with it, and they're like, How are you doing it?

How did you get the the Berkeley police department to do the transparency of?

I wish I could take credit, but we didn't uh and it's it's helpful that that data is available for this part of the report.

Thank you, Director.

Um, an overview of the stop data for 2024.

Uh we did provide a comparison of the triannual period uh we presented to council last year.

Um, as an overview, the in total in 2024, there are 4,773 stops in terms of the patterns that were observed.

Those some of the racial disparities that have been highlighted in previous reports and the Pabs FIP work, um, continue to persist at about the similar level.

Um again, one of the questions that gets brought up is in terms of how we make this assessment.

Uh in our report, um, in comparison to the BPDs, we use a population-based comparison uh compared to the BP's uh Veil of Darkness and the other um methods that they used in their report.

Um in terms of the levels of citations, arrests, and psychiatric holds, uh, which were highlighted in our previous years, and in this current report, uh, the level remains consistent to prior years.

Um, and the majority of stops were observed to be around distance districts one, two, three, and four, um, primarily around along major roadways as one would expect for this kind of stop.

Um, in terms of use of force trends, there were 294 use of force incidents reported by BP by the BPD uh in 2024.

Uh, folks from the Black and African American community involved were involved in 154 incidents, 154 incidents, which is roughly 57.83 percent.

Uh folks identified they're perceived to be as white over 96 incident, 96 incidents, uh, which constitutes about 29.81%.

Um, and then Hispanic, the Hispanic Latino, Latinx community, uh, were about 45 incident or 45 incidents to about 13.98%.

And the other categories, which include Asian biracial, Native American Indian are unknown, uh, constituted 16 incidents with uh 5.44%.

Um, one question that we received and comes up to us frequently from members of the public trying to understand the data is why, if there is only 294 incidents, we see 742 officers or 322 subjects, or in other instances, just the number of uses force.

The reason for that is that each incident could involve multiple officers applying different um types of force.

So that's why you get the disproportionate numbers, which might be confusing at an initial glance.

In the calendar year 2024, officers completed a total of 7,000 7,065 hours of training.

Particularly within those uh in terms of the categories uh specific, those were the topics.

Um tactical and operations were 2,800, um, approximately 2,860 of those hours, followed by management leadership, uh, which made up 2,390 hours.

Uh conference and seminars were 1,437, uh technology and systems were 198 and a half, uh legal and legislative uh update training were 180 hours.

And now now I'll pass it back to our director.

If I may add something, um, one thing that the department noted in their their annual report this year was that they're going to eliminate the level one use of force reporting requirements.

So, you know, next time this year or in March, you may see a decrease in the number.

Um, and that too was a policy change that was made without any input from really this council or the PAB.

And so, you know, our desire is to look and make a recommendation on that um prior to them implementing that, which I believe has not happened yet.

Um, and if the council's interested in that, we can proceed um along those grounds.

Thank you.

Uh this is the uh final um stage of our presentation here, um, where we just talk about some of the challenges and recommendations.

Um, so in 2024, um, uh, as a continuation of the sort of narrative and discussion we had uh in the triannual report, we talked about some of the challenges that that we uh face.

Uh I'll also caveat by saying it that uh in transition uh phases going from one model to another, one iteration of the model to another, is not uncommon for uh programs and jurisdictions to face some of these growing pains.

So I think part of it is uh associated with that.

The other thing is to really ensure that we're institutionalizing the independence of the program here uh in a way that respects the charter language.

So just generally speaking, we saw incomplete um implementation of charter initiatives, disputes regarding the scope of authority, uh some operational constraints uh on staffing in classification challenges, infrastructure and IT delays.

Uh again, I mentioned earlier in the presentation that the charter talks about board staff, uh, but then also distinctly talks about the ODPA staff.

And in practice, this has just been one set of staff.

So I think uh the framers of the constitution of this charter, excuse me, had a uh envisioned at least at the way I read the charter, where there was at least board dedicated staff that were separate from the ODPA staff given our distinct duties and powers and responsibilities.

Okay.

Um, somebody uh recommendations uh we noted in the report was to finalize and adopt permanent oversight regulations.

Our chair discussed that process in history, uh, and that's underway.

Uh address racial disparities of police staffs and use of force.

Our policy analysts discussed uh our differences in benchmarking and why we may see uh or be talking about the same thing in different ways between us and the police department.

Uh we're utilizing uh residential uh population as a benchmark.

The uh department may be utilizing other uh techniques like uh veil of darkness.

Uh and this is also part of ongoing a public safety conversation in criminology, how we assess um disparities in policing.

Uh we noted that we need to enhance public uh engagement.

There have been times where we see a lot of community engagement in the work that we're doing, and other times where uh we wish that there were more folks uh available to engage with us.

And uh we note our responsibility there.

Uh we're trying to make these community relationships and be at places uh where um where we need to be and engage with the community, strength strengthened oversight of surveillance and specialized units.

Um that was um related mostly to the downtown task force report and and some of the conversation regarding their uh support subcommittee engagement and policy reform capacity.

Okay, in uh next slide.

Okay.

And uh we also provided our office some additional uh recommendations as well in the noted in the report, uh, establish oversight-specific civil service classifications, and that is uh one of the questions that we uh or it would be related to one of the questions we received ahead of this presentation, um, enhance infrastructure and IT coordination for charter compliance, adopt standardized uh complaint subcategorization and improved trends analysis, ensure adequate resources for civilian oversight operations, invest in youth engagement and inclusive outreach, and I will say from our part we're undergoing a lot of that uh relationship building this past year, which is not presented in this report, but will be in next year uh report.

We had the opportunity to host a youth uh works cohort, so we're really proud of that relationship, and we uh plan on uh expanding it.

Um at this time, I want to stop the presentation here.

Um I don't know if our um chair wants to add any concluding remarks.

Um, we're just happy to answer any questions.

I think that for the next annual report, I think it would be beneficial if we were to present at a time at or around um the department's annual report um to to have that alignment there, and we could commit to that.

And one quick question, Madam Mayor, uh, we did have uh some of the responses available for the questions we received ahead of time.

I don't know if you wanted us to start from there or if you had a different flow.

Yeah, we can just ask them.

I mean, so just so folks know some of us sent questions ahead of time just to give them a heads up and in that way you could prepare some of your responses.

So hopefully that was helpful, and we'll just ask them and you can answer them then.

Sure.

Um, so speaking of, does anyone have any questions?

I know you do, but oh, sorry.

Well, if I turned on the parliamentarian, it would tell me who had questions.

Um, so starting with Council Member Lunapara, and thank you all so much for the presentation.

Thank you so much.

Um, I have a couple of questions.

The do you can you outline the requirements and procedures for PAB involvement in BPD policy discussions as it is explained in the charter?

There's there's no criteria.

It says that we are able to review BPD policies, practices, and procedures.

And so we are able to either initiate our own uh review, or we receive um policy complaints from the public, um, that the board can accept or reject, and we have built out this year a criteria of factors um to consider public interest, board member capacity, BPD interest, um, and accepting or rejecting those uh members of the public complaint.

I think one thing that is evident from this presentation is that there are two types of policy reviews that we undertake.

One is reactive, where there's an event that happens, and um those resulted in the downtown task force report and the fair and impartial policing report.

The others are proactive, and those are ones that um are of interest to the board and are largely drawn from best practices from around other jurisdictions, and I think um both are of interest um to the city.

Thank you.

Um, I have a more specific question.

The report references both internal and external complaints.

And both were reported to BPD internal affairs.

So I'm just curious if you can explain the difference between the two.

So one of the aspects of our complaint process, which so whenever we receive a complaint, okay, again, we're complaint driven, so we can only have external complaints.

But the BPD, on the other hand, they could receive complaints from their internal staff or within other departments within, or sorry, with other staff within the department itself and members of the public.

So they make that distinction of the external, which is coming from a member community member versus internal, where it's coming from the inside.

But one caveat that we've talked about is that unlike our process where we send our complaint forms to the BPD and they conduct a parallel investigation.

The PAV and the ODPA, when BPD receives a complaint, we don't get that report to initiate a parallel investigation.

So that's why we only have the external versus BP has external versus internal.

And I'm not sure if the director wants to add anything to that.

No, neither so I think I think the chief actually referenced internal complaints at our last presentation.

She talked about during the course of an investigation when there's an external complaint that is made, she will initiate an internal complaint when they identify a separate um violation of policy.

And that's that's sort of what that is referring to, which is why there's a higher sustain rate for internal complaints as opposed to external external ones.

Okay, that's really helpful.

Um also curious, um, for Chair Kayatano, how you think that the city council can broadly support the PAB.

Yeah, I think there are a couple ways.

Um the first is as I mentioned the PAB is a board of volunteers, and we are constrained by our resources.

Um we rely a lot on um staff who is not technically our staff to do a lot of the labor.

Um, but we currently sit at six members, and I would really encourage council to um continue to even like to put out in your council newsletters, um, that the PAB is a body um that serves the public, and those members of the public who are interested in public service and in public safety in the city have an opportunity to contribute to this to the city, and to have a running list of people who are interested in the case of openings.

You know, we have an opportunity, or we have uh an option availability for alternates as well.

And so I think that it's really important, given the breadth of the work that we do for us to be fully staffed in that sense.

The second thing is um I learned recently that the council has a four by four um with the housing board, and I think that um there could be a benefit to a similar um committee with the chief, um, a couple members of the PAB and a couple members of council in order to keep abreast of some of the more quickly evolving policy changes that the council has seen this year.

Just to clarify, did you mean rent board?

Yes, rent board, sorry.

Great, thank you.

Those are my questions.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Moving on to Councilmember Blackbee.

Thanks, Madam Mayor, and thanks uh to the team of the PAB and for fielding the questions in advance via email.

Um I did go through the report, um, it's a really thorough report.

Um, I think I spent some time with it maybe on the other end before.

I can't remember, but anyway, I appreciate the work.

So just a couple of things is to tick through on the on the public engagement part.

Uh I I'm totally support the idea of how we uh of enhancing public engagement.

Do you have some ideas of how we can broaden participation?

I do, if you know, when we do that, want to make sure we broaden it and include as many voices as possible.

Have you thought about how we might do that?

Yes, and there are different uh models and different ways that you can do engagement work.

One of my concerns, and and I um have been uh attempting to communicate this with council is the infrastructure and the resources constraints.

There's a lot of statutory deadlines and timelines that we have.

Uh, and given that the um uh the sort of bulk of our work is the investigations, that's where a lot of our priority goes.

Um, and one of the things that's gone uh the few budget cycles is a request for sort of a dedicated person that can assist us with this because we can build out a program um to do in different ways that's to do sustainable engagement.

Uh often our our engagement work has been very reactive.

We get invited, but we're not proactively seeking opportunities, although in some uh places we are to give an example.

Um Jose is an alum of our um uh the regional uh network the leadership public schools, okay.

Uh I always get it right uh wrong, but um uh of Hayward and he uh we get invited to uh participate in their career fair.

Uh we're actually in talks and discussion with having um a more sustainable internship program with that uh network and other uh nearby um high schools to be able to do that and through youth works.

So that's one element.

Um we're also building uh relationships with the other oversight uh programs in the region, making sure that um we're abreast of the issues that they're facing and and also speaking um to sort of broader issues that we're all facing, and even something like vehicle pursuits uh as a policy, we need to be engaged.

Sometimes we get vehicle pursuits from other jurisdictions that end up coming to Berkeley.

So that that it's part of our engagement work and being knowledgeable about that.

Okay.

One suggestion I just make is uh lean into more of I think the policy work, just looking at what could come ahead, drones, other surveillance technology.

I mean, I just think there's an opportunity to bring people and ask for public input through your process on the policy side.

I think that's something that would actually be more engaging than just a general event, but say hey, let's have a discussion about what the community thinks about uh the drone policy and make sure we inform uh what the department's thinking about what council is thinking about.

I would just lean into that.

I just think there's a lot of opportunity there, and you could be a good kind of um convener of community discussion on some of this stuff, which could be useful.

Again, as long as I think as long as you're getting broad perspectives, it could be actually really useful.

Um let's talk about the personnel complaints.

Um, I appreciate the detailed kind of the table.

One of the things that does kind of concern me when we look at all of the numbers, is just it's not even the agreement or disagreement rate with the city manager with the uh with the department because that that certainly there's progress being made there, but it's just the fact that you know, of the you know, whether you look at 53 complaints, you know, we've got three sustained complaints or 459 allegations, you know, six sustained allegations.

And again, this isn't through no fault of your own, but it's saying, like, look, there's 95% of cases that are that are resulting in either administrative closure or something or an allegation not being sustained, which is a lot of staff work that's going towards work that isn't materializing in something that's uh a sustained finding.

So I guess my question is how do we, you know, we don't want to discourage people from we want to encourage people to make complaints, but we also want to triage and make sure that we're not encouraging frivolous complaints that then require your staff time, require BPD staff time.

Every time there's a complaint, we notice the officer, right?

So I mean there's a whole process that happens.

So how do we how do we how do we manage that?

Do you have some ideas?

Because I, you know, I I think we should be getting much closer to 40-50 percent, right?

Like the the ideal should be half the time you find something and half the time you don't, just for sake of argument.

But a six percent sustained rate is just really small.

And uh again, do you have evidence of other jurisdictions to compare it?

But my mind is going there.

Like that just feels like there's opportunity there to figure out how to improve that, improve the targeting of it.

Okay, a chair wants to uh say a few remarks and um if he doesn't.

I have three quick comments.

Um councilmember Blackby.

The first is that I, you know, at the last annual report, which was in March 2024, there was a comment by Councilmember Humbert about repeat um repeat complainants.

And I think one thing that the board is working on is implementing a regulation around vexatious complainants in the same way that there are vexatious litigants and to uh to pre-screen vexations and to hold them to a higher standard, that would reduce the workload because there are um there are instances in the city of vexatious um complainants, and we think that that does burden the the the director's office.

The second thing is the board really does think, um, and this will come up in the regulations discussion that access to body warrant camera can actually facilitate a quicker and more efficient process because complainants can see sometimes they don't they have they misremember what happened, and once they see what happened, they're like, oh, that actually didn't play out the way that I wanted to, I'm gonna withdraw my complaint.

Um and that can actually also lead to a more efficient process.

The third thing is that um I know that our sustain rate is low, and there are different a few different reasons for that, but I do want to point out something that wasn't highlighted um during the presentation is that um there are there are as I sort of what I mentioned that there are a wide swath of complaints that are serious complaints that our board doesn't hear because there's pending criminal investigations like officer involved shootings.

There are also um instances that the PAB has seen, although hard to quantify, where the most serious allegations are sometimes voluntarily withdrawn by the complainant, and that is a concern to the PAB.

And we think that the uh a process that subjects complainants to a very uh rigorous standard um where they are being cross-examined, like there's a lot of situations that go into that um actually dissuades um people from making complaints that are actually more serious.

Um I think one thing that I as I've been reflecting on why there's such a low sustain rate is because sometimes um the ser the serious allegations that we've seen been not pressed.

Um, the complainant may cite to a lack of there being any result.

And I think um it's true.

If I were a complainant, I would want to know what would happen at the end of this process, and I would not want to know that there was a resolution and what the resolution was.

And I don't think I in my time here at the board there's ever been a resolution that has found in the complainant's favor where they've actually received a recommendation um that has found in their favor, and they understood that in this case um they're they were vindicated.

And that's a that's a concern for this for the city's complainant process.

But I just wanted to highlight those three things for you and then pass it back to the director.

Yeah, and I also want to just caution um the sort of um rabbit hole we're going uh utilizing, and not that you were a council member blackly, uh, but um sustained raises sort of metric of of how successful or or how effective a program is being uh I think some oversight communities and even jurisdictions can focus on that in a way that may not be helpful or or productive.

Uh at the at the very least at the baseline level, uh with oversight in in this complaint process is allow committee members to exercise uh their constitutional rights to um bring about their grievances to to the government.

So we are able to do that through this independent process.

Yes, they can always go to internal fares, but there are uh historical barriers that may prevent that.

So independently we're able to do that, and I think that in and of itself is is something that uh we need to highlight and emphasize.

Um I also just want to emphasize too the the concern about the vexatious complaint, and part of the is the language in our interim regulations.

Uh there has to be um if there's prima fascia uh alleged misconduct, then that's what allows us to go forward, but then after a cursory review of the evidence, body worn camera mainly, like the chair just mentioned, uh, we see that you know what was being described is not necessarily what is being observed here.

Uh put to the body worn camera point.

Uh in other jurisdictions, there's direct access to body worn camera uh by the oversight entities I've been in in a model where that was the case, and that could also streamline the process.

Uh, if we don't have to go through administrative process of doing the records request, waiting for it to come back, we can really get ahead of being able to close out some of these um the cases.

And the other thing in terms of comparators, um, there are some uh entities and groups that are looking at these uh sustain rates.

There's a uh a website, and I'll share with you in the rest of council police scorecard where they're looking at these uh rates.

Um, and there are rates in it there are jurisdictions that mirror our rates.

So for example, uh LA is is uh listed as their sustained complaint rate to be six percent, which mirrors ours, but then there's other jurisdictions like New York is at 26%.

So we also have to be mindful about what their legal standards may be.

Are they using the preponderance of the evidence?

Uh and they may or may not be.

So that when we're doing these comparisons, we got to be mindful about the sort of legal thresholds.

Okay.

Well, I would just encourage- I appreciate that.

I just encourage that the the sooner in the pipeline that we can at least apply some sort of a filter before you go too far, is helpful.

Um, and I think that's just something we should continue to work on because as you're talking about needing staff time to do all this other work, there's a huge amount of staff time that's going into this that if you can figure out how to triage and prioritize a little bit, right?

I mean, I think that frees up a lot of other time to do some of these other things.

Um let's pivot over to the policy side.

Um appreciate the kind of the detailed review.

You mentioned there's another 14 reviews currently in the pipeline for the coming year.

What issues um are you expecting to complete this year?

Do you have some priorities for what you're trying to bring forward on the policy side?

Thanks, Councilmember.

Um, many of those 14 have been closed this year.

Um, so this is kind of the awkwardness of presenting a 2024 report in November 2025.

Um there are only very few of those 14, I believe like three or four that are still open.

Um, in terms of the policy recommendations that can that the council can expect that from coming from the PAB, I think you will see recommendations around surveillance, as you mentioned.

Um we have been um vigilant to um around the changes to BPD surveillance policies and uh as it relates to ALPR data.

I do want to flag, I I believe that BPD's um pilot program with the ALPR um, you know, uh project is um coming to a close in 2026.

And I think that is an opportunity to review the ALPR policy, its effectiveness.

Um, the council just heard the surveillance technology um annual report.

Um I would really encourage council um as it reviews the efficacy of the ALPR program and the policy therein um to understand like when the chief says that the ALPR is assist in identifying and solving crimes, um, what the is that true if if they were not present as well, would officers also be able to solve and so like these these are questions that the the PAB asks the chief um for evidence supporting um a lot of the policy changes um around surveillance.

Um is it true that you would not be able to solve crimes um without this data?

And that is a question that I haven't really heard this council ask the chief, or to provide or or I haven't seen evidence to that effect.

And we we're asking BPD to provide that evidence um as it relates to their uh newly implemented surveillance technologies, um, and we will continue to do so.

The other one was the vehicle perceived policy, but I believe I already mentioned that, so I won't take up more of your time on that.

Okay, thanks.

Um on the trends and patterns and stops.

Um can I just share?

I just want to share because I'm really interested in sort of the methodology we use to look at bias here.

Um and I wanted to share if I could the BPD annual report um methodology.

And just I wanted us to have a discussion or kind of comment about it.

So you'd mentioned like the the data you're presenting is sort of the absolute kind of you know, stops, arrests, that just basically uh racial makeup of those people were stopped against the entire population and the frequency and how much more frequent or less frequent it might be.

I do find the way the BPDs presented these three analyses on the at fault collisions, um, where they basically are looking at collisions and the and the racial breakdown of collisions versus moving violations and looking to say like this is actually a representative of who's kind of driving on the roads versus who's being pulled over is sort of a very interesting comparison.

The yield rate analysis here, which is basically um percent of searches that uh turn up contraband.

So again, if you you assume that if some racial group is being stopped much more frequently and doesn't yield uh a successful search, that's a there's more harassment, there's more kind of intimidation happening.

They're not actually generating um fruitful searches, uh, or this veil of darkness test where you're looking at a certain time of day, and at some times of the year that's you know, at 6 p.m.

it's light, and 6 p.m.

it's dark, and looking to see, like again, uh, you know, given all else being equal at the same time of day, whether it's light or dark, you should be seeing again the similar kind of breakdown if you don't see bias.

And at least according to these three tests that they've presented in their annual report, uh, you know, you see pretty good evidence that that there there you don't see much bias in these numbers, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

And we know there's a lot of other factors that contribute to the racial breakdown of of the absolute numbers in terms of stops and these statistics.

So I guess my question is why should we, you know, what's the right set of analyses here?

I find the BPD analysis to be pretty compelling because they're they've they seem scientifically valid in terms of trying to control for all these other factors, and I'm curious your response and why we should look at those metrics in your report versus these or how you how you would put these together.

So I'll just say that I think that's a million dollar question.

What's the right analysis and uh is part of a broader sort of conversation in criminology and criminal justice and policing, um there are different benchmarks.

There is no identified one best benchmark or a set of benchmarks that are best to analyze.

We're dealing with social phenomena that's highly complicated, and there's also an element of the qualitative version of this.

We're looking at the numbers and statistics, but let's look at the bodyborne camera and look at qualitatively how uh these interactions play out and what happens at the next level when they go to uh the courts are are these um are yielding convictions and so there I think there's a full life cycle of uh criminal justice um uh the spectrum here that that may or may not necessarily be represented.

I think what we uh want to just highlight that there are uh at least from from the the basic standard of utilizing the residential population benchmark uh that those numbers don't don't seem to necessarily uh agree with with what we would sort of expect um on uh on the different um proportionalities uh of the demographics.

Uh and I hear your point.

What you're saying, and I and I also think we have a very uh qualified uh data analyst and Arlo Maulbrook uh explores that I had a lot of conversations again.

I go back to the FIP conversation where they really scrutinize the veil of darkness conversation because uh how we uh designated twilight period I think matters.

Um I'm giving you I think a more broader answer, but I think it's uh important to say that there are limitations with the statistical data, uh, that this is uh mixed uh method sort of approach that we need to look at this phenomena and also just uh understand that um the numbers may suggest one element of it, but when you look at qualitatively and in the interactions, like you're saying that the numbers suggest uh potentially there's no bias, but when you look at the interactions and look at how the demeanor of the officer may be from one racial background to another, and Stanford did a great analysis on this where they did it in Oakland, and they were looking at all of these police interactions, and officers were talking differently to different uh community members based on race.

So I think that's where we have more nuances in this conversation here.

Okay, my time's lapse, so I'll wrap up, but I I uh okay.

I mean, uh I'll just say that you know, I I understand I understand what you're saying.

Uh, but I think like our concern really is around bias.

These are at least some of the best tests I think we have to establish that.

We know that when you look at the absolute numbers, there's all sorts of other factors in there.

And so I just I think like when you use the the global data in terms of stops, you're wrapping in lots of other things into that analysis.

This I find, again, I'm for you to be correct.

Please correct me, but I I find this to be closer to the actual you know piece that's within our control, which is what is the police department doing in terms of how they're conducting their stops, as opposed to all the other socioeconomic factors that are involved in and what those racial disparities are.

Not and I'm not minimizing the disparities, I'm just trying to say what is how is our department acting, you know, and I find these analyses kind of closer to that.

Uh uh so I guess my ask would be over time.

I would love to kind of uh, you know, arrive at a a more common set of of uh of measurements that we can agree on between the so we're not all using our own analyses, but we're trying to find the same analyses and speak the common language.

So that's kind of thing for another time.

Um couple last things, and I will so thanks, Councilmember Taplin.

Um on the early warning system, um, in the report, you mentioned kind of there are four departmental actions that arose from those audits, um, uh, which I thought was really interesting.

Could you describe how that process worked, how the process of doing the audits worked, and you identified some some uh problematic situations and there were some remedies.

Can you just talk about how that works?

Yeah, we don't um handle the early warning system audits.

That that happens internally within the department.

The department selects um randomly and under its current system for random officers and it evaluates them against the criteria factors.

Um, and they those factors are not clearly laid out to the PAB.

Um I would and and then they come to a qualitative assessment of that officer's compliance with policy, and then they make certain they make certain recommendations, and you saw a couple of those in the report.

Um with the new early intervention system, um, instead of only randomly selecting four officers, it will uh evaluate 80 different factors across the entire um Berkeley police department um, sworn officer staff, and so that will um allow for more targeted interventions that you see in these reports as opposed to there just being four.

You might see many more.

Um, there will be a more um laid out process in the early intervention policy that will be rolled out next year.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm really encouraged by the new system.

Uh it was more a kudos that like it feels like that the the audit was identifying some some issues.

There were some remedies that were being kind of put against those issues, and I was just kind of curious how that that process works and support, you know, more of that using the technology to identify problems and then uh coming up with a solution to those problems.

Um last couple of things on the annual report.

You kind of at the at the end of the report, there was a section where you were talking about um the production of the annual report, and um I know that in the charter uh it's sort of the ODPA drafts the report and then the the board approves it.

And there's sort of some question about um should there be two reports, one report?

What's the deal?

I would just say, you know, from from my perspective as a council member, I mean, I I felt like the charter is fairly clear, and that it's like, you know, the ODP's yeah is off is authoring it, but at some point it's authoring a report that the full board has to approve.

And so there's uh there's you know, that there's an advice and consent kind of responsibility there, and I sort of support that continued process, which is um rather than having two separate reports or here's the ODPA one and here's the PAB one.

There is a police accountability board report with multiple authors.

Um, and so uh so you were asking for some feedback in the document, at least in this particular council member.

My feedback is I like having one report, and it's a collaboration between your office in terms of producing it and the board in terms of approving it, and if there's some give and take in terms of edits and strategic direction, I mean, I feel like that's part of the process of producing a port again to me.

So I I you know we'll see how it goes, but that that would be my feedback that you're you know, in terms of what you're asking for.

Uh, and I think this current process could work, and you wrestle out the issues with the board um to get to a finished product that that the board is comfortable with.

Council member, can I ask if you just have other comments that you keep them for later so we can get through our questions?

Sounds good.

Last question looking forward is what are your top three five goals for the year?

That's kind of I guess the college interview question, but like um, what are you trying to do in 2025 and into next year?

What are your top priorities?

Is that for the tab or for ODP?

Maybe for each of you, then I'm officially done.

Sure.

Uh, one of the things we're excited about again, continual relationships on our internship program side.

Uh, we I just had a conversation this week with you folks, uh, we're in the early stages of exploring uh an RFP process that would uh enhance our ability to uh um host more uh interns and collaborate uh with that department a little bit more.

Uh we're continuing to expand our relationship with the university.

Uh, also explore an opportunities to do um some uh work study uh uh opportunities with both uh Berkeley College and the university.

Um and we're um we've pilot it with social media uh mostly uh LinkedIn is more of a bandwidth thing, it's just low-hanging food.

Uh, but we really want to expand that program.

We know the benefit and value of it.

We just want to make sure it's a sustainable program.

Yeah, I think our number one goal is to pass our regulations that create a process that's fair for both officers and and for members of the public, um that's efficient and that's that facilitates a just process, um, and that should be coming to completion soon.

The second is to um continue to be a resource for council um to rely on to provide um recommendations around best practices and to provide recommendations around public safety, specifically in Berkeley, and that that goes across um a number of areas.

And the third thing is to really hold I mean our job is to hold the department accountable and so when we when the department produces a report our job is to analyze that report and to provide recommendations to council based on the report.

And so really um part of that third ground is cre is furthering um the the relationship that we have with the department I think the council council member has pointed out many times that there's an opportunity there for us to continue to work um on relationships with the department and um I really personally um have been pushing for that um when it comes to joint um policy and reporting efforts great thank you and thanks uh council member tapman for your indulgence and thanks to my colleagues for their indulgence thank you thank you no you had great questions I just um so council member tragic is next okay thank you madam mayor and this is questions only so um I will limit it to that um to save time um I am going to go rapid fire so I will ask all the questions right now um uh some of them are just for my own edification in reading the reports question one can you describe the difference in the report it mentioned certain complaints were not sustained and others the marker used was exonerated could you describe the distinction um number two I know we're you know it's um well maybe what uh what is the projected date for the next report um that you will be presenting and if you have been able to see any trends right now that may be distinct from the trends noted in or the conclusions or patterns noted in 2024.

I was interested in the report um it was mentioned that one of the um flags was for AI assisted report writing um there was a pending item on AI at the council so I was curious if you could speak more about what that would entail um I what I wanted to know uh how is the level of adjudication determined um such as whether the police chief or the city managers determines um or investigates a violation or determines whether one is sustained or not sustained um I on page 32 of the report um it does mention um that districts one through four have the highest geographic dist number uh distribution of highest number of stops but on page eight it says uh D1 through three and district seven so I was curious if that was a typo or if uh if I'm missing um a distinction here um I I would love to learn more about who has the authority to deem um a violation or an allegation rather administratively closed and what may be the reasons for administrative closure of a case um and lastly uh what specific recommendations do you have uh to reduce racial disparities in police stops?

Thank you.

Um I'll I'll start with that last question and then um I'll also um engage with some of the earlier ones um and then um take our data and let's or is tracking the questions which we might not be able to answer all of them at this time but the um I think that's a great question the last one uh what recommendations we have for one is uh more research uh engage in more conversation and analysis about what is going on, why some of these uh this disparities discrepancies uh may be taking place again the the qualitative piece I think is an important element of this when we're talking about bias uh we just need to understand more uh council member black could be alluded to bringing the community in more and uh it'll be in our next report but we did have um uh senior citizen focus uh uh um senior citizen focus groups uh where we we were looking at particular with policy review so those are sort of engagements we would like to have uh when we bring in uh community members a little bit more and bring them in uh to share their conversations and we also have uh uh a pending uh task is which is to do a uh a public survey uh to get a better understanding of where we are with these interactions.

I think the last one that was done was um a little bit near around um uh the 2020 um mark or shortly after so we're in need of a more robust uh over a robust community engagement survey regarding public safety to find out more about these interactions because complaint rates um are in the um the data from the police interactions are only going to get us but so far um the other element uh the more technical one about the definitions that comes right now the the the sort of definitions we're utilizing are from uh the interim regulations um we have those uh right now um so for exonerated um we have uh that is um for unfounded is the evidence fails to support the allegations but the allegations cannot be shown as false the finding shall be not sustained uh that should be not sustained if the evidence shows that the alleged act did not occur the finding shall be unfounded if the evidence shows that the alleged act did occur but was lawful justified and proper the finding shall be exonerated and if the evidence shows that the alleged act did occur and the action was not justified the finding shall be sustained so we have very set definitions we're working off um and I'll yield to the chair if he wants to take any questions.

On the question of how to reduce um racial disparities in police stops I think um whatever metric the council wants to use um there's an opportunity to reduce the disparity um that both the department and the PAB has identified and I think um one of the recommendations that we made in our FIP report was for the EIS which is being implemented the second thing um which was not uh implemented but could be taken up next year is the profiling by proxy policy and the profiling by proxy policy um governs when BPD should be investigating um complaints made by members of the public that appear to be motivated um for reasons other than crime so if an a member of the public um if if member of the public calls BPD and there's a call for service um but there is an indication in the call for service that there is a racial motivation um by the by the by the caller then um bpd policy directs um specific specific steps for the department to take before responding to that and to also verify on the scene um the story that is being told um and I think in those instances because even under um bpd's traffic model one of the prongs is um community calls I believe and um the PAB has seen um repeated instances of community members in Berkeley um who have called um BPD um on uh m on black members on black Berkeley residents um and it turns out that the the call for service resulted in a a really big miscommunication because the person um was just living their life and they didn't know what was happening and the officers um only were only relying on what was a faulty description or narrative um at the time.

And so I think um the policy around profiling by proxy can be strengthened.

It could be um enumerated better.

And I think um there could be training more training around that policy specifically.

So that's the recommendation from our FIP report.

Thank you and uh just to clarify you which uh recommendation did you say was already being implemented?

The EIS.

EIS.

Sorry, excuse me.

The early interventions.

I do have uh two more that I just caught.

Um this based on your presentation.

Um I was one uh I was curious.

You you mentioned that um external investigations may trigger internal investigations, and that is on the same incident.

So uh what controls are in place to avoid double counting in those cases for statistical purposes.

Um and lastly, um, it was mentioned that there were some challenges getting laptops, other IT challenges, and have those been resolved, or are they still uh challenges?

Do you want to take the first question?

Double counting.

The double count?

You want to?

Uh sorry, I was focused on the the second one.

I I think I mean like the director can weigh in, he's um more well versed in in the preparation of the complaint form, but um the allegations are presented on the same form in the PAB, so there's no double counting of allegations.

It's it's the department's um the department separates external versus internal complaints, we don't.

And so the the complaint is submitted to the PAB um as one complaint with multiple allegations, and none of those allegations are duplicative.

Does that answer your question?

Um, so with the percentages, uh that there's a distinction between um internal and external, how many are sustained, that it um basically it's it's the same universe of complaints, but maybe looking at the data um slightly differently.

Is that basically it?

Yeah, so in terms of our complaints when we're thinking about the sustained rates or even uh the agreement rates between our office, the chief, um, and the city manager's office, that follows within our own data set of the complaints known to us.

Um so for example, if 10 of our allegations get forwarded to the chief, but we only disagree with seven, um, then those would be the ones that would go to the city manager's office and it's to our discretion, but they follow our same um sort of our own data set.

They're all accounted for within the same uh set of data in terms of the external versus internal, this is more of a BPD process.

Um we, as we mentioned, were complaint driven, so we don't necessarily initiate our own investigations.

So whatever um our number is, it sort of doesn't really change because we would consider that complaint as its own separate incident.

Um the allegations may change, and director Aguilar um could speak a little bit more to what that process looks like with the complainant.

Um but for double counting, um having worked with that data, um, it doesn't really come at least for us, it's doesn't really present an overlap because the data sets are sort of they're separated.

So BP will send us their numbers.

Um we can't really cross-verify them apart from knowing how many we sent them.

Um so the internal one doesn't really overlap, but um I'll pass to Director Aguilar for more comments.

Uh I don't have a digital context just said, but I do want to address also the other uh question, which is the IT.

Uh we I just had a recent conversation with the city manager, so it was an ongoing conversation.

Just to background on that, you uh we use the snow ticket in the city.

One of my first no ticket requests to maybe add again uh was that we want to make sure that I was uh transferring information to the PAP in a very secure and confidential way, uh, utilizing the city's infrastructure.

Uh and I've been in other jurisdictions where I was able to procure laptops for our uh commissioners uh it's been for me um uh a very exhaustive sort of conversation over years um in here regarding the importance of that, and I've spoken with several city managers, deputy city managers, and um the IT director on this.

I'm hopeful that we will get into a closer place, uh, but it has not been uh fully resolved yet.

I think I think where it it actually and matters to the PAB is um we don't have access to ShareDrive or or Google or the share drive that um for the Microsoft systems that Berkeley uses, and so BPD maintains all of their records on a share drive, and they we would be able to create a joint folder to share data, but we're not able to because we're not able to use actually share drive, and so that's prevented us from accessing certain data that we would be able to otherwise.

Um and so they have to like you know take it down to PDF and send it to us.

But it's not very collaborative, yeah.

Is is that the subject of like um it like is that a policy decision or is that just something that's a point of agreement but hasn't been implemented yet?

I think it's a city um IT and appropriations question, not a policy that we have to really adopt as a board.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

Um and then I I did want to make sure I'd love to get a response on the AI question using AI to um enter um citations for if I'm just uh for my own edification.

I was trying to understand what um this was getting at.

I'm sorry, which element is the AI part?

No, but which part was it um the body worn camera sort of uh AI use or uh it was so the report writing okay with the report writing AI assisted report writing.

Yes, and for this, we were uh part of the history there.

We um we're tracking the different technologies uh acts on the uh company that are uh city uh utilizes for body worn camera.

They had launched at the time uh and they were promoting the AI assisted uh report writing.

And the department had that made any indications that they were looking into this.

This was uh sort of uh example where the the PAP and the office was being proactive on looking at an issue before or or a emerging technology uh before it could be adopted or even contemplated.

So we were able to partner with uh the book and law um the department uh that's being headed by uh Chase of Boudin, uh and we did a very thorough robust analysis on this and looked at um what were the uh benefits and then the trade-offs we're utilizing this this technology is very early in the stages.

Uh is it could be promising.

Uh it it uh promotes and um being able to get officers uh off the desk and back on the street, uh, but it is not necessarily without issues and it could be potentially legally uh uh contested.

And so we're we're tracking this issue.

I think uh it's still as early phases.

Uh there's uh a few recommendations that came out of that analysis.

And I think this is my last clarificatory question, but in the context of uh there were some complaints that were made, and that was the category.

Is that the is that the contention by a complainant?

Is that allegedly they like someone improperly used AI technology or didn't use it for policy to write up the report?

I don't I don't think there was a I mean the director can correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't I don't remember a complaint about AI.

I think um there are complaints that we receive about uh failure to write a proper report um or putting false information in a report.

Um but I don't there the department doesn't use AI for its report for its um reporting process, and so um that would that would be surprising to me.

Okay, I think I maybe conflated the policy review upper site section with um report writing later on.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um council member Humbert.

Yeah, thank you, madam mayor.

Um and thank you all for the presentation and thank you for this very thorough report that you've provided us.

Um a lot of work went into it.

Um and I appreciated uh Chair Kaetano's reference to um my comments I guess a year ago about um uh vexatious complainants, because that's the first thing on my uh the first question on on my list here.

Um what you know, and and you mentioned that you're you're looking into uh ways maybe to sift out the the vexatious complainants from the you know the the complainants who have righteous um uh complaints.

Um what's what have you been doing in that regard?

So we we are amending our um regul not our regulations, our operating procedures um to introduce a vexatious complainant um provision um there is an opus oh open question about whether that provision needs to go through meet and confer and so um that is something that is holding out part of the process um there's another question about um the interaction with our charter because the charter does require um complaints to be submitted to the board and so there's a we could um do a quick look so to speak of um complaints that are that that the department of director considers to be fall under the the vexatious complaint and standard submit them to the board for um adjudication for a quick readication before um actually engaging on further fact finding um but i think the thing that's holding it up right now is um this question around meet and confer and also um yeah is that's a primarily question all right thank you i i appreciate that um but that that remains uh concern of mine um i'm i'm convinced there are you know there's a small group of people out there that are that are generating a disproportionate number of these complaints and i it sounds like that's correct but you know even courts have a hard time dealing with vexatious litigants because you know you want people to be able to you know to uh exercise their constitutional rights to to um to make these complaints so um here's another relatively specific question the report notes that the category of discourtesy is one which um your office is targeting and I guess this is two um uh to the DPA your up your office is targeting for disaggregation to increase analytical precision however I noted that of a hundred and seven allegations of discourtesy only one was sustained in 2024 given the extremely low absolute numbers and percentage of complaints sustained in this category why why do you think it's worthy of analysis uh via some process of disaggregation rather than for example you know uh you know an analysis of a complaint sources if I may okay sure um the BPD's policy um actually disaggregates discourtesy as a separate um uh by itself and so we we're following what BPD does there okay um but but does it merit you know a lot a lot of um of energy and time when we're talking about one out of 107 I mean it that seems de minimis to me.

I don't think there would be much energy and time into evaluating just one.

All right okay no that's fair.

Um another question since 2021 the total number of allegations has tripled or quadrupled while sustained findings have remained relatively flat in your view what explains this widening gap between allegations and sustained findings of police misconduct.

One thing I would say is related to your previous question in Latin of inquiry uh 2024 was a very unusual year um and happy to go into closed session and and talk more into the weeds of it but uh it was uh a lot of our numbers were driven in part uh by certain community members and um one thing I would just say in caveat that uh each of these uh complaints generated by a few individuals they were corroborated with actual interactions so it wasn't like they were uh there wasn't any prima fascia um threshold met there and I think that's what complicated we we were now forced to to look at this more closely because it was getting through the complaint intake phase but then when we got to the other side of it we got bodyborne camera footage and says whoa uh it's not what what's being described here uh we also did interact a lot with the city attorney's office to make sure that we were properly utilizing the framework uh the interim regulations and the charter uh to be able to uh properly um come up with dispositions for that in a way that respected the the rights of the complaint and the due process rights and also of the officers so uh we've we've been having these conversations what can we do with the assistant framework uh but uh again 2024 was unusual in that regard that uh a lot of our numbers were driven by uh particular um individuals but they were also verified instances with those um uh complaints okay no I appreciate that um another relatively specific question the report notes that that you the ODPA um or the DPA applied for multiple grants but you weren't awarded any um how many grants did did um the office apply for um can you answer that question yeah we were swinging for the fences or there were two big um um grants uh close to a million dollars uh and over multiple years so okay one was through the uh US department of justice and the other one was the mayor's uh uh bloomberg challenge did you work with the city attorney and the city manager's office to to create these grant proposals um we did um screen so at the the stages where they were they did not require that interaction and we were utilizing the city's framework for that at some point if we proceeded with them we will have to uh naturally interact with those offices at the stage where we initially applied we did not uh but we did uh reach out for uh collaborations like with the BPD because it it did impact um that in the it would require that collaboration okay you just didn't get there is that right correct um and then this reflects something that that council member blackaby mentioned um this uh bifurcated reporting model with separate reports being issued by the office of the DPA and and the police accountability board itself and I guess you know just quickly um uh I want to respond to that I I think likewise that I I would only want to see one report um the the charter created both of uh the both offices both the board and the office together and what I'd like to see personally is is what we've been seeing which is a report um drafted by the office of the um the ODPA and then approved by the board um okay council member blackity covered uh the issue about you know recovery rates yield rates and metrics like day versus night traffic stops in in my view those are the best practices and and I have real concerns um that for example the comparison the of the traffic stops to the to the demographics of Berkeley don't really get at the real issue because our borders are porous I mean our city boundaries are poor us and the demographics of our surrounding cities are very different from ours so I I don't think that's uh I don't think that's a good staff uh in my view um okay I think that's it let me let me just double check here no that's it thank you if I may because you you had a question about this um I I think maybe the question was also what was unclear because it said that the process is ambiguous and unclear um in regards to the report and I was curious to know what was unclear.

We're talking about the production of the report yeah so the bifurcation question you know yeah and I'll take lead on this and I don't know if the um chair um has the same sentiment so uh there's definitely um let's take a step back um what I was proposing here uh there is um precedent in other jurisdictions sort of oversight where the board writes a report and the the office writes a separate report I I understand um the the sort of bandwidth concerns about all these different entities and about doing more work than necessary so I want to acknowledge that I think what were my concern was that um they're in writing and putting together these different elements of the report there's an editorial element that I think is sometimes difficult to reconcile uh where um we're uh we're asked to task to produce the this report, uh, but sometimes it's being editorialized in a way that may or may not be within um sort of what the office's philosophical standpoint is and how the charter is seeking a report.

So we're looking at it from a very technical, like these are the things.

Uh, but the language behind how we present it, that's where sometimes the difficulties uh come into place.

How to say and how to present the data, uh the data it's you know speaks for itself.

So uh you know, not get in trouble with that, but uh how we talk about it, I think matters, and sometimes council members may ask questions why did you say it this way, and why did you not say it that way?

And then that's where the different authors come into place, that's where that's sort of challenges could present themselves.

Um, but I don't know if that answers the question neatly, but um I just think the the editing process is in as spelled out in in the way that other processes are spelled out in the charter.

Okay.

So it seems like part of the issue is really uh in agreeing on how to present the report, perhaps.

Um that part is unclear, but and maybe also more clarity might be helpful from the charter itself.

Or council's direction, like what what is intended in terms of like a patterns and what is it that you want us to report on some things that the office believes feel with fit within the framework of patterns, may or may not make it to the report or get edited out.

And is that the what is the intent?

What is the of council and the public and when they're consuming this report?

I see okay, thank you.

Um council member Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh thank you for for your uh your very conference report here.

Um quickly, just to uh hone in a couple of points.

Um looking at the um the stops data, uh and uh do you do you have access to the information as to of the pullovers who lived in who are residents of Berkeley and who are not?

Is that captured at all?

Uh within our report or in general?

Uh in general, any report.

Uh well, I don't recall how the director uh just verify that.

But yes, the stop data does uh BP's transparency portal does in fact include whether a person or someone being pulled over is a resident of Berkeley, not Berkeley.

It's actually analysis, I believe we presented in the fair and important policing report um earlier this year where we did a similar analysis for um residents of Berkeley and those coming from outside uh from other cities and other jurisdictions passing through.

Um, if I recall correctly, and we could certainly get back to your office about that.

Um, but when we did that analysis, when we compare the population of residents versus non-residents, the patterns and distributions were relatively the same.

So if um we presented um we had a slide on this in our presentation, but it does analyze um non-Berkeley versus Berkeley residents, and the for black people residing in Berkeley, this is in our report, they were 6.55 times as likely to be stopped as their white counterparts, and that is for residents of of Berkeley specifically.

Um so I would reference our FIP report there.

Okay, yeah.

So that okay, so that sort of um things are very clear picture.

Um, and honing in on um the reasons for the stops, the top two, of course, are uh violation of traffic and uh reasonable suspicion.

And so real suspicion, of course, is uh a pretty low threshold.

I don't know the exact I'm not a criminal lawyer, I don't know the exact threshold.

What that is for ponderance or it's low, right?

Yeah, and so this is where the where the bad uh the bad mindset comes through and reasonable suspicion, you know.

But I know we've taken steps to sort of categorize the metrics that lead to the at least quantify your suspicion uh via these reporting tools they have.

Um can you talk about about that at all?

You know, like he was hanging out the he was hanging out the seat, he was waving his, you know, waving what appear to be a gun out the window.

I don't know, this kind of thing.

I don't know if there's been an effort to quantify in in that sense.

However, um I think there is an emphasis in the department on report writing and the active report writing, which is going to council member Trigov's question about AI assisted report writing.

Um there's something that AI does where it it consolidates and it uniform it makes um report writing uniform such that it will um input those keywords um that that take away from the officers that don't show what the officer was actually um seeing or deciding in that time.

And so I think uh we haven't evaluated like systematically what those reports say and whether they're whether they are inserting those phrases that are from our perspective suspicious or like sort of red flags.

But if that's something that the council's interested in, we can do that, especially as it comes to evaluating BPD's um three-pronged traffic approach.

Because really what they're trying to do with their three front three-pronged traffic approach is um find race neutral um India uh to allow them to to guide their enforcement mechanisms.

And so the way that we can reconcile um or to analyze that is to analyze how the officers are actually reporting and to match up what they say is um what they're what they're using as their criteria with what the actual what the officers are actually reporting, but that is a labor-intensive process.

There's not like a there's not like a system to evaluate that that's currently in place.

Okay, that'd be something to consider in your recognitions going forward, possibly um future ARs or um policies around some of these information gathering tools that I know we do use and are available to us.

Um, about to speak?

Yeah, um you can consult with Chief Lewis on this, but there I we have experienced extreme pushback when it comes to being able to access these records.

And so if we were to engage to do this sort of policy work that you're envisioning, um there would have to be buy-in from the department on that.

Okay.

I want to address my colleagues about the um the racial makeup of people outside of Berkeley versus Berkeley.

Um I'm not surprised that you say that the the evidence is the same, because if you look at our neighbor to the left to the south and to the north, um it probably evens out in terms of our makeup.

Um to our north is very um very, I guess, you know, white essentially, to our south, um, less white.

Richmond's past our immediate neighbors.

Um, but overall, if you're the overall, I guess distribution probably will paint a similar picture, racially.

Um, okay, and then the last piece is just I guess um in terms of the yield for pullover, that's another example, another another um indicator.

Uh, what are your thoughts on our yield ratios compared to other cities of slimmer disposition?

Yeah, so I could um read from a paragraph of our report on the yield.

Um it says that city auditors' data analysis shows that only 13% of calls from community members resulted in a citation or arrests compared to 42% of officer-initiated stops to effectively reduce the potential for profiling by proxy, which I mentioned earlier.

Analysis of this 13% should be conducted to determine what types of community calls are most likely to yield a law enforcement response crucial to public safety.

And so I think um when it comes to yield rates, what we see is that when when members of the community, which is a prong that that BPD uses in its enforcement, um actually results um in a lower yield rate.

Um, and so that's something for the council to keep in mind as it analyzes the effectiveness of what BPD has prepared has put on for its policy here.

And then when I was in the police review commission in its prior iteration, that was um a key policy element that kept coming up.

And uh we had a the BPD was very uh proactive and engaging with us on trying to craft um some process to minimize sort of racism by proxy, and so um is distressing it's still active, but um glad you're on it and uh please keep at it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Leno Power, did you have a follow-up question?

No, I have a comment.

So I'll wait.

Thanks.

Got it.

All right.

I have three questions, and then um I really want to move on because it's already 540.

Um, so the report lists that there are 12 active subcommittees.

I know it seemed like maybe there were fewer when you just had it up on the screen.

Um, but this seems like a lot of work for six folks who I know are currently there.

So I'm curious what are the priorities for the subcommittees and how are you measuring their outcomes?

So these are um many of them are ad hoc committees.

So the regulations committee, for example, I mean, they they meet consistently, but um they're they're not a standing committee um internally, but they meet with um external city stakeholders.

The fair and impartial policing um commit committee was an ad hoc committee, and that that has been dissolved since the report has been published and all the action items are finished.

Um, and so in terms of what our priorities are, we really wanted to, and we have a um we implemented a plan this year to um standardize our committees, and one of them was to establish a policy committee and to streamline all policy requests through this policy committee, and so the department has a consistent um you know uh partner to collaborate with as well, and so they know who to go to in the case and when when they're when they're thinking of revising policies who they should communicate with.

And so the policy subcommittee is really one of the three anchors.

The other one is um, I believe the the budget and operations committee, but that comes up every two years and it's coming up now.

Um and so that's something that you know as as the process kicks up kicks um begins internally within the city, that's something that we are we are also aligned on with the city's processes.

That's really helpful and and I'm glad to hear that you're consolidating.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

Um this question just came up for me during the presentation.

Um how does the amount of time and training for BPD compare to other departments?

I'm not sure if you looked into that.

Is that high low average?

Uh that's one area of the report that was new for us this year.

We didn't do that analysis.

Um, there was more that we can do uh on that.

Uh this was very surface level, just compilation at hours.

So we don't have the response for you yet, but we are actually uh interested in expanding our analysis there because they provide a lot of data points for us that I think is important, especially as we're going into budget season.

Thank you.

And can you clarify your community engagement objectives?

Like what kind of deliverables are you trying to achieve?

Do you keep track of how many people you talk to or reach out to?

Uh what kind of metrics do you keep?

Uh in this for the office or the board because we might may or may not have different strategies here, but because I don't want to speak for your subcommittee.

Okay.

Uh so I'll speak from the office's perspective.

Um, one of the things we want to do is raise awareness about the program.

So uh being at the visible community events, both internally and externally is important to us, uh, but also making sure that we're mindful of our bandwidth.

Um so we're um identifying those events.

We do normally have um uh uh sign-up sheets because we are actively increasing the number of folks that we add into our uh listserv.

So that's that's something that we do.

Um we also uh field a lot of inquiries online, uh whether through email or through uh also through phone call through our office.

So those are sort of engagement uh pieces.

Uh last uh year or we highlighted in the last year's report, we did um acquire um um the uh civil uh complaint um processing system is a case management system, but it's also more more than that, and allows us to be able to track a lot of data.

We just haven't been able to merge all the data and uh we're planning to be able to provide that information with out to council and our next outcoming report because there's a lot of data that's just not um being communicated out.

I think um from the board's perspective, I think we don't we don't metrics are hard, but benchmarks are something that that I try to set for our board.

One of them is I've tried to instill a sense in every board member that has come on to um com connect with the local community organization that's in their district.

And I think um sharing the public safety perspective to a local community organization is something that's important and it's something that roots us in the community, something we should stay connected to.

And the second thing is another benchmark that we try to set every year is to host a community event and um specifically around a policy that that's of community interest.

And so um one of the one of the priorities for the board this year has been around immigration policy, and so host we've been we're we're working on hosting a community event to to bring in um different stakeholders to um bring in different jurisdictions from around the country to to explain best practices where when it comes to implementing uh sanctuary city policy.

Thank you.

Um and then also I'm just curious, has uh ODPA partnered with BPD to do community outreach?

Or actually neither PAP or ODPA?

Uh we have partnered in in different ways.

Um, and I know one of the um board members, uh board member Wells did go out to um uh Coffee with a cop um advanced.

So there are times when the uh department taps into us.

Uh we didn't do national night out this year, but that's typically an event that we partner with them.

So uh we try to um have these conversations uh I know with our law also we're exploring one of our things for our work plan in our office was to have uh uh sort of geek out day um where we would talk about data and teach them about the trans community members about the transparency hub uh that it's a natural partnership with Arlo and in that uh segment of the uh BPD.

And I'm I'm on um a steering committee put together by um Dr.

Ardando on the gun violence prevention program, and that's um both us and BPD are on that, and we collaborate with the community there.

That's great, thank you.

Um, okay, so moving on to uh public comment.

I think we've gone all of our questions now.

Do we have any public comment on this item?

This is a special meeting, so this is the only item on our agenda.

And are there folks online too?

Um I'm interested interested in the development of the vexatious uh complainant policy and what the consequences would be to the complainant.

I can see where that would arise and it would be an issue of concern.

But would they be barred from making a complaint in the future?

And what if they did make a series of unmerited frivolous complaints, but they actually then have a valid complaint?

And I'm concerned about persons with mental health issues who might be complainants because that you sometime have to filter through what they're saying, and sometimes it may not be valid, but within it, they can actually have a valid underlying complaint, particularly in the way that they're treated, and that goes for not only complainants but but witnesses that they have to be given some credibility.

You have to work through that.

Um so it'll be interesting to see how the policies uh proposed.

Um are there common issues in the vexatious complaints or that are being alleged?

Um is there a common officer involved?

Um, do we look at those uh because of those issues?

I was interested in the uh when the chair stated about there was a particular black resident in the community about how repeated unfounded complaints were made against him, and I I'm very curious to know the nature of that and what's that all about if he was just as the chair said, living his life, were they looking at something he was doing in his yard and just complaining unnecessarily.

Was he a homeless person?

Because there can be valid complaints against homeless people, and there can be sometimes community members who just don't like to see homeless people.

In fact, it it I've heard or been told people of people who observe a homeless person and they literally follow them around to watch what they're going.

And if thank you.

Thanks, Carol.

I think I really like coming up here, so thank you for all being there.

And in case I need an extra minute, Steve said he would give me one, but hopefully I'll be done quicker than that.

But I'm here at the moment because I really want to thank these people.

I've been to a bunch of their meetings, because transparency and accountability would be just so gloriously helpful in these perilous times.

I was in Chicago back in the 60s and had plenty of interactions with the non-accountable and non-transparent police department there.

So I really appreciate it, especially with cop cities arising everywhere.

And the question is, is Berkeley going to be of foreign by the people?

So thank you, Mayor, because I feel some confidence that we're going to try to stick to that.

So thank you.

Um yeah, because I also was happy to report a police officer that literally de-escalated a situation so exquisitely I had to call it in because it's like wow that was beneficent.

So I've been to some de-escalation trainings because again you y'all know I'm a hippie and I much prefer peace and love to war.

So yeah because we're also utterly in Oakland and almost everywhere totally I don't have an appropriate polite word about the drones and surveillance that is mushrooming and expanding all with the intention of protection just like we have nuclear bombs mutually assured destruction as like let's stick to things you want to give yes please I do have an extra minute yeah you can take another because this really matters to me is the only reason why I'm my bones are still standing here.

Gosh I want to be safe I want everyone to be well but that doesn't mean I should carry 50 machine guns so please please please I heard you mention the program for kids if we if we supply what people need they will not be desperate I've been desperate I once reached out I was so hungry and quote stole a steak up my sleeve however I put it back when I saw another woman looking at the prices that obviously go up when people steal my point is let's care for each other please let's guide each other I've worked with kids let's help each other thank you thanks thanks Maria and thank you.

Hi okay come on up.

Hi Mayor how are you?

I want to thank you again for the excellent years of of service that you have uh you've provided to Berkeley and to the larger community as I've always said uh the city of Berkeley struck gold when brought you on as mayor I've always said that uh I am a person in my late 50s and I have been a Berkeley in for a lot of my life not right now I don't live in Berkeley but either I have attended university and or high school or have lived in Berkeley for many many decades and I have never felt the compunction as I told you when we first met I don't know if you recall I was here a few weeks ago about two months ago I've never felt the compunction absolute compunction come before elected officers uh until about two months ago because of a situation uh regarding a business a relatively new business which is so extreme I have unfortunately um had a rather negative interaction with our friend here district four councilman Igor Tragoub uh have been carbon copying you on all the emails that have been sending to his executive assistant uh Mrs.

Olga Bologna it doesn't seem that based upon my my preliminary interactions I'm so sorry I just realized so are you making a comment on this report that was just had no okay because it's going to do with the lady I was talking to me earlier okay because it has to do with a personal matter with an issue so this is actually a special meeting on a specific report so unfortunately this isn't the comment that I didn't know that yeah that's okay.

Yeah this is this the that meeting will start at six o'clock where it's supposed to but I think we're running a bit late so well now that you have me here why don't I just go ahead and finish on I'm sorry I can't let you finish with the mayor's office but you're you're welcome to continue your you're welcome to start completely fresh in the next meeting um and share your comment there and what time does that begin that that meeting probably won't start until like 6 20.

But um feel free to submit an off agenda public comment card uh for the next meeting.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I step back in line.

Uh yeah, you don't need to stand in line though.

You'll submit this comment, and then she'll what she does is she'll pull names out from there.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Did you want to use you have okay?

You're gonna use one of your minutes.

Okay.

Does anyone else want to make a comment that's here in person on this item?

I just want to make sure.

Are you gonna make a comment?

One minute.

We are supposed to start at six, but we're in the special meeting still.

Yes.

Okay, go ahead and go ahead and start your comment.

Okay, um, this is directed to the folks over here.

Um I haven't really been able to look through this in detail yet, but a few things kind of jumped out at me.

Uh, under reasons for stop, it would be good to have a disposition breakdown under um traffic violations type of violations would be useful.

Um, for instance, you know, expired tags um versus um running a red light.

Big difference, um, under disputes uh regarding scope of authority, numbers would be helpful there.

How often does this happen?

Break that down.

Um under administrative closure, um basically this is so broad, it's basically the dog ate my homework.

Thank you.

Um are there any comments online?

Yes, there's one one hand raised.

So this is for public comments on the special meeting agenda for the police accountability board and report.

Um, we have one speaker that's uh Leah Wilson.

Hi, uh I'm Leah, the vice chair of the Pab, and I wanted to just hop on.

Uh our chair has done an incredible job uh this afternoon, and I'm sorry that I can't join you.

There was a lot of discussion about the metrics for uh stop reporting and tests for bias, and I wanted to emphasize that appendix one of the FIP report that we submitted last year, detailed um all of our concerns with the at fault collision test, the yield rate analysis and the veil of darkness.

I was reminded of that when council member Bartlett asked his question.

I think it's important for council to be aware that the at fault collision um metric does not include um discretionary stops based on equipment violation, registration or license plate infractions or other low-level offenses that make up about 19% of all stops, and those are the precisely the kinds of discretionary stops that lead to or or that can stem from or be impacted by the types of biases that council member Bartlett alluded to.

So I do encourage the council to uh look at that appendix one of the FIP report and also really welcome as our chair mentioned, council establishing metrics that both the PUB and the BPD would use going forward.

I think that would benefit both entities as well as the public.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leah.

That's very helpful.

Appreciate your comment.

That's it.

Okay.

All right, very good.

Coming back to council for our comments on this matter, starting with Council Member Lunapara.

Thank you.

I just I really I wanted to briefly push back on the notion or insinuation that the reasons for these racial disparities is due to people of color coming from other cities into Berkeley.

And I appreciate Councilmember Bartlett's question and Chair Cayetano clearing up um uh uh with the data on Berkeley residents, but I just don't really want to let that comment go on.

I know that that's not what was meant, but I find the incident insinuation to be dangerous and dismissive of the very real experiences of many of our residents of color here in Berkeley and does not do anything to build trust between our government and our communities of color, especially our black black and brown residents, um, which is kind of the goal of all of this.

So that's that's all I wanted to say.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Taplin.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor and thank you, Chair Kayotano and Dr.

Aguilar, and and everyone.

Um I just wanted to uh say that um when council adopted uh or approved the three-prong stop uh policy.

A large part of that was to um deprioritize um those low-level um uh equipment violations um to address some of the disparities and stops.

Wanted to flag that.

And then I also wanted to say that I am interested in uh the policy questions around uh um profiling by proxy policy.

Um uh, you know, both from uh from uh equity perspective as well as a dispatch perspective.

I think it's important that when we get calls for service, we are able to triage calls that you know don't require uh you know a deployment.

And um we'll get to this later with drones, but that is one of the things I have been thinking about with respect to dispatch over the last few years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Backaby.

Thanks, madam mayor.

Three quick points.

One, just thank you all.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for the report.

Thanks for indulging our questions, answering so many of our questions and fielding them.

Um, and thanks for the discussion.

I think it was really um uh enlightening and helpful uh for many of us as we as we talk through.

So thank you.

Second point, um, totally agree, and um, we're doing everything we can on this side, but um uh wrapping up the regulation negotiation is a I know it's a priority of yours, a priority of mine, priority of ours, and we're looking forward to the upcoming closed session soon, where hopefully we can try and um get significant movement um just in terms of the time that is being spent by all parties, um, the sooner the better.

So we're looking forward to that, and then kind of having a clean slate to move into the new year.

And then third, um, I think a lot of the comments and questions and the discussion to me is is also around just um encouraging ongoing prioritization and triage.

Um, you know, you're a small but mighty team, and to the extent that you can focus on a few key policy priorities and knock them out of the park.

I think that's gonna serve you and all of us much better than um, you know, mile-wide inch deep.

So the extent that you know, as a team, you're prioritizing those things, a few of those key policy areas and going deep, I think we'll all be better served by that.

And then at the same time, being able to triage some of those personnel complaints, uh, whether it's the vexatious complainant policy or what have you.

Um, again, just in the spirit of um finding a way to make uh effective use of limited resources, both on your side as well as the BBT's side and officers' time.

Um so um I think those are my three comments, but you know, I again thank you for participation.

Uh and with that, I'd like to move that we accept and certify the presentation of the report with our thanks.

Second, this is just we we don't need a motion for this.

We're not we don't need to vote to accept it.

We're giving a presentation, but thank you for your motion.

I withdraw my motion.

Okay, thank you.

Um all right, Councilmember Traegub.

And folks, I I know there's some talking going on.

If you all could take your conversation outside, please.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I wanted to echo my gratitude to uh the chair, the director, and uh staff that um presented on this report and prepared this report.

Um I'm I'm going to echo um some of the comments.

I I will add um a couple of my own.

But uh I agree that um with those who have said uh it would serve um I think the council a little more um if there was one single integrated report, and if there are differences around language and uh you know charter mandated limitations, uh perhaps uh the PAB could do an addendum to that report uh from the PUB.

Um, but it would be great to get it at a predictable um time of year uh every year going forward.

Um I also wish to echo the comment on um my desire to see um you focus on upcoming issues of high interest, um, which could be high priority uh for you for what's going on in the community, um, but also some of the matters that the council is taking up where we could really benefit from your input.

On recommendations, I really appreciated the ones in this report, as maybe just a suggestion going forward.

We just we benefit the most from recommendations that are specific and actionable and where ongoing work is already being done to also recognize so that we can look at the gap in the spirit of continuous improvement.

Lastly, I appreciated the comment made by Commissioner Wilson and others about looking at some maybe developing some joint metrics.

And I understand that some of this may be a policy conversation for us as well.

And I look forward to having that conversation on this dice.

And I'm very interested in uh and will be digging into the report on use of AI when you're ready to bring it to the council since, as I mentioned, we do have a pending item on the AI regulations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Other comments from council members?

Yes, Councilmember Cassarwani.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.

I just want to thank you for your presentation.

And I don't have any further questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I know you, yeah, go ahead, Councilmember Humbert.

Yeah, I just want to thank you again for the for the report.

A lot of work went into that.

Um much appreciated, and thank you for your presentation here tonight.

Thank you, Councilmember Lunapara.

I realized I didn't do this earlier.

So thank you very, very much for this presentation and for being here.

Okay, yes, I'm gonna add my thanks as well, but also just take a moment because I think it's important to recognize the importance generally of PAB and ODPA.

Um, it's crucial that we have transparency in government, including our police department and collectively you all are a tool to promote that type of transparency.

So I really want to appreciate the work that you're doing.

I know um this is a lot of work to do a report like this, um, and also a lot of unpaid work.

So I just want to acknowledge that.

Um reading the charter, and you know, based on some of the comments that were given today, there really is no ambiguity in my perspective on the process of how the report is created.

Um, the charter tells us that the ODPA is to create the report for the PAB to approve, and the PAB has the discretion to approve or not approve what's put in front of them.

So I don't see the need either for a bifurcated report given that the charter outlines the requirements and the process for approval and and in terms of the editing piece, the separate piece.

I'm hoping that you all are able to figure that out, you know, moving forward.

Because I feel like those kinds of disagreements there they shouldn't be major things, right?

Um, something that I'd love to see uh to give you some more feedback for how those reports might look in the future is around metrics.

Um, I noticed that there was a strategic planning um session that happened in 2023.

I'm not sure if there's been one since then, um, but I think having an overarching strategy would kind of help provide that structure and maybe more of a lens that might be useful.

And I'm particularly interested in metrics surrounding community engagement.

I think that's a really important part of the work.

And um, I want to know, you know, how you're reaching the community, um, how many folks were reached, um, you know, what was the impact of that?

Um, just having more metrics and quantitative measurements, I think in that area would be really helpful to see.

And um, I was glad to hear that finishing the regulations is the top priority.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Um, I know we've already asked those involved in the internal negotiations about their availability and our polling council now.

So I really want to encourage my council members, uh, all of you.

Oh no, my laptop just died.

Um, I want to encourage all of the council members if you haven't already um filled out the um the poll for that.

Please make sure that you you do that.

Um, I'm gonna try to pull this up on my phone.

Thank you.

No good deed.

That's unfunished.

Lend my charger, my laptop dies.

Um, and let's see.

And finally, oh my gosh.

Yeah, a couple of things.

Two more things.

So one, I was really shocked to hear about this issue with the laptops, um, that this is something that's still going on.

Um, this the first time I heard about it was in this report.

And so definitely please reach out to my office.

I'd love to figure out how we can move that forward.

That was very surprising.

Um, and just generally, I I wanted to comment that I'd love to see more community engagement from from Pav and ODPA.

It's super important to get out into the community beyond just tabling and career events.

Um, I know there were some ideas that were given earlier about like kind of deeper um uh deeper uh engagement, and um I really want to appreciate the work you've all done, especially around the use of force forums, but there's definitely like opportunities to do more work here.

Um, and I know that in the report, one of the operational challenges touches on your desire to expand equitable community engagement, and I really want to encourage you all to do that.

So, thank you all so much for your presentation for taking all the time, answering all of our questions, and just being here this evening.

Um, thank you for your work and to my colleagues for your good questions as well.

And and uh since we don't need an actual vote on this, um I will see if there's a motion to adjourn.

So, okay.

Is there any opposition to us adjourning this evening?

Okay, meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all.