Berkeley takes police off traffic duty, promises big cuts.

A tense, ninehour Berkeley City Council meeting ended early Wednesday morning with a sweeping set of new public safety reforms, including a pledge to eventually cut the Police Department budget in half and create a Department of Transportation to reduce traffic stops based on race.

But critics of the plan called the actions hollow without a clear timeline for when and how they’ll take shape.

An omnibus bill proposed by Mayor Jesse Arreguin, which passed 80 with one abstention, will reduce the use of Berkeley police in traffic stops as well as homeless and mental health crisis responses, fund an independent analysis of police call data, and create a community safety committee to lead the changes. The goal is to eventually slash the police budget in half to $36 million.

“These measures shared the same urgency and spirit, but had different mechanisms for achieving it,” said Councilman Ben Bartlett, who supported the measures. “There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen for reimagining public safety.”

The new policies — proposed amid a nationwide movement to divert public funds from police department budgets to community services and unarmed crisis responders — were fueled in large part by protests against police brutality and systemic inequities following the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But the contentious discussion leading up to the Berkeley council’s vote, which came after 3 a.m. as 300 members of the public called in to the video conference, demonstrated that even a body united on public safety reforms can disagree over how far to go.

Two weeks ago, Berkeley reduced its police budget by $9.2 million, which represented 12% of the department’s annual operating budget. If it hadn’t, the department would have claimed 50% of the city’s discretionary fund over the next five years, Arreguin said.

Councilwoman Cheryl Davila, who abstained from the

vote, and many members of the public said the 12% cut to the police budget did not go far enough to reduce the presence of officers on Berkeley streets.

Davila proposed a measure that called for cutting the department’s $72 million budget in half and reallocating funds toward city staff and community crisis responders. The proposal would have eliminated police from schools and required police to pay for misconduct settlements, rather than paying for them with money coming from the city’s general fund.

“We had the opportunity to do something really major last night. That didn’t happen and that’s disappointing,” Davila said. “Because that’s what the country and the world is asking for.”

The conflict over Berkeley’s budget echoes similar disagreements in neighboring Oakland. On June 24, Oakland leaders passed a budget that chopped law enforcement funding by $14.6 million, falling far short of motions to reduce the budget by at least $25 million and as much as $150 million. After public criticism that the reduction wasn’t sufficient, Oakland council members decided to reconsider the budget on July 21.

Mayor Arreguin endorsed the spirit of Berkeley’s reforms, but cautioned that the city needs to take it step by step.

In the omnibus bill, the council approved a plan to create a new Department of Transportation staffed with unarmed civilians tasked with both transportation planning and enforcing traffic law. The goal is to reduce stops based on race.

“Pretextual stops have too often escalated into use of force or unnecessary arrests that disproportionately harm innocent Black Americans,” said Councilman Rigel Robinson, who introduced the bill. “Driving while Black is not a crime.”

The council also adopted a plan to spend $150,000 toward an independent analysis of police call data and the current police budget. The analysis, which the Berkeley city auditor will conduct over the next few months, will inform future cuts to the department budget.

A new Community Safety Coalition and Steering Committee will lead the planning of these public safety measures over the next few months.

Davila started off

Tuesday’s meeting by submitting a motion for an unplanned vote of no confidence in Police Chief Andrew Greenwood.

At a June council meeting, when asked about how the Police Department responds to Black Lives Matter protesters, Greenwood said, “Firearms. We can shoot people. If you are being attacked with lethal force, if we don’t have lesslethal that can drive it back, then we’re absent a tool. That’s my concern. I’m not trying to be overly dramatic and I apologize.”

In her motion, Davila called the comments “not merely a gaffe, but inexcusable.” The motion did not receive a second council member’s support to come up for a vote.

A rapid succession of public speakers admonished the council for failing to consider the motion.

“This is someone who told the residents of Berkeley that he’s literally going to shoot us,” Berkeley resident Mae Massaci said. “In an election year, I just wanted to let you know we’re watching you. We’re watching your actions, your words, and your silence.”

Dozens of public speakers supported the city’s plans to radically scale back the police. But many asked for a “no” vote on all measures — aside from the 50% department budget cut.

“They delay necessary steps to police abolition that will save lives in our Black community,” community member Avi Simon said.

The council chose to wait on data from the police call analysis, as well as the analysis of the police budget, before it makes final decision on cuts to the department’s budget.

“Whatever changes we arrive at must be achieved through data, community conversation and a transition to a new model,” Arreguin said.

But some experts who support the spirit of the measure advised caution in its implementation.

Erin Kerrison, assistant professor of social welfare at UC Berkeley, said that reallocating police funds to social services risks making only marginal improvements to a system heavy on bureaucratic enforcement.

The measure to transition police away from homelessness response fails to address the root causes that put people on the streets in the first place, she said.

“If we move from policing to a different system of corralling and managing, we expose people to more surveillance,” Kerrison said. “If you really want to end homelessness, provide housing.”

How the city will reach its stated goal of a 50% police budget reduction remains unclear.

UC Berkeley law Professor Franklin Zimring said he was skeptical the city can achieve its lofty reform goals, calling the measures a “wish list” that would, in practice, incur significant costs.

“What would be unprecedented is not the nature of the wish list, or even its magnitude, but whether it happens at any scale close to the numbers flying around in policy conversations in a lot of cities right now,” he said.

Personnel costs, Zimring noted, take up the vast majority of police budgets, so any cuts would require protracted and costly renegotiations with police departments and their unions. Cities will have to provide incentives in pension plans and payouts to get people to leave, he said.

“It’s an iron law of public employee negotiations that those kinds of transitions cost money,” Zimring said. “Fifty percent is the end of a very, very, very long rainbow.”