Cities weigh police reform
Question is: do they heed calls for radical changes, or simply improve the existing force?
When Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín considered a slate of proposals to defund his city’s police department and remove some of its core functions in the wake of sustained protests against police brutality and racism, he knew it was time to do more than “tinker around the edges.”
Faced with similar pressure, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo thought about his already understaffed police department and the community members calling for a more robust law enforcement presence. Unlike Arreguín, Liccardo proposed far more modest changes he described as a move to “reform, rather than defund.”
The two cities illustrate the quandary faced by progressive-leaning local governments in the Bay Area and across the country, as the Black Lives Matter movement seeks to channel the energy of massive nationwide demonstrations into changes that eliminate racism in the criminal justice system and prevent law enforcement killings of civilians:
Do they seek to make improvements while keeping the institution of law enforcement intact? Or do they heed activists’ calls to revolutionize policing altogether?
“We are past making reforms and changes to the existing system,” said Arreguín.
The proposals approved by Berkeley’s City Council broadly aim to shrink the role of police in society — to more narrowly focus their efforts on responding to and investigating violent crime, rather than being the first responders to a wide variety of social ills.
Two of the most notable changes shift responsibility for enforcing traffic laws from police to unarmed civilian employees, and cre
ate teams of medical staff to respond to noncriminal calls that might otherwise be handled by officers.
Berkeley’s ideas have drawn national attention, including from law enforcement groups that say they will put residents and the newly appointed nonpolice responders at risk. Arreguín said the new approach is necessary.
“There is a long history in this country of policing being used to repress African Americans and people of color, and being a tool of enforcement for racism and oppression,” he said. “We have to fundamentally change our approach to criminal justice in this country.”
Traffic stops are the most common way civilians interact with law enforcement, said Darrell Owens, a housing and transit activist with the organization East Bay for Everyone. But those contacts can escalate, and several studies show that Black and Latino drivers are pulled over at disproportionate rates compared with white drivers.
Supporters of the change cite as examples the 2016 police killing of driver Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, during a traffic stop, and the 2015 death of Sandra Bland, who died in jail after she was pulled over and arrested for failing to signal a lane change
Owens said he hopes to create a future in which “Black and brown motorists can drive around without worrying their lives could be over if they make one wrong move.”
While lawmakers at the state and federal level have announced a raft of new legislation meant to change police practices, the vast majority of law enforcement decision-making happens at the local level. And that’s where much of the debate over the future of policing is playing out.
Oakland’s school board has voted to eliminate its school police force, and the City Council has cut $14.6 million in funding from the police department. Many activists wanted to see a deeper cut.
BART’s governing board redirected $2 million planned for traditional police officers to ensure riders are wearing masks and socially distancing, and will instead have unarmed police personnel do that work. The transit agency also has started looking into options for responding to problems relating to homelessness, mental health and substance abuse with unarmed staff, rather than its police department.
San Leandro slashed $1.7 million from its police budget last month, and Concord’s police chief has said he wanted to explore creating a nonpolice response team for mental health calls.
In San Jose, Liccardo has proposed a nine-point plan he says will “make our department more accountable and more responsive and more transparent.”
Its two most significant points call for having an independent body conduct officer misconduct investigations that are now handled by the department’s Internal Affairs Division and overhauling the arbitration process for officer discipline. The existing arbitration process usually results in watered-down discipline even in cases of egregious misconduct, Liccardo said.
Raj Jayadev, director of the South Bay social justice group Silicon Valley DeBug, said Liccardo’s proposals are the kinds of moderate changes that cities have been trying for years — which have failed to prevent racist practices or police killings, and the community backlash those incidents spark.
“It’s out of touch with the moment and this national, transformative position the country is in,” Jayadev said. “We’re either going to have to be more ambitious and bold in our changes, or we’re going to be stuck in this cycle.”
But while Liccardo said changes like those in Berkeley are worth exploring, he does not believe most people agree with activists who want to reduce the role of police in society.
“Their views aren’t necessarily the views of the majority of our residents,” Liccardo said. “I’ve been in a lot of community meetings, particularly in highcrime, low-income neighborhoods, and the first and last demand of every Spanish-speaking mom who is leading those community meetings has been, ‘We need police patrol.’ ”
Each of these cities’ proposals faces the challenge of winning over — or overcoming resistance from — both the activists calling for dramatic change and police themselves. Police unions have historically been among the biggest obstacle to institutional change and reforms.
Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the San Jose Police Officers Association, said the union wants to hear more from Liccardo about his proposed changes to the arbitration and discipline process.
“The devil’s always in the details, but we’re open to it,” Saggau said of the mayor’s nine-point plan.
That was a much more positive review than Saggau gave Berkeley’s plans.
“It’s really political pandering at its finest,” Saggau said. “Instead of being surgical and trying to figure out the best path to improve outcomes, they’ve taken a meat cleaver to a section of the department that is going to cause way more harm than … good.”
LaDoris Cordell, San Jose’s former independent police auditor, said each of Liccardo’s proposals is a good idea, if the goal is limited to making changes within the existing structure and culture of law enforcement.
“But if you want to get at policing — the culture itself that is militaristic, that sees itself as occupiers, as us-vs.them, which is full of stereotypes of the community they are policing — these reforms are not going to get at that,” Cordell said.