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Segment 1

Hello, everybody.
Good afternoon, all four of you.
I'm going to call to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Today is Tuesday, March 18th, at 4 o'clock p.m., and I'm going to start us with the roll, please.
Okay, Councilmember Kesarwani is currently absent.
Councilmember Taplin? Present.
And Councilmember Bartlett is currently absent.
Councilmember Tregub? Present.
Councilmember Humbert? Present.
Councilmember Kesarwani? Present.
Councilmember O'Keefe? Present.
Blackabay? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mayor Ishii? Here.
Okay, quorum is present.
Great, thank you so much.
So today's a work session, and we have folks from the Berkeley Police Department here for the annual report, so I'm going to pass it all to you.
Over to you all.
Okay, good afternoon, Mayor and Council, and thank you for this opportunity for us to present our 2024 annual report.
I'm joined here today by Deputy Chief Jen Tate, as well as our Strategic Planning and Accountability Manager, Arlo Malmberg.
So the written report that you've been provided covers a lot of detailed information, and the daily updates to that data can also be found on our Transparency Hub.
The purpose of today's presentation is to provide you with an overview, as well as give an opportunity for Council and the Mayor to ask questions once we finish our presentation.
So my great hope is that as we work through this report, you'll see throughout the report that our values, accountability, service, diversity, that all those values rise up through the way that we're doing our work.
And those really drive the approaches that we have to providing community safety.
So this past year, 2024, we focused on core services and operational efficiency, while reinforcing our commitment to proactive problem solving and clear internal communication.
So as we move into 2025, we're looking again to commit to data-driven policing by evolving our practices, integrating new tools, and strengthening partnerships to ensure that our public safety efforts remain transparent, equitable, and effective.
So today, what we're going to cover, we're going to look at our operational workload, crime and investigations, road safety, and the data on our stops and our use of force.
So we're going to provide some overview data.
We're also going to assess the efficacy of the work that we're doing.
And we're going to talk about what our plans are for the coming year.
As we move through this process, as always, we are inviting both our Council and our community to reflect on the progress that we've made and to join us as we shape our future for public safety for our community.
Okay, so in 2024, our department responded to 61,666 calls for service.
And although we are working well below our authorized ranks for both officers and dispatchers, we are proud to say that we met regional standards and our own expectations for response times to our highest priority calls.
So diving into our workload metrics here, looking at our staffing, we have 150..
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Thank you, yes.
We have 154 officers on the books, but only 140 are available for solo full duty due to a combination of new officers in field training, which means they get paired up with an experienced officer, as well as a number of injuries.
So 140 working sworn, 154 total compared to an authorized workforce of 181.
On the dispatch side, we have 17 out of 36 positions currently staffed and all told among sworn and in all professional staff, the department has a vacancy rate today of 21%.
So these gaps have prompted us to take on some new initiatives that will detail at the end of this section.
But to get a sense of our basic workload, we can line up the staffing trend that we just saw with trends in calls for service.
So while total calls dropped slightly this year compared to last year, or 2024 compared to 2023, calls to 911 have grown 9%.
So we're getting fewer calls to our non-emergency line, but more calls requesting emergency service.
And, of course, those are the calls that require generally a more robust response from us in terms of the number of officers, response time, and time on scene, and just the total amount of time and resources that those calls take.
So put together, we're seeing officers respond to a similar number of calls for service per shift as last year, which was a big increase from previous years.
So what we know is who we hire matters, and despite the workload realities that we just talked about, we rigorously evaluate application.
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Yeah.
I bet it was everybody, but I can see them.
Oh, yeah.
Henry, please mute.
Sorry, we were having problems with the audio folks that are at home, so we're trying to make sure that the audio is working before we move on with the presentations.
Sorry, we don't have a little in between act for you.
We hear you now.
Henry, are you going to sing us a song? I think we're getting a handheld mic.
Is this one working a little bit? No, it's not.
Let me try this one.
This one might.
Council members, can you hear Mark from the handheld mic? Test, test, test.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, we could try this one.
I can't see the screen in front of me, so council members and Humbert, when you, if you can't hear anymore for some reason, if you could just like, wave wildly and I'll ask our presenters to keep an eye on that for me.
Thank you.
Okay, let's try that again.
How's this? Can everyone hear me? Yes.
All right.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
All right.
So, as I was saying, even with the challenges with staffing shortages, and an increased volume of calls, we still pride ourselves in fast response times.
That ability to reach community members quickly, especially doing critical situations is a cornerstone of our service.
And this graph shows that we've maintained a response time of seven minutes over the past several years.
While agencies define priority levels differently, the latest available data shows that our response times compare favorably to those of neighboring cities.
And one initiative that we're incredibly excited about this year is the expansion of our community service officer program.
And right now we have three CSOs that are training under experienced field training officers.
And they're handling non-emergency calls, routine reports, traffic control for patrol.
And this is a resource that we haven't had in a few decades.
And once these patrol CSOs are fully trained, which we expect to be done by the end of April, these CSOs will immediately strengthen our patrol capabilities.
In this photo, you'll see two of our new CSOs in their new uniforms and uniquely marked community service vehicle.
And the next round of CSOs hired and trained will further supplement patrol and support detectives.
This expanded CSO initiative not only addresses rising call volumes and staffing challenges, but also reinforces our commitment to quality community service.
In 2024, crime will trend closer to our historical norms.
There was a drop in shootings and robberies.
And while some property crime rates still exceed pre-pandemic levels, we did see a drop in commercial burglaries and vehicle thefts.
While there are a multitude of factors that could affect crime trends, these overall patterns align with the progress that we've seen in our crime prevention initiatives.
So I'll get into some crime data here.
The written report that you have details our 2024 crime stats.
And one quick note, we submit our crime data to the state.
And the law changed as to the format in which we collect and report that data.
So previously we used what was called the summary reporting system, which recorded only one offense per incident, even if multiple offenses occurred.
And so starting just this last year, we moved to the national incident based reporting system, or NIBRS, which captures every offense.
So this is richer data for the state to analyze and compare across jurisdictions nationwide.
And this is what it looks like.
So these are NIBRS categories on this slide.
NIBRS divides serious offenses into crimes against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society.
So for purposes of comparison, with Berkeley's population around 119,000, we saw rates per 10,000 residents of 98 crimes against persons, 674 crimes against property, and 77 crimes against society.
That's per 10,000 residents.
Okay, so we can take a closer look at some specific crime categories.
Over the past few years, both nationwide and here in Berkeley, we saw troubling rise in violent crimes, like shootings and robberies.
But 2024 definitely marks a turning point, especially for robberies.
In Berkeley, shootings fell by 26%, and robberies fell by 43%.
Robberies fell by 43%.
So the rise and fall of these numbers was a bit more pronounced in Berkeley, but the overall trend is one that we're seeing across the country.
Last year, we saw positive shifts in several additional crime categories.
Sexual assaults have dropped from historic highs, though they still remain at an elevated level.
Stolen vehicle incidents followed a similar trend, with vehicle thefts falling by 23%, but remaining above pre-pandemic levels.
Overall, thefts and burglaries have returned to within historic ranges, and these are areas where we are seeing both progress and areas where we must continue our concentrated efforts.
Our hate crimes data tells an important story.
In 2024, hate crimes related to race and religion remained a part of our landscape.
Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for about 20% of hate crimes, while anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes made up close to 7% and 5%, respectively.
The most common hate bias motivation in 2024 was anti-LGBTQ.
We take all of these incidents seriously and recognize that there are likely hate crimes and incidents that don't get reported to us as well.
We want to engage with affected groups to provide what support we can, and those conversations, along with our data collection, guide our work to investigate and address these acts of hate.
The truth is, these acts of hate affect us all, and our department stands with the community against all acts of hate.
As a department, we really lean into and embrace our responsibility to safeguard our diverse community.
Last year, to support that mission, we launched several focused initiatives to address emerging crime trends.
First, to combat gun violence, we deepened our partnership with the city-run Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention Program, along with community organizations Live Free and NICJR.
This collaboration delivers crisis response, mediation, life coaching, and employment support for individuals who are at risk.
Our detectives also increased proactive investigations and search warrants, leading to a recovery of 110 firearms last year, which is a 28% increase from the year prior.
Next, we advanced our technology by piloting automated license plate readers, or ALPRs.
With 32 cameras now active, this program contributed to 14 arrests, recovered 10 stolen vehicles, generated 14 investigative leads, and supported the issuance of two warrants in just the first three months of deployment.
And these were all successes that were in response to vehicles involved in serious crimes.
Finally, we took on organized retail theft.
Over six months, 12 dedicated operations resulted in 79 arrests, with many suspects already on warrants or facing additional serious charges.
Taking these initiatives into account, as well as our core emergency response and investigative processes, we look at clearance rates as a key performance measure for us.
For context, a clearance rate is the percentage of cases that get resolved within a year of being reported.
In 2024, our homicide cases maintained a 100% clearance rate.
In fact, it has been over 10 years since a homicide has gone unsolved in the city of Berkeley.
Clearance rates for felony sexual assault, robbery, and other offenses are steady.
And this year, we saw a substantial increase in our clearance rates for thefts.
We attribute most of that increase to the direct focus of our retail theft operations.
So what's next for us in terms of crime prevention and response? Well, with Council's approval, we hope to install fixed surveillance cameras at key intersections and public spaces with high pedestrian traffic to help officers and detectives reconstruct events accurately and respond quickly.
This new system will also complement our ALPR network, which monitors key entry and exit points and busy roadways.
So that together, the fixed cameras and the ALPRs can provide powerful public safety tools for both pedestrian and vehicle-related crimes.
Also, building on the results of the organized retail theft operations, we plan to pilot a flex team in 2025 to address retail theft and other developing crime problems head-on.
So turning to road safety, in 2024, we experienced a steady number of collisions with some serious incidents at key intersections that we'll take a look at.
Our enforcement efforts focused on areas highlighted by this data as well as by community feedback.
And this year, we'll continue to build on that work.
Last year, Berkeley recorded 877 total collisions, and this includes four fatal collisions, 559 injury, and 314 non-injury collisions.
Needless to say, these numbers are higher than we want them to be, and this data reflects persistent challenges at high traffic intersections.
We've been particularly troubled by the four fatal crashes we experienced this year after reporting none last year.
Turning to statewide collision data, Berkeley remains one of the most dangerous cities, among others of similar size, to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle.
One of the key functions of our Traffic Bureau is to analyze the primary collision factors of our collision reports.
And year after year, we found that speeding is the most common cause of the crashes.
Our traffic data also shows that..
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We're going to restart.
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Thanks, folks at home, for your patience.
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To our presenters.
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Okay.
So backing up just a little bit, one of the key functions of our Traffic Bureau is to analyze the primary collision factors from all of our collision reports.
And over the years, what we found is speeding tends to be the number one factor that we're seeing.
So our traffic data shows other factors, such as distracted driving, that also contribute to our collision rates.
This slide shows the intersections with the highest number of collisions last year.
The intersection of Ashby and San Pablo Avenues tops the list with a total number of 16 crashes, and 10 of those are injuries.
Those are our state routes, and they tend to see a large portion of our total number of crashes.
And like I mentioned, together with primary collision factor analysis, we use this information to direct our officers to these high collision intersections in line with our three-prong approach to traffic safety, which I'll talk about shortly.
These intersections informed our high-intensity traffic operations, as well as support Vision Zero initiatives this past year, and we're going to continue to build on that in this upcoming year.
So recognizing important road safety trends, our department hosted four Drive Safer, Drive Longer events last year.
These sessions took place at both the North Berkeley and South Berkeley Senior Centers and offer guidance to help our aging drivers stay safer on the road.
Our traffic safety experts explained how health conditions can impact driving and provided clear advice on avoiding risky situations.
Attendees received practical information about vehicle safety, DMV licensing procedures, and additional support resources.
We received really good feedback from the community about these classes, and we're going to continue to support our aging drivers with more classes moving forward this year.
Our traffic safety approach is built on three prongs, as I mentioned.
The first focus is on primary collision factors, and we use our local data to identify vehicle code violations that cause severe and fatal collisions.
And the second prong is driven by community reports where we address concerns submitted through our Transparency Hub or other venues like Calls for Service.
And the third prong emphasizes community caretaking by focusing on additional safety issues like distracted driving and seatbelt violations.
These principles are clearly reflected in our enforcement data, and this graph shows a strong connection between stops for moving violations and our primary collision factors.
The majority of these stops directly reflect key safety issues on our roads, texting and cell phone violations and other behaviors that contribute to a crash occurring, but by definition cannot be a primary collision factor, fall into the third prong.
Additionally, stops for missing license plates are often linked to stolen vehicles and related criminal activities, and this alignment shows us how much of our enforcement efforts is directly tied to improving road safety.
So this year we took a look and built upon our partnerships with Vision Zero stakeholders and other key players in traffic safety, and our leadership is going to continue to work alongside these partners to identify high-risk locations, understand the root causes of our collisions, and develop targeted interventions.
Some interventions already being considered include automated enforcement opportunities, education and awareness campaigns, safe routes to school programs, as well as ongoing public messaging.
We're also continuing to work through high-intensity traffic operations, which is a regional effort involving 10 local law enforcement agencies where we use data and community feedback to pinpoint dangerous areas and implement measures to discourage dangerous driving.
So we'll continue to use Office of Traffic Safety grant funding to support both enforcement and educational programs, and this funding will help us continue things like the Drive Safer, Drive Longer classes, as well as support our DUI and driver's license checkpoints, and as always, we'll continue to leverage our collision data from the traffic safety page on the Transparency Hub to guide our enforcement actions.
All of these initiatives form a comprehensive strategy rooted in real-world data and collaborative insights.
Okay, so so far we reviewed our crime data, and we talked about our collision data, and the steps that we're going to take to address those challenges.
But at the same time, it's vital that we never lose sight of how we serve our community.
And so we've got to continue to hold ourselves accountable, act in harmony with our community values, and work to do our part to eliminate social inequalities.
This means examining our data honestly, engaging in open conversations about the impact of our work, and anchoring our policies and practical solutions that truly benefit the safety of our community.
I want to take a moment to recognize the hard work and professionalism of our Berkeley officers.
I also must acknowledge the negative impacts that historically policing has had on parts of our community.
And even as we might celebrate some of our successes and look to build on the positive steps that we've made, we have to remain committed to constant self-evaluation and improvement.
To advance our commitment to accountability and community-centered policing, we're implementing four key initiatives.
First, in 2024, we launched the Office of Strategic Planning and Accountability, or OSPA.
Managed by Arlo Momberg, this office represents a significant step towards greater transparency and efficiency.
The OSPA will develop data-driven strategies for improved public safety, optimal resource allocation, and enhanced departmental accountability through routine audits and strategic analysis.
Second, in partnership with both the Berkeley Police Association and the Police Accountability Board, and with funding provided by council, we're rolling out a comprehensive early intervention system developed by Benchmark Analytics.
This cloud-based platform proactively identifies risks in officer performance, allowing us to intervene early and provide targeted support.
Benchmark's proven effectiveness in cities like San Francisco and San Jose give us confidence in achieving similar results here in Berkeley.
Third, the KIND training program.
That's emphasizing fair and impartial policing, incorporating DEI-centered practices and de-escalation techniques, looking to improve the quality and the way we provide our service.
By the end of 2024, almost every officer has completed at least 40 hours of KIND training.
Moving forward, we plan to expand this initiative, scheduling officers to participate in trainings like a week-long crisis intervention and de-escalation training, looking to deepen our skills in these areas.
Finally, last year, we reorganized our personnel and training division to strengthen the connection between our policy development and our training teams.
This structural change ensures that the new policies effectively guide daily police operations.
The OSPA audits these practices regularly to confirm alignment with our actions and our policies.
Through these initiatives, we're striving to uphold Berkeley's values of equitable, transparent policing while continuing improving officer effectiveness and building on community trust.
In service to those goals, one of the primary aims of my office is to examine our practices closely by conducting evidence-based analyses of potential implicit bias.
And to do that, I'm going to walk through three evidence-based and industry standard measures of implicit bias in stop data.
But before I do, I want to emphasize two concepts that underpin the academic literature on this topic.
So first, research tells us that when looking for implicit bias, we should concentrate on discretionary stops and searches rather than information-based stops or stops in response to a call for service.
Experts highlight that it is during these moments of discretion that implicit biases could potentially surface.
So for folks interested in looking at all stops and searches, not just the discretionary ones, you can find that data on the Transparency Hub.
It updates daily.
But for the purposes of identifying implicit bias where it might exist in officer decision making, we're going to focus on the moments when officers have the most control over who gets stopped or searched.
Second, we would expect the decisions officers make to reflect race-neutral public safety concerns.
So the statistical tests for bias that are best practice among researchers in this field don't use demographics of residents as a baseline to compare stop demographics to.
They use baselines that are more directly relevant to policing and isolate the potential effect of officer bias.
And in that way, provide us with a clear view of whether stops and searches are conducted impartially.
So this first analysis is a good example of an appropriate baseline for comparing our stop demographics.
Here we start with the demographics of drivers involved in collisions in Berkeley.
Research in this field tells us that this population gives us an accurate representation of the demographics of who's on the road.
It's like drawing a random sample of drivers in Berkeley.
And we find that, in fact, the demographics of drivers in Berkeley don't match the census demographics.
And that could be because of different driving patterns or commuting, gig economy work, et cetera.
We can further refine our baseline by focusing on drivers that are found to be at fault in the collision, which gives us our closest proxy for folks that are driving dangerously in Berkeley.
And that is precisely who we would hope officers are pulling over for moving violations.
So if officers are making the decision to stop for a moving violation based on race neutral observations of behavior, we would expect the demographics of those stops to align with the demographics of our proxy population of folks that are driving dangerously in Berkeley.
And in 2024, we do, in fact, see a close alignment between the demographic profiles of at-fault drivers and those stopped for moving violations.
Okay, so we just looked at discretionary stops for moving violations.
This next analysis looks at all discretionary vehicle stops.
The academic literature in the field calls this test the veil of darkness test.
And it's premised on the idea that the race of a driver is more apparent to an officer when it is light outside rather than when it is dark outside.
And the idea is that if black people, for example, are stopped more often in the light than in the dark, it could indicate that the visibility of race is playing a role in the decision to stop.
So we compare the demographics of who officers are stopping when race is more visible to the demographics of who officers are stopping when race is less visible.
And what we see in 2024 is that those groups align quite closely, which is the result we would expect if officers were making their decisions to stop based on race-neutral observations of behavior.
So those are two tests of implicit bias in the decision to make a stop.
This last one looks for implicit bias in the decision to conduct a search.
In this graph, we see the percentage of discretionary searches across racial groups that yielded some sort of contraband.
And the idea here is that a search trigger.

Segment 2

I'd like to begin by saying that a search that is triggered by a given level of suspicion based on race-neutral factors will yield contraband at the same rate across all racial groups.
Conversely, a higher yield rate for searches of white people, as compared to searches of black people, for example, would indicate that race is playing a role in officers' decisions to search.
And what we find in 2024 is, in fact, the opposite.
Search yield rates for searches of white people were lower than other groups, and that finding is in line with what we would expect to see if searches conducted by officers were based on factors that do not involve race.
Moving beyond stops, one of the most important areas of accountability relates to how and when the department uses force.
As you can see, BBD uses force in just a small fraction of the 61,000 plus calls for service that we had in 2024.
Of those interactions, only 0.48% resulted in any use of force, and 0.05% or just 29 incidents led to force that involved a weapon or produced more than a minor complaint of pain.
We also track the demographics associated with our use of force incidents in relation to arrests.
So this chart shows a breakdown of force incidents in those scenarios.
We focus on arrests for two reasons.
First, it is the most common scenario where force is applied.
And second, by evaluating the use of force as a percentage of arrests, we can isolate the arrest as a variable to directly compare how force is applied across racial groups.
So this chart shows that during 2024 arrest situations, force was used at very similar rates across racial groups, which is the outcome we would expect if the decision to use force is being determined by factors such as the dynamics of the arrest situation, rather than the race of the individuals involved.
All the tests for bias that I just described are metrics we track throughout the year to guide our deployment decisions and strategic direction.
We recognize that our work occurs within a broader historical context marked by systemic inequities.
So acknowledging this, we actively prioritize addressing bias directly, holding ourselves accountable, and actively contributing to fairer and more equitable outcomes.
So we remain dedicated to modernizing our practices to reflect the values and expectations of our community.
This year, even amid staffing pressures and increased demands, we've successfully expanded our team and strengthened our operational capacity.
Our partnership with All-Star Recruiting has introduced fresh talent, strengthened us, and look to moving forward, we've also are preparing to integrate our community service officers.
We know these effects will assist us amidst our staffing challenges.
We've also leveraged strategic technology, such as our ALPR readers, looking forward to fixed camera surveillance systems.
Our goal is to address crime proactively.
Initiatives targeting organized retail theft and gun recovery are producing measurable safety improvements through evidence-based strategies.
Community collaboration continues to guide our work.
We understand the value of meeting our community, sharing what we know, and working with them towards solutions.
Transparency remains central to our mission.
The ongoing development of our transparency hub will soon provide more frequent updates on crime trends, enforcement actions, and technological uses, reinforcing our commitment to accountability and trust.
Looking ahead, we'll continue to build on our data-driven precision, real-time response capabilities, and enhanced situational awareness.
We are committed to exploring innovations that keep all of Berkeley safe.
And we know that we can set new standards for public safety.
We greatly value the partnerships we have, both with this Council, with our community, with the Police Accountability Board, and the Director of Police Accountability.
All of these pieces are important to keeping our community safe.
Thank you for your attention.
Despite the challenges today, we're happy to take any questions.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate the presentation.
I know how hard it is to give one in the middle of all those different technical difficulties.
I want to take public comment first, since I don't think we have as many folks here in person.
Does anyone have public comment? And then we'll take Council comments and questions.
Really happy to hear about the initiatives that the Berkeley Police Department is taking.
It's already an excellent police department, but everything excellent can always use improvement.
I was happy to hear that Chief Lewis spoke to a week-long CIT training.
CIT International is the preeminent organization on crisis intervention training, and it covers very specialized populations.
For example, de-escalation with someone with dementia, with autism, who's deaf.
There's an array of workshops.
There's excellent officer wellness workshops.
And the last time anyone other than me was there from Berkeley was when Officer Jeff Shannon was here, which is Sergeant Shannon, who was also our last CIT coordinator.
So we're good to see that moving forward.
And this is the first conference since I've been attending, which is 8 of them since 2012, that will be in California.
So it's going to be in Anaheim in August, and I really hope that this time there will be Berkeley officers there, but not only officers, but other individuals who work with these issues in the community.
Because they just do incredible work.
So, again, I'm also happy to know that Chief Lewis has worked very well with many other alternatives, and I'm hoping that the public safety for downtown, the safety escorts can move forward faster.
Although I also received comments from community people that there isn't enough police downtown.
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks for your comments.
Do we have any other comments online? Perhaps there's 1 remote commenter that Kelly Hammergren.
Okay, go ahead, Kelly.
Okay, thank you.
And and thank you for the report.
Right now, we're entering what would best be described as an unstable national government.
I mean, at least certainly feels that way.
Things are seem to be changing every minute.
So I really kind of wished that we had a little longer period of time for your statistics.
It's hard to predict what the future is going to bring, but I really kind of wish that we had available statistics to a couple of years before the pandemic up through the present.
You know, I hope that all this instability doesn't have a horrible negative impact on our city, but some of us are a little on edge.
But that's it.
And thank you for the report.
Thank you.
Maybe I'll just give you a quick opportunity.
Arlo.
How many years back does the data go on the hub? Yeah, thank you.
So on the transparency hub, it does go back quite a bit further than what we've included in this report.
So we have crimes back to 2016 calls for service back to 2019 and that's available both as an interactive dashboard and then also the raw data that you can download and work with on your own.
So that's available updates daily.
We included this time range on the report because I think it represents the new paradigm that we're in post-COVID.
Thank you.
I figured you wouldn't want to pass up an opportunity to talk about what's on the dashboard.
So are there other questions, Mark? Or comments, I should say? Okay.
No, there's no one to speak.
I will take comments from Council.
Okay, I'm not sure our parliamentarian is working, but I know that Council Member Traigub has comments.
I'm going to start there and then Council Member Linopara.
Thank you so much, Chief and members of the BPD team for the really edifying presentation.
And most importantly, thank you for your utmost professionalism and the care and diligence with which you exercise this important duty.
I had a few questions that, if it's okay, I was going to just for time list out, and some of them are clever, clarifying nature and others are more just looking at just what to expect next.
So, I wanted to find that in the clarificatory question category, I wanted to ask what an online call looks like.
I also wanted to ask, I didn't catch what the kind training was, how you define that.
And I wanted to better understand, you mentioned in one of the stats, use of force beyond minor discomfort or weapon deployment.
And I wanted to better understand how particularly minor discomfort is defined.
And then on the other questions, so, I was really interested in the slide that said, most of the highest volume of 911 calls are coming from D4, and I wanted to look at that.
And then on the other questions, so, I was really interested in the slide that said, most of the highest volume of 911 calls are coming from D4, and I wanted to see if you could, if you have a sense of what kind of calls for service, those might be, and the breakdown and how it may compare to historic data in that particular area.
I also, I noticed that four of the high collision intersections were also either in my district or at the boundaries of it.
I wanted to better understand what kind of prevention or intervention steps are being taken to reduce that.
I wanted to find out if you could tell me what, how you're defining crimes against society.
And then I wanted to just ask you about the attrition rate.
Obviously, you're working really hard to get us closer to what is needed for a shift complement.
So, but of course, there is also planning for retirement.
And so how did those numbers compare? And on the implicit bias data, I wanted to see if you could speak to, if there is an assessment you're doing on the types of vehicles that could be used for profiling, and if so, what is being done to try to mitigate for those kinds of implicit biases.
I think those were all my questions.
Others I will ask offline, but thank you so much.
So, did you get all those questions? Yeah, we got them and maybe I'll grab a couple of them and then pass the mic.
Sure, that sounds good.
So the KIND training is really cool.
It covers a lot of topics that are really important and valuable to us as a department.
It leans into fair and impartial policing, de-escalation, the crisis intervention training, constitutional rights, fair and humane treatment.
So there's a robust series of courses that we know make us more equitable, more aware, more capable in being our best professional self.
And so that's what the KIND, it's an acronym that covers a lot of those topics.
And we really have a very strong focus in ensuring that we achieve that kind of training for our staff.
And some of the training we're able to bring in, we're also able to share throughout the department and not just for our sworn staff.
Let's see.
The attrition rate.
So we, too, are tracking very closely, you know, how well our recruitment efforts work.
In 2023, we set a goal or a focus, a priority of recruit and retain.
What we realized this year moving into 2025 is we're really focused on retention, professional development.
We met as a command staff and really started to define on what that meant.
How do we ensure that those that we bring to our agency that have the same shared values as our community, who we invest this training into, want to stay? One of the words that came up was thrive.
We want our employees to thrive and be able to continue to serve with joy and be their best selves when they're serving the community.
And so a lot of our efforts are focused on looking at who maybe is retirement eligible and starting to stay ahead of hiring, but ensuring that people, as long as they continue to benefit and provide good quality service, we want them to want to stay here and not look at other agencies or not look towards retirement and really kind of leaning into that work.
I think I'm going to ask Arlo to talk a little bit about online calls and force levels.
Yeah, sure.
So those online calls are referring to online reports.
So community members can submit a crime report via our website.
It's on the city website and that gets categorized as an online call for service.
So the term of the call for service is no call, but it's online.
And then use of force levels we have that's detailed on our written report.
We report use of force a little bit different in the city than in other cities.
And the main difference are the level one uses of forces that we call them.
It's a four level, four tiers, four levels.
And those level ones are the really low levels of force that involve a grab or a.
It's actually perfect that you brought this up.
If you look at the city gate report, the assessment that they did, we capture low, low levels of force that really no one else in our surrounding jurisdictions that we're aware of capture.
And so we are looking at how to align the way we report and capture force to connect with our other surrounding jurisdictions so we can make good comparisons.
Because one of the things we do know is that the question about whether something minor caused minor discomfort or didn't cause minor discomfort, it can be subjective to the officer that's taking the report.
So we want to continue to document and have records of the ways that we engage force.
We find that some officers were over reporting because they just weren't sure whether they had reached that threshold or not.
But I really want to raise up, though, are the incredibly low uses of force.
The rate force in which our officers go out and do their work on a regular basis is, I think, really a testament to the quality of the employees that we bring in the training and their commitment to serving the community well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I just want to share some of the dynamics of collisions.
Whenever we have a suspected serious injury or something that raises a serious concern, we get together with our Vision Zero partners and we have a meeting to discuss what the dynamics of the collision were.
And we share those factors.
And then we also look at the transparency hub for any complaints that are coming in a particular area to make sure that we're focusing our efforts in those areas.
And then I think your last question was about do we take specific car types into account in our test for implicit bias? And I'm assuming that you're using that as a way that we could get towards a proxy for race based implicit bias.
So we go directly to the race based measure that we're trying to get at.
So instead of measuring an intermediate outcome or output, I think it's more direct to measure those racial disparities in the test that we do directly.
The point about specific cars is a good one for especially the veil of darkness test, because to the extent that specific car types or other neighborhood factors correlate or betray that light versus dark experiment that we're leveraging, then that detracts from the validity of the test a bit.
So that's why we do multiple tests and they're all pointing in the same direction.
So we feel pretty good about the analysis that they're producing.
I'm sorry.
You had one more question you asked about crimes against society.
That's a category that's built by NIBRS.
So that's the way that they categorize it.
And so they've separated certain types of offenses into those categories to try to provide more nuanced crime information based on how they see those crimes.
So we don't have the ability to affect the calls that go into a specific category, but I'd be happy to provide the longer definitions that NIBRS has for each of those categories.
I think that would be helpful, and we can take this offline, certainly.
I think my only other kind of main question that I wanted to just better understand on the record here is, and D4 is probably just the tip of the spear.
But I was very curious about the decline in most or all types of crimes, but an increase, a paradoxical increase in 911 calls.
And I was curious if there was a breakdown of the calls for service either in D4 or just in general.
If not, I'm happy to take that offline.
But more broadly, I'm just curious what may be driving this somewhat paradoxical inverse relationship.
Yeah, so after you asked that question, I went on to the Transparency Hub, to the calls for service page.
I was able to filter for your district and for 911 calls.
I'm looking at that list now.
The top call in 2024, top 911 call, was for a disturbance.
So some sort of disturbance happening in the district, somebody calls in.
There were also welfare checks getting called in, aid to citizens, batteries.
So an assortment of calls.
And so all that information is there, and we can slice it a couple different ways to really refine the insight that you're looking for.
Thank you.
Well, just broadly, again, I wanted to thank you for just, I think the professionalism exercised by this department is top-notch.
I'm very proud to be in a community whose police department cares so much about serving this community and being also receptive to constructive opportunities to do even better.
I know that you have a lot of challenges from multiple angles, and I think you do a really great job, especially accounting for limitations on staffing.
And just, I would welcome any opportunities we can get to spread the word about your initiatives to the broader community.
I imagine that's something that I'm not the only council member who feels like we would want to share that.
And I'm really interested in kind of what you're doing to staff up both on the sworn and non-sworn side with a particular focus on community policing efforts.
You mentioned one of those.
I know you didn't talk about bike patrols.
Certainly something that I would like to see returned back to the full shift complement as soon as possible.
And I know you're taking a step towards that.
So thank you so much.
Okay, so it seems that everyone has a comment or questions to make.
So I want to just do a quick temperature gauge.
If you can let me know just about how many questions you have.
No questions.
No questions.
Do you have questions? Yeah, I have a question.
Can you tell approximately how many? A few questions.
Okay, a few.
Two.
Seven.
Ten.
Okay.
Council Member Humbert? Maybe five.
Okay.
All right.
I'm just trying to get a sense of what we've got here.
All right.
And then did we lose Council Member Bartlett? Oh, no.
His video's not here.
All right.
Okay.
So let's keep going with our order, then, in that case, just so you know, folks, we're about 50 minutes from our 6 o'clock meeting.
So go ahead.
Thank you.
And thank you for the presentation.
I'm really happy to see the big decrease in violence and property crime.
And also, at the same time, really saddened to see the increase in anti-Semitic and homophobic and transphobic and racist hate crimes that, you know, I'm sure are emboldened by our federal government.
And the increase in traffic violence, fatalities, and major injuries that it's a reminder that we have to remain committed to our Vision Zero goals.
And I appreciate your work in that as well.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to Council Member Kaplan.
Thank you.
I wanted to thank the department and commend you for your work.
I want to commend your accountability measures, as well as your clearance rates.
I'm really excited to see that the gun violence program is active and that the ALPRs are live.
And those are my comments.
Thank you.
All right, then.
Moving on to Council Member O'Keefe.
Are you going in least to most order? No, I'm just doing it based on, like, who I've seen, because our parliamentarian system isn't working right now.
Right, yeah.
It might be working now, but.
Great.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for this presentation.
I have two questions.
They're unrelated, so I'll ask them one at a time.
The first one is about moving violations.
I saw on your lovely bar graph that the violations for moving at unsafe speed were pretty low on the list.
And yet it was the top of, I forget how you, you know, the reasons for accidents.
I forget how you phrased it.
So I was wondering if you could sort of speak about that differential and what are you doing to enforce speeding laws? It's a great question.
So some of it has to do with availability of the equipment to do the speed enforcement.
It also has to do with whether or not we have valid speed surveys in certain areas in order to do that type of enforcement.
So some of it is officers being out and in the right place at the right time to be able to pace a vehicle and get the speed to do that enforcement.
So there's going to be a little bit of a disconnect between the number of citations that are being written and the type of crashes that we're seeing.
So we absolutely acknowledge that there's work to be done in that area and are actively trying to work with our city partners to get up to speed with the equipment and whatnot and what we need to do to get there.
Thank you.
And actually, I have a follow-up question that doesn't count.
I have another one after this.
So what support would you like from us? Because this is something that's been mentioned.
I mean, we saw it in the data you presented.
It's also a lot of my constituents are concerned about how fast people drive.
And I'm sure a lot of you are getting letters about that.
So what can we do to support your efforts in making people drive more slowly? Some of it is just being out there and being visible for us.
And I think everything falls back to staffing levels.
So we have staffing levels within the police department, but outside of our department, you have transportation and the folks that need to get the speed surveys updated and things like that.
Everything is impacted by staffing shortages citywide.
So to that end, it is a priority for us.
And I can just say that when staffing improves, I think we'll see the needle move a little bit in that arena.
I think another thing to really consider here, too, is the deterrence factor.
So you might not see officers writing a lot of tickets for unsafe speed, but their ability to be present on Sacramento Street or University acts as a deterrent and can slow people down.
And then they may then lean into some of the other violations that are also having to do with collisions that don't have those other constraints around enforcement that we have to accomplish.
But it's certainly a great point that as we do our focused operations to kind of work on how we can address speed issues in a smarter way.
Thank you.
And do keep, if you have any ideas, some technology or some law you want changed, just ask us and we'll consider it at least.
So thank you.
And then my second question is about calls for service regarding mental health crises.
I'm wondering just if you could talk more about if you have data about how many were that was a factor or the primary concern.
And if you think that the specialized care unit has changed the way those go or how you guys are working with the specialized care unit, if you could just talk more about how you respond to mental health crises, that would be great.
Yeah, it's a great question.
As we stepped into a lot of the reimagining work, we were trying to explore what percentages of our calls involved someone that was in either mental health crisis or mental health was a factor in that.
And we do.
We created a system to be able to tag that in the calls that we have.
What's particularly challenging is that we didn't want to miss collecting that factor in a call, but it may not be like the main reason that we arrived at a call.
And it's been one of the challenges that we've been working through through several rounds of different had data analysis to really try to parse out what might be a peer and call for service that requires that would allow for a mental health intervention that didn't require the police.
And it's an important question.
And so I'm very proud of our partnerships with both our mobile crisis team and our specialized care unit to have additional tools and ways to provide the care that we need for our community.
I'm excited about some of the places that we can go that work to expand coverage.
You know, we are in a position where officers are highly trained to respond to that kind of call and are 20.
We provide 24 7 service, but we know we are not the best person for many of those calls.
We also know that we have a responsibility to balance making sure a scene is secure.
Public safety is addressed.
There's accountability regarding crimes at the same time.
We're trying to lift up those services to those that might be in that kind of crisis.
Yeah, so what I'm hearing is it's very hard to keep track of of the data to the extent that I'm curious about.
Is that right? Well, we do track your chart.
Yeah.
So we do label our calls with dispositions that are mental health related.
And so that data is on the transparency hub.
I'm looking at 2024 right now, and it's about 5% of our total calls had some nexus with mental health issues.

Segment 3

We're going to talk a little bit about the nature of the call and the nature of the issue.
But that doesn't tell the whole story of what's appropriate for what types of responders.
And importantly, that disposition comes at the end of a call, so we know even less about the nature of the call as it comes in.
And so that complicates this question about the who responds.
I am still curious.
It would be nice, I guess, I understand that it's difficult, so I'm not coming after you, but it would be really nice if we had data so that we could evaluate better how the specialized care unit was working and if it was actually, like, if the interface between the police department and that unit was working well, or if it wasn't.
I'm curious about that.
If you could comment about that at all.
Yeah, I think that's exactly it, is that we try to collect data from our end and the SCU independently collects data about the number of contacts they have and the success of those contacts.
And then we have the places where we intersect.
And so we do have data that we can get to that tells us how many of the calls that we were on that SCU would then be able to hand off to, and be happy to kind of pull that together and work with HHCS and Director Gilman and get to that data.
Yeah, that'd be great.
Thank you so much.
And thanks again for this presentation.
Thank you.
So I'm going to go districts 1 and then 3, 6, and 8, just to give you all a heads up.
Okay, great.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I'm disappointed I won't get to hear Council Member Blackabee's 10 questions before I ask mine, but I'll try to, I'll do my best here.
Thank you, Police Department.
Thank you, Police Chief Arlo.
Sorry, my contacts are a little blurry today for some reason.
And Lieutenant Tate, thank you.
Thank you, the 3 of you for being here and making your presentation.
Let me just pull up my notes.
So I think like others on this Council and like members of the community, we're all very concerned about traffic safety and specifically pedestrians and bicyclists, but also drivers.
And, you know, we've had these tragic incidences of people dying on our streets.
And so I know you talked about the primary collision factor being speeding, as was noted, and you talked about automated enforcement opportunities.
Can you explain a bit more of what you mean by that? So, we had talked about red light cameras and what it would take.
I know that there was some interest in the past to look at bringing red light cameras back and what sort of impact that would have.
It has been a challenge.
Just that in order to stand up that program again would take considerable effort and staff time.
And another thing that had been considered in the past was what it would look like to do automated speed enforcement.
So, unfortunately, we weren't part of the pilot program that is ongoing right now.
That effort, I think, goes through 2030.
So there may be an opportunity at some point for us to engage in that.
But those are the things that we're referencing.
Oh, okay.
So, yes, my understanding with the red light cameras, correct me if I'm wrong, is what I understood is that there's a need for an officer to then go to court to defend the issuance of the ticket in the event that people are challenging those tickets.
And that became the staffing issue that made that difficult.
Is that accurate? It's a little more than that.
There's also the staff time that it took for an officer to review the violation and confirm that a violation actually occurred.
So all of the citations that were coming in from the third party vendor had to be vetted by an officer.
And then, yes, the officer, if there was a citation that was contested, would have to go present the evidence in court.
Okay, so that's just not something we would have the capacity to do at this point.
I do want to note that there is a state law from a couple of years ago, AB 43.
It was in the referral ranking process, and I'm looking forward to getting those ranking results that would allow us to lower speed limits in certain areas.
I think it's commercial areas and other designated areas.
This is I just want to note that a lot of this safety on our streets is not just the role of the police department, but our public works department.
And so they are the ones who would have to implement AB 43.
I'm hopeful that they can do that work, especially if it's ranked highly.
I just want to note that for the public.
I also want to note measure FF is funding dedicated funding to make improvements to our streets to whenever we pay the street that we would also do some kind of safety measure.
And Mr.
City manager, could you just talk briefly about developing the work plan to implement measure FF? Just so the public knows that just given these tragedies that have recently occurred, what we're doing to for the long term to improve our street safety.
Sure, thank you for the opportunity council member.
We'll actually be coming to council to do a work session on measure at the end of the month.
So we'll, we'll be sharing a lot more information with the public about that.
If people want to come to that, but essentially more than half of the measure funding is dedicated to not just pay for the streets, but.
To creating safer infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists, fixing sidewalks and doing more of a complete streets approach.
And I really do want to appreciate your calling out that part of the work of.
Creating safety in our streets is police.
Yes, but a big part is infrastructure and public works and creating infrastructure that makes it harder for people to speed.
So that will definitely be a big piece of the work that happens through measure.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I also want to say, I do believe in enforcement and sometimes the only way that somebody will slow down is if they get a ticket.
So I just want to express my support for that work.
I think there is a role for ticketing people who are driving unsafely.
I've seen people run red lights, just driving with extreme speed and we know that speed is what kills and that's what the data show.
That's what we know.
So I also just want to encourage if members of the public, if you are concerned about street safety, the biggest thing you can do is slow down when you're driving and and we all need to be aware of our surroundings as well.
So, okay.
That was the kind of my piece about that.
I also wanted to just pause and note the studies of tests for bias.
I thought this was I think this is data you've presented in the past and you're presenting it again and it almost seems too good to be true.
And so it is what it is.
I think it is.
It is something that we should feel very proud of.
I was I was curious.
You know, I don't think this is something you have right now.
Maybe it's something we can look at for next time.
You know, how do we compare on these tests to peer cities just so we can kind of get a sense? We're sort of looking at this in a vacuum.
We look really good, but it's sort of because I'm actually, you know, I'll just say for myself, I'm not steeped in these types of tests for bias.
So that's why getting a comparison to maybe cities of similar size or or, you know, in our region, I think would be helpful.
But Mr.
Melberg, do you want to make a comment? Yeah, we also would love to do those comparisons and we scour the web and other departments for their stop data.
Unfortunately, not many other departments published in the same detail that we do.
But the report at the state level does collect all of all of the stop data that the California departments are collecting and publishes a generalized report with some of these same metrics at a state level.
So we can see at least how we compare to state average.
And then not in the most recent report, but the previous version, they did publish a jurisdiction level analysis of the specifically the yield rates ratio test, and we could see that we like our results were confirmed by the test that they ran and that that was not the case for for many departments in California.
So we do have some some things that tell us that we're performing at a very high level compared to other departments.
Okay, thank you very much for that.
And then finally, I, I wanted to applaud two things.
One was the work on organized retail theft.
So, so what I have here, tell me if this is accurate over a 6 month span, there were 12 dedicated operations that resulted in 79 arrests.
I think that that is really tremendous.
And I think there's a feeling whether it's true or not that these are sort of these brazen crimes that are going unpunished.
And so I just want the public to know that our police department is doing something about about this issue.
This is an organized crime ring, basically.
And so I appreciate the seriousness with which we are tackling that problem.
And then the final thing I wanted to appreciate and applaud is the work on recruitment.
I think the stat I had was, well, I'm losing it now.
5 times, but 5 times what? 5 times more applicants that we're able to bring into our pipeline to then review for whether they meet qualifications.
Okay, great.
So, so, yeah, I just want to appreciate that too, because part of doing the traffic enforcement is having the officers available.
And sadly, we have to make decisions about how to use our scarce staffing resources too.
And I think that's part of the challenge with the traffic enforcement.
If you've got to respond to a serious crime in progress, they can't always do that work.
Correct.
So, so I think we just have to always stay focused on recruitment and I just want to just in general, appreciate all the work that you're doing.
And thank you again for all the time that you took to prepare the report and present it to us.
Thank you.
Council member vice mayor Bartlett.
I think you're next.
Thank you.
Madam Mayor.
Hello, everyone.
I'm not feeling very, very good today.
However, I really am feeling good about what I've seen so far today.
I want to thank you chief and team for your, for your deep analysis.
A great report.
Very enthusiastic about the decline in robberies, decline in shootings, unfortunate increase in deaths from shooting, but we'll work on that.
We'll work on that.
And the, the stop data, the use of force, the, the, all the equity arrangements that we've that we focus so hard on all these years, and 10 years ago I was on the police review commission.
And so just seeing the evolution of our practice here.
It appears to be bearing fruit.
And it's very, very encouraging.
And I know the other cities you mentioned that report.
We are, we are free and clear of them, not even a comparison.
This is the gold standard of policing.
This is, this is it.
And so I want to encourage us to keep keep on going and keep developing the, the, the, the alternate means of engaging people in crisis that's the specialized specialized care unit.
Yes, see you evolving that program to something even more effective possible.
The CSR program, which I want to ask you about actually quickly.
Is there is there you have any sort of update on our ceasefire initiative? Yeah, it's a great question.
First of all, thank you very much council member Bartlett for those kind comments.
The, the work that we talked about the city led gun violence intervention.
That's the work that's directly related to the ceasefire efforts.
It's just we understood from the result from our analysis of our Berkeley data.
That a pure ceasefire type approach was not the most appropriate to intervene and prevent violence related gun violence in our community.
So, thank you for launching that work and the council member for shepherding it forward.
That is exactly the work that we're engaged in with our city based organizations.
That that effort is, I think, and very hopeful is going to drive real change in our community and provide the sort of support systems that we really all want.
That's wonderful.
That's what is incredible.
Yeah.
And again, because this does bear fruit to the thesis that we put forward together those years ago, that when you, when you have constitutionalized policing, that's human centered safety follows.
And here we see it.
Another question about the hate crimes, the, the unfortunate hate crimes that we see, what is the, the, the 19% of the, the first group is this race, ethnicity, nationality, the hate crimes went down over the last three years.
From 29 to 20, and then hit incidents went up from 16 to 21.
my questions are, what was the difference between a crime and incident? And then what is the racial breakdown of these victims? Yeah, no, it's a really important question.
The, so the 1st, the difference between a hate crime and a hate incident hate incident is a report of some hate based events that came to us, but did not meet the, the requirements to charge a crime.
So, it could have been something that somebody said, but did was not a threat or an active vandalism or some of the other more common crimes that we see occurring to your question about the categorization of hate crimes.
We have some more detail on the current trends page or transparency hub of how those categories break down, but we are seeing, like, we mentioned a number of hate crimes that are directly towards or the hate bias motivation is anti Jewish anti Muslim anti Arab.
And that's a relatively new development in recent years.
But, like, I mentioned the main, the most common hate bias motivation that we saw this year was anti last year was anti black.
And so those tend to be what we see year to year as being the most common hate crimes that we experienced in Berkeley.
Okay, so the usual ones are black people and queer people, but now reflecting the, the, the, the conflict in the world that subsumed our council last year, right? All the 22 meetings we met in the back room.
It's the, it's the Jewish Muslim conflict abroad being played out here.
That's unfortunate.
Very sad.
And lastly, I just want to join my colleagues and if you look at the, the road safety intersections, the high class intersections, you know, it's, it's, it's phenomenal.
How, how, without, without fail, how it lines up to, to, to be the red line districts.
It's, it's incredible when you see this list in this fashion, you can see very clearly what happens when you wipe out community and put in highways.
It's very, very clear.
This is, I've never seen it laid out so perfectly.
So, again, this, this goes to our, our efforts around the bar stations and, and the road narrowing and bringing back economic development and cultural development, where there are now dusty highways.
So, thanks for your work here.
Really appreciate you all and carry on.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay.
We have council member block be next, followed by council member Humbert and we're about 25 minutes from 6 00.
p.m.
So.
Thanks, madam mayor.
I just want to appreciate all my colleagues.
Good questions, especially council member because I've now knocked out too.
So we're doing, we're going to make real progress.
1st, I just want to echo everyone else's comments real.
Thanks to chief Lewis, deputy chief tape to Arlo for this really thoughtful and comprehensive report.
I appreciate the level of work and care and detail that went into it.
Also, the self reflection and the careful analysis, especially around accountability.
So, again, just on echo colleagues and thank you for all this great data, because it gives us a lot to work with and reflect upon.
As we think about the community moving forward.
So, a few questions and 1st, 1 chief, you and I have been talking about a little bit and the context I'll say is this is a question.
It's not just to, but as I've been thinking a lot moving forward about.
You know, we measure, I'm sorry, we manage what we measure and as we go through the budgeting process, and we kind of ask the same question, most of the departments, which is really kind of driving down to the key metrics that show impact.
And outcomes in terms of how we're serving the community.
So, out of everything in this report, because there's a lot here as a kind of a leader of the department and the leader of the police force here, you know, if you had to think about.
3 or 4 of sort of your North star metrics that are like, these are, these are really what we track to show positive impact results outcomes that we, you know, in the community.
You know, what would what would you focus on and what would you focus us on? That's great.
It's a great question.
I know you and I talked a little bit at length about, you know, for me, my values really are centered around community service, which is all about community safety and public safety.
And as we look to things like response times and time on a call, really thinking about what that means.
How do we get to a call safely in appropriate amount of time for a high priority call? How long do we spend on a call knowing that we are want to ensure we have a quality investigation that ensures that we have high clearance rates and how do we holistically look at our approaches that we don't lose that important piece of customer service? And so some of the things we look at are how many calls per shift and officers is managing as a way to understand what their workloads like, which also allows space for things like proactive policing, doing the traffic enforcement that we're talking about it.
It gives space and time for investigations and also that quality care again for us.
We're looking at response times, you know, we've got four priorities of calls.
We rank really well with our regional partners, but what's what's acceptable for a priority in progress? Dangerous call is 7 good enough.
It seems like a really long time.
If you're the one that's calling for help again, that might be better than regional partners, but that's not good enough for Berkeley.
If we know we need something different, it needs something more.
I will say that priority one calls is it can also be a broad field.
So not all things are equal.
The geographical layout of our city means not all things are equal, but we can drill into the data and really decide what's important to us.
Drill into the data and really decide what's important to us.
We know there's technologies out there looking at drones, the 1st responder looking at utilizing our camera technology and things like that that would allow us to maybe get insight.
And there's also moving to a script brace to dispatching all of those things would allow us potentially to have more insight on a call.
I think the last thing I think really is a metric that we're proud of, but that we really look at is our clearance rates.
And that might not be whether we immediately in the moment catch someone, but do we clear a call within a year of that call? What do we value as far as ensuring that we are solving problems in our community? And that means accountability.
It also means ensuring that people don't continue to come and victimize us.
So, you know, for me, I want to look at a lot of different metrics and I and I want to have grace around the fact that there's some things we can and can't control, but you're absolutely right.
If we're not measuring anything, we can't measure anything.
Thank you.
That's really thoughtful.
And as a city manager can attest, I've been asking him similar questions as kind of other departments, because I'm really interested in being this data driven approach and sort of measuring outcomes.
And so I look forward to working with you on that.
And really kind of drilling down to the things that can matter, we might be able to track and report kind of the community on a kind of ongoing basis.
2nd, on the, you know, I know last year, there's a lot of work on the city gate staffing report.
Any kind of just quick update on that? Yeah, if you, if you recall, there were about 54 recommendations on that work more than half.
I think it's 26 that we're at right now.
We've either begun work or completed work on them.
It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of work.
We know our goals for down the road to look at, as far as, you know, how we're going to be able to meet those goals.
And so, you know, I think it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of work.
And so I think it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of work.
And so I think it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of work.
So, I think, as we move farther along in those processes, probably closer to the budget cycle will begin to really lean into what will be raising up as the highest priority items in that report that we want to try to move forward.
Great.
So, with, you know, city manager might be worth at some point scheduling to sort of a check in its own kind of just check in on that.
I know that was an important piece of work and would love to kind of keep hearing about progress there quickly.
Just to take through thing on the workload and staffing and council member, I think a few other people have asked this also on the staffing and the hiring.
I know you've noted that there's at least 7 announced retirements and 13 who qualify for retirement.
I'm just curious about the churn.
So, last year, like, how many people did we successfully hire? And so if we're anticipating losing anywhere from 7 to 10, just curious how you're thinking about the folks out and folks in and what we're trying to get to this year in terms of new ads.
Yeah, what we're kind of overseeing are seen as an overall trend is that what I call the call plus 2.
So, with all of our advanced recruitment efforts, we are seeing incremental changes and we are very slowly moving up towards our staffing numbers and which led us to kind of really focus in on how we retain the staff that we have, knowing that there's a number of folks that are eligible for retirement.
What we also know is that we had a really heavy set of personnel over a 5 year period that were almost through, but there were a large number of people that were eligible for retirement.
And we're going to get a little bit of space around that in the next couple of years where we won't have as many people that are eligible to retire.
And so it's all these, it's the constant contact that those efforts that we're really hoping to increase and improve that plus 2 to move to a number that will actually allow us to make some inroads and what's been a challenging staffing situation.
I appreciate it.
And the culture is, I know, a big piece of this and getting that right is important.
And that plus 2 is a net plus 2 for the year.
Is that or is that just so I understand what you're thinking on plus 2? That's correct.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Real quick other on recruiting any thought it sounds like also recruiting is doing a great job programs with BHS, BTEC, BCC.
There's other areas where having a presence, being active, engaged.
I'm even thinking like, you know, the Berkeley SRO obviously is in touch with lots of folks at Berkeley High.
Are there other ways we can be creative in terms of outreach here locally and bringing folks that know the community kind of back into the force? Yeah, it's a great question.
And we're really excited about our CSO program as a way to really step up that community engagement piece and also offer a pipeline into our law enforcement positions.
And we too very much value recruiting from within our city boundaries and with some really fantastic suggestions from our mayor are looking to expand into some recruitment efforts at BCC very shortly.
Awesome.
Great.
I teed up Adina for that one.
So great.
Any note about why we think, and again, this is related to Council Member Traiga, why we think the non-emergency calls saw such a positive negative downward shift? I know we focus a little bit on 911 calls going up, but like 5,000 fewer non-emergency calls.
What's, you know, what's the good, what's the magic there that's or what's happening there? If we have any hypotheses.
It's a good question.
I mean, we saw a big drop in all call sources in 2020 during the pandemic.
And so they've rebounded at different rates.
And so no big theory as to why they're moving in the way that they are, but do appreciate that folks in the community call when they feel something is wrong and give us the opportunity to come check it out.
Okay, that'd be interesting to kind of just dig into that a little bit at some point.
And if there's some reasons, if there's more of those things that we can be doing, or does this reflect some of the alternative policing, SCU and all these other things? I'm just curious.
That'd be interesting to find out because that's a good trend in terms of your staffing levels and in terms of calls for shift props or things like that.
A couple last ones.
I wanted to piggyback on Council Member Castellawanyi's point.
To the extent possible, if we had kind of for future reports, an agreed upon set of comparable jurisdictions for as much of this data, just to put it in context.
So, whether it's the NIBRS numbers on the crime categories, whether it's the clearance rates, and maybe it's, again, we're not going to come up with them here, but Vallejo, Hayward, Fremont, Palo Alto, I don't know, El Cerrito.
There might be a set of them that are even more applicable than San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, but I also know that it's the data that you have and what you can get your hands on.
So, but to the extent that there's always kind of a consistent set of, here's our comparables and everything, we're kind of looking at us against those jurisdictions, that would be really, I think, helpful context.
So, just a comment, just for thinking about moving forward.
And then almost through here on the road safety, I love the information about the Drive Safer, Drive Longer program.
I know that we have anecdotally been seeing that is part of the factor here that we've got older drivers on the road.
Is that at all kind of an element of what we're seeing? But just to the extent that we could support that, support the funding for that, support attendance at that, it feels like that is an important angle here that we need to really lean into just to be proactive.
And so I just, I love the fact that you're talking about it and you're already planning on doing more, but if there's anything else you need from us on that, love to be helpful.
Final two things.
On page 32 on the use of force on the reporting, there was just a comment I just really wanted to clarify where you said, we anticipate modifying reporting practices in 2025 to better reflect common standards among peer agencies when you get to level 1 use of force.
Can you tease out a little bit what you meant by that? Are we changing the standard or changing the reporting standard? Or what did that mean? That was really drawn out in the report and that was what I was referring to earlier about the minor discomfort.
That's a significantly low level of force that's captured in different ways by different jurisdictions.
We have probably the highest level of reporting in that, which can make it challenging for us to compare ourselves like you were talking about compare ourselves to other jurisdictions.
Okay, so that's it.
I know the council in the past has sort of given some, set some framework for how we wanted to define level 1.
We want to be pretty expansive about it.
Anyway, so it feels like that's a future conversation about how we're going to define it and agree upon that.
Yeah, and that's certainly a conversation we expect to have with the police accountability board as well as we work through that policy, understanding that they've got a lot of feedback to provide us around that area.
Okay, last one I promise and then I'm done.
Again, this is more just sort of big picture reflective and looking at the heat map, which I thought was super useful on calls for service, reflecting that necessarily most calls for service occur in other council districts.
And you allocate staff and beats to where you need the people to be to address that.
So totally, which is absolutely the right thing.
We do get some thoughts or questions in our district about how can we continue to be creatively maintaining our visibility or having an effective presence? Even if we know that where the way you're designing the beats and we're allocating people needs to go where the activity demands that.
Any other thoughts or ideas and this might again, future future conversation about this, but how else we can be showing the flag or showing kind of the visibility and having a presence, even if we know in district 6, we're not.

Segment 4

I'm going to go ahead and start with the first question, which is, what are some of the things that are going to necessarily, you know, if there are fewer calls for service and staffing needs to be reflected accordingly? But any ideas on that? I'd really love to hear it, too.
Yeah, it's a great point.
And especially in jurisdictions or beats that are more geographically challenged, it can be hard to be in a place to be most useful for public safety.
At the same time, you're most visible.
So, I think that's a good point.
I think it's something that we should be looking at as we're working with our traffic bureaus to try to have more events up in those areas, have things like our transparency hub, where we can have back and forth conversations with community members about where they're seeing maybe an issue.
I think it's a good reminder.
I need to get back in touch with Lieutenant McGee to schedule.
I think we'd love to do some quarterly things up in D6.
And just, I think that's a great idea for just being present and engaging with folks.
So, thank you for the indulgence.
Thanks for the time.
Sorry, Mark.
And I'm all set.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And at this point, after having heard all the questions from my fellow council members, they've all been ticked off.
I don't have any questions.
I just have some comments.
First of all, I want to thank Chief Lewis, Deputy Chief Tate, Arlo Malmberg, and everyone else at BPD who worked on this for this comprehensive and highly informative report.
We're fortunate, I think, to have a police department that not only works hard to keep us safe, but also provides us with a wealth of data to help us understand crime trends and ensure accountability.
I especially want to appreciate BPD's work to get the FLOC ALPR system installed.
It looks like it's working swimmingly.
It's clear from this report that the system is already paying dividends.
It's notable that in the last three months of 2024, and I'm quoting the report here, ALPR technology played a role in 14 arrests, helped to recover 10 stolen vehicles, generated 14 investigative leads, and contributed to the issuance of two warrants.
I also want to bring attention to the data that we have around stops.
I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating because at these meetings, not today, but often, we hear that BPD must be engaging in profiling because the rates at which different groups are stopped do not precisely match their proportions in Berkeley's population.
The approach, of course, is false and misleading, and it's disappointing that we continue to hear it, but I'm happy we didn't hear it tonight.
We know that people committing crimes in Berkeley don't come solely from our city.
More importantly, we know that the most important measure of whether increased stops are a result of profiling is whether stopping someone was actually justified or not.
The stats that you showed tonight, and thank you, Mr.
Malmberg, for your explanation, you're highlighting all these statistics, show that, in fact, the yield rate in particular show that there seems to be a lack of bias, and that's exactly what we want to hear.
But, of course, we can't rest on our laurels.
We need to continually and actively pursue our fair and impartial policing strategies and goals, ensuring that we live up to our principles means continual training and accountability, and I'm pleased that we have a partner for those things in Chief Lewis.
I do want to note, as some of my colleagues did, the traffic safety data shows that traffic violence is one of our most pressing safety items, issues facing people here in Berkeley.
We've had an unfortunate number of deaths and serious injuries lately, and I'm looking to measure FF and, you know, staffing up the police department to get some more enforcement, but also measure FF to help us engineer safety, which we know it can do.
Touching briefly on another topic, I'm pleased to see that recruitment efforts appear to be yielding additional applicants.
Thank you, Council Member Blackaby, for your questions about that.
I hope this trend continues and that we're able to get BPD fully staffed up, you know, as soon as possible, and I know it'll take a while.
So, again, thank you very much to the police staff present today and for so many others for this report.
I look forward to continue to work alongside BPD to keep Berkeley and its people safe.
Thanks a whole lot.
Again, that's all I have.
Thank you so much, Council Member.
It's my turn.
So, first, I just want to thank you all again so much.
I really appreciate how much time and energy goes into this report and getting all of the statistics, although I imagine that that's very helpful when you have Arlo to help with it.
I really appreciate that the report starts and ends with values.
I think that that really says something about how you are hoping to lead the force, and I really appreciate that.
I'm also very concerned about the fact that we're not going to be able to get BPD fully staffed.
When I was doing my ride along with BPD, I know that one of the reasons why they said that response times might not be as fast is because they have fewer people covering the same amount of area.
And so I just want to highlight that for folks, too.
Just that can also impact our statistics.
Let's see, I've got some comments and then a couple of things I'd like to see for the next report, perhaps, and then a couple of questions.
So, again, appreciating the data, it would be really, as others have said, wonderful to see more comparisons to nearby cities when possible, just whenever possible, I would say.
I think it's really helpful to just have something to compare it to.
And I really want to highlight something that was brought up earlier about the importance of reporting period, just reporting crimes.
So, for the public, I think that's really important.
I know that some folks are hesitant to report crimes because they're concerned.
Maybe they won't get solved or they're not really sure what use it is.
And I think it's very important to report regardless.
So I really want to highlight that for the public.
I know you've mentioned collaboration with Vision Zero and the police accountability board.
I would love to see for the next one, how you've been working with reimagining public safety.
I know you're doing a lot of work there and you've been working on the police accountability board.
I think for our community, this is something that they really care about.
And so highlighting that, I think, in future reports would be wonderful.
And in line with this, just want to really thank you all for the work that's being done around CSOs and community work with the gun violence intervention and prevention programs and Vision Zero.
All of these things are so important to our community and we hear a lot that these are efforts that the community cares about.
I'm also very concerned about road safety and I love this drive safer, drive longer program.
I'm curious what the turnout was like.
That's one of my questions and I'm just going to finish if that's okay and then I'll come back to that question.
And then again, I really want to highlight the fact that you spoke about accountability.
I think that's so important and we really want to make sure that the people of Berkeley really trust our police department and having an accountability section and the work that you're doing with PAB, I think, really helps to make sure that people feel that they can trust the police department.
I really like this kind training program and would love to see that in the report next time.
The last thing I'd love to see in the report is just more information about mental health.
I think many people in Berkeley still don't realize we have a mobile crisis response team and a specialized care unit.
And as you highlighted, chief, the specialized care unit is not within the police department.
So you don't have that data, which I understand, but just generally being able to see, you know, what has the mobile crisis response team responded to, what have officers responded to that was a mental health issue.
What have officers responded to that was a mental health call, but perhaps the crisis team or the SEU weren't available.
And then I also just want to say that I'm just really disheartened to see our hate crimes in our city.
And we know that this is an issue.
It's not that this is new, but I just want to highlight the fact that we have also seen a rise in hate crimes.
And it's just, it's sad to see that here in our city.
So going back to my question earlier about drive safer, drive longer, do you have an idea what the turnout was like for those programs? Sure.
So when we first started, we had about a dozen people that were attending as word has gotten out and we've had very positive feedback.
There's upwards of 20 people per class.
Great.
That's good to know.
And as others have said, please share that with us so we can make sure we get it out through our channels as well.
I noticed that kidnapping and abduction levels seemed pretty high.
I just want to see if you could could touch on that at all.
I was pulling pulling this up.
I think it said 56 or something.
Let me see if I can find.
Oh, yeah, so so I don't have the, the prior numbers in to, to compare this stat because it's the 1st time that we're reporting these neighbors categories in that category doesn't line up necessarily with, like, the previous categories that reported to state.
So I, I'm happy to dig into that further and see if we can get some more details on what's going on.
Yeah, and I think maybe providing a list of, like, what the definitions of what crime categories fit in some of these things as we're stepping into this new data, I can tell you that we did not have 59 stranger kidnappings in our city last year.
So it's possible that a false imprisonment charges under there's a myriad number of types of crimes that might be assumed underneath that that specific title.
Absolutely.
And I know that even if a parent takes a child, if they don't have custody, that could be considered a kidnapping.
So I'm aware of that.
I just wanted to make sure that we have some breakdown of that information.
And then the last question that I wanted to ask you was about strategy strategies for increasing dispatch.
I know we've talked a little bit about increasing officers, and I'm sure we can also look for Berkeley City College students who'd be interested in in doing dispatch as well.
But I know that there are challenges in terms of just how much training is involved.
And I'm really concerned about that.
Having done a sit along, I got a chance to see how much work they really did there.
And I highly encourage my colleagues to do both a ride along and a sit along with dispatch.
I learned a lot from both.
So, please.
Yeah, sure.
It's a great question.
And I've said often is when as we recruit people, we want to recruit people to a life of service, a career of service in in Berkeley or and in the Berkeley Police Department and really looking to it to be that there are so many positions within our agency that serve the public and serve our mission.
And so we never shy away from bringing someone in any one of our staff levels.
You're right.
We've had very challenging numbers and have had challenging numbers of staffing in our communication center.
Right now, we are working in partnership with the fire department to set clear working groups to address both the training program recruitment, the infrastructure needed to expand the communication center to some of the script based dispatching that we've talked about that will ensure we have a better quality service and allow to effectively get the right resources to the call.
And also consider the wellness and health of the dispatchers that are doing that really, really important work.
Thank you so much.
It is exactly 6 o'clock.
Oh.
Yes, council member.
I'm so sorry.
I just need to correct myself.
Deputy chief Tate.
I miss misspoke earlier.
No, I wasn't, but thank you so much.
That's all.
Thank you.
Yes, so thank you all so much for the I really appreciate your time that you take in and I will entertain a motion to adjourn.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
And thank you again, everyone for dealing with the technical difficulties.
So, yeah, so we do have another council meeting coming up.
It's supposed to start at 6 o'clock.
I know some of you are there specifically for that.
So I just wanted to let, you know, I am going to give us like a 15 minute break just because we, we have been sitting for quite a while.
Thank you.