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Segment 1

Vice Mayor Wengraf, can you hear us? Yes, I can.
Okay, great.
Recording in progress.
Vice Mayor Wengraf on Zoom.
We have five members so we can begin the special meeting.
Good afternoon.
I'd like to call to order this special meeting of the Berkeley City Council for Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 at 3.30 PM.
The first item on the agenda is roll call.
If the clerk can please call the roll.
Okay.
Council member Kesarwani is absent.
Taplin is absent.
Bartlett is absent.
Tregub? Present.
Hahn is absent.
Wengraf? Present.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Here.
And Mayor Arreguin? Present.
Okay.
I see Councilor Taplin on Zoom.
Oh.
Mr.
Nunez-Smith.
Okay.
Just chatting.
Here he is.
Okay, well, then let's.
Do we have to have five here? Physically here? Yes.
Okay.
Bartlett's going to be here any minute, so.
Okay.
So Councilor Taplin, when Councilor Bartlett gets here, we'll come back to you to do the AB 2449 procedure.
Okay.
Quorum is present.
We'll now proceed to the action calendar, and this is a work session to receive a report on the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative, and also to receive a presentation on the City of Berkeley Workload and Organizational Study of the Police Department by CityGate.
So the way that we'll conduct this agenda item is, first, we'll have the presentation on the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative, and then we'll go to the CityGate report, and then I know the Vice Chair of the Police Accountability Board would like to address the City Council.
I'll go to her after, and then we'll open up for public comments and then Council discussion.
So, Mr.
City Manager, who should I turn over to? You can turn it over to me.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Mayor and members of the City Council and valued community members who are here today.
We have a terrific group that's been working on our Reimagining Public Safety Initiative for quite a while now, and we're prepared to provide an update.
We'll have several members of the group who are all online, and they will each do a section of it, and we're very much looking forward to providing this.
So the next slide shows the agenda for today, and basically what we'll do is we'll have a high level update on the Reimagining Public Safety efforts.
We'll cover the framework, the leadership, the guiding principles, key initiatives, and progress and next steps on all of those, and then we'll turn it back to the Mayor for those comments.
And then, as the Mayor said, we also have a CityGate report, which focuses on the Berkeley Police Department workload study that they will be providing.
So CityGate will be here to run through their slides.
We'll also have staff from the department here, and I believe from the PAB as well.
And then the next slide, I'm not going to go through the names of all these folks, but just we'll leave it up on the screen for a second.
Like I said, we have a very robust team who's worked really hard on all the elements of reimagining public safety.
So as you can see, we have a very robust team.
And if you look at public safety up on the screen here today, you see the faces of the folks who are online, many of whom will be presenting today.
So with that, I will hand it over to Carrie Arandondo, who will kind of proceed from here and then hand it off to the next person.
Yes.
Wonderful.
So as with previous updates, I'll provide a brief overview of our phased approach and the status of the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative.
This slide here gives a high level snapshot of our progress and timeline.
Since our last update in the spring, we've continued to move forward and are now transitioning into Phase 3.
For those of you listening in that are new to this initiative, Berkeley launched the Reimagining Public Safety effort in 2020 in response to the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others disproportionately affected by traditional public safety system.
The goal is to reshape and reimagine Berkeley's approach to public safety and set a national example.
So in Phase 1, which ran from July of 2020 to July of 2022, this phase centered on gathering community input, conducting research, and forming a task force.
This phase produced key reports and recommendations leading us into Phase 2.
And in Phase 2, City Council built on this foundation by setting a framework and allocating funding in fiscal year 23-24 to advance reforms.
So now that we're in Phase 3, our focus is on maintaining momentum, completing Phase 2's objectives, and expanding the scope of Berkeley's efforts.
This afternoon, staff will present the following recommended actions for City Council to review and discuss the Fall 2024 Reimagining Public Safety Status Report and provide feedback on the City of Berkeley workload and organizational study of the Berkeley Police Department.
As mentioned by our City Manager and the Mayor, staff are going to provide a high-level update on key milestones related to reimagining, we'll pause for comments, and then transition to the workload study presentation led by CityGate associates.
Hope this slide looks very familiar to folks.
So similar to previous updates, this presentation will focus on progress report outs from City staff aligned with the initiative's three core principles, reimagine, reinvest, and improve.
We'll begin with updates related to the first principle, reimagine.
So under the principle of reimagine, Berkeley is reshaping public safety to better meet the diverse needs of our community.
And this afternoon, we'll highlight the work of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as the City's Specialized Care Unit.
Leadership from Health, Housing, and Community Services, alongside the DEI office, will share key milestones achieved since our Spring update in May.
And for a full overview of our progress on all of the deliverables and reimagining, again, please refer to the comprehensive report and appendix that was shared out.
Now I'll turn it over to Rex Brown, the City's inaugural DEI officer, to report out on progress.
Thank you, Carrie.
Good afternoon.
Today I'll provide an update on the progress of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the City Manager's Office.
This position launched as part of Phase 2 of the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative.
As Berkeley's inaugural DEI officer, I'm leading efforts to integrate anti-racism, equity, and justice into our City's operations.
The goal is to ensure that the City departments are responsive and accountable to our diverse communities.
We are continuing to partner with organizations such as Healthy Black Families, the Pacific Center for Human Growth, the Commission on Disability, and others, too numerous to mention here.
But I would say that in our upcoming update, I'll be excited to join the Bay Area Equity Officer Network, convened by the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, to discuss operationalizing health equity and local government context with more than 20 equity offices and local governments across our region.
We aim to enhance inclusivity, address disparities, and improve access to all communities.
This winter, we are preparing an RFP to bring in a consultant who will guide the community process for local reparations.
Additionally, we'll continue to focus on increasing community engagement and prioritizing investments in environmental justice.
Having said that, I'd like to hand over to my partner in health equity, Scott Gilman.
Thank you, Rex.
One second here.
Thank you, Rex.
I'm going to be speaking about the Specialized Care Unit, which is a pilot project.
This has been a wonderful addition in our efforts to assist residents who are experiencing a nonviolent behavioral health crisis.
What makes this unit unique is that its response is without the presence of law enforcement.
The team is made up of an EMT, a licensed clinician, and a peer with lived experience.
The FCU began providing services in September 5, 2023, and is quickly ramping up to 24-7 services in the coming months.
I actually had a conversation with Dr.
Flores from the FCU today, and he anticipates we'll be 24-7 in December.
Goals of the FCU include promoting community well-being and enhancing public safety.
The FCU team does this by connecting those in crisis with services or transporting them in a very compassionate way wherever they may need to resolve the crisis.
Typical calls for service include welfare checks, community members in emotional distress, as well as those involved in substance use.
Some significant milestones for this pilot project.
As referenced on this slide, the design process is complete, and Bonita House continues to hire and train staff to operate the program.
Since September 2023, the team has continued to operate and has now responded to over, or has received over 1,500 calls for services.
Of those 1,500 calls, the team was dispatched to approximately 800 calls.
Once on the scene, if the team does determine that there's a health and safety issue that requires law enforcement, they may contact law enforcement for assistance.
So that said, of the 800 calls that the team was dispatched to, 700 of the calls didn't include law enforcement in any way.
Team on average responds to three to seven calls a day.
We're also now ramping up our public education efforts.
You may have seen the posters on the electronic kiosks throughout Berkeley.
The phone number for the FCU is a direct number that people can call.
It's on the slide, and it's also posted on our posters, again, throughout Berkeley.
We look forward to the coming retrospective evaluation process and continuing to expand our public education in the coming months.
So I'll hand it back to Carrie now.
Thank you, team.
So under our reinvest principle, the city is directing resources where they are most needed.
Taking a holistic approach to supporting our community and advancing a theory of change that positions Berkeley as a model city of resilience, safety, and strong community bonds.
This afternoon we'll share updates on respite from gender violence, language equity, mental health and violence prevention partnerships, as well as updates related to the city's gun violence intervention and prevention program.
I'll hand it back over to colleagues in HHCS for the next update.
Thank you so much, Carrie.
Good afternoon.
The Department of Health, Housing and Community Services is very excited to share a status update related to our strategic effort in addressing gender violence and enhancing crisis response systems.
So initiated in fall of 2023, the department launched a systems analysis to improve community knowledge about respite from gender violence and understanding current systems, strengths and challenges, and identifying service gaps.
Our policy recommendations as a result of this analysis covered crucial areas, including promoting financial independence, investing in restorative justice, multilingual language access, trauma-informed and non-carceral crisis response, support for incidents of violence among sex workers, and community surveys offering opportunities for feedback on emergency shelter services, adult, transition-age youth, and youth survivor services.
Our focus has remained on deepening community collaboration and really ensuring our policies resonate with survivors and their lived experiences.
Since our last presentation, our team has really focused on developing relationships with the Commission on the Status of Women, receive feedback on draft recommendations, and also begun their implementation.
I'll hand it back to Carrie.
Thank you, Sasha.
And with that, as part of the city's commitment to language access and equity, we are currently translating key public safety resources into Berkeley's most commonly spoken non-English languages.
So this is including Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, with additional languages like French, Arabic, and Hindi available upon request.
So this includes materials such as the specialized care unit brochure and resources on domestic and intimate partner violence.
We're on track to complete these translations by the end of the year, really wanting to ensure that community members have access to essential resources and information.
And as we move into Phase 3, the DEI office will continue identifying additional language needs and expand translation efforts to better serve our Berkeley community.
Passing it back over to HHCS.
Oh, and Director Gilman, I think you're muted.
Yeah, thanks, Carrie.
I now have a couple of slides to talk about our efforts that really focus on our youth population.
The Berkeley High Wellness Center was established thanks to a partnership between Berkeley Unified School District and the City of Berkeley.
The Wellness Center provides a dedicated space for students to visit that can help them cope with academic stress, anxiety, bullying, depression, and really any other sort of mental health concern.
Since its soft opening in 2023, the center has logged over 1,120 student visits and continues to enhance its mental health services, including prevention, early intervention, and crisis resources.
As we move into Phase 3 of reimagining public safety, the Wellness Center will focus on expanding outreach, increasing family engagement, and tracking the long-term impact of its services.
These efforts aim to further support our students' well-being, resilience, and align with the city's larger goal of youth investments in violence prevention efforts.
And next slide.
In addition to providing funding for the Berkeley High School Wellness Center, the City of Berkeley has made additional investments in youth violence prevention.
The city has allocated funding to McGee Avenue Baptist Church for its Voices Against Violence program, which focuses on mentoring, life skills training, and violence prevention for middle and high school students.
The program, led by Community Peace Ambassadors, has served Berkeley youth, offering workshops and activities that promote leadership, conflict resolution, and community healing.
Additionally, Berkeley Youth Alternative receives funding to support its counseling center.
So far, over 1,600 individual and 900 group counseling sessions have been provided to young people, most of whom face significant barriers to accessing traditional mental health support.
In addition to this, Berkeley Youth Summer Jam Day Camp offered creative programming like art therapy, nature walks, and team sports, all designed to help build resilience and social connectedness.
The city is continuing to support these impactful programs, along with Berkeley Junior Jacket's Violence Prevention Program, which focuses on youth development through leadership, teamwork, and community engagement.
Back to you, Carrie.
Thank you.
And with that said, we're excited to share an update on the Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention Program.
You may also hear me refer to it as its acronym, GVIP, for brevity, which is a key part of the Reimagining Public Safety Framework.
Over the past few years, we've prioritized community engagement and developed strategies to address gun violence in Berkeley.
The completion of community ad hoc advisory sessions and the gun violence prevention report in 2023 really laid the groundwork for a four-pronged approach that was adopted, which includes place-based interventions, custom notifications, street outreach, and social services.
In 2024, staff launched an RFP for the city's $2 million investment and contracted with an East Bay-based but nationally known organization, Live Free USA, who is partnering with the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform and Berkeley-based community organizations like the Center for Food, Faith, and Justice and Berkeley Junior Jackets to implement these strategies and build a violence prevention ecosystem for Berkeley by Berkeley.
And this fall, we initiated a soft launch with focused community outreach to those affected by gun violence.
As we move forward, we are focused on securing staffing, training, legal compliance, and ongoing funding to ensure the program's long-term success.
Just a reminder that the city manager's office will provide regular updates on this program to keep the community informed and engaged in this work.
So moving on to the IMPROVE principle.
So as part of the IMPROVE principle, we are actively enhancing Berkeley's public safety model to better serve all residents, approaching this both holistically and with a targeted focus on those most affected by the current system.
So this afternoon, you'll receive updates from colleagues in Public Works on Vision Zero programming, from the Fire Department on the Dispatch Needs Assessment, and from the Police Department on the CityGate Staffing Assessment.
And I'll hand it over to my colleagues in Public Works to discuss the latest projects under the Vision Zero program.
Good afternoon.
This is Eric Anderson from Public Works to give you an update on the Vision Zero program.
Starting with a staffing update, in fall of 2023, Public Works hired a new associate planner Vision Zero program coordinator.
As of November 2024, this position will be vacant, and we are currently recruiting for a replacement.
This is thanks to outgoing Vision Zero program coordinator, Jenny Lockman, who has done incredible work supporting the Vision Zero program over the last year.
We are also currently recruiting a senior planner, Vision Zero program manager, who will also serve as project manager for traffic safety projects on Vision Zero high injury streets, identified in the Vision Zero action plan.
Public Works is on schedule to onboard both of these positions by the end of 2024.
Filling these two vacancies by the end of 2024 is critical prior to continuing or initiating any new Vision Zero program or project activities.
In terms of current program initiatives, the associate planner program coordinator has been instrumental in the planning, funding, and coordination of upcoming high injury street safety projects, including the Adeline Street transportation improvements and San Pablo Avenue corridor projects.
Program coordinator has also established regular collision data analysis meetings with the Berkeley Police Department, and in response to recent crashes, has organized interdepartmental city staff rapid response briefings following severe injury and fatal traffic crashes.
In terms of recent traffic safety projects, Public Works has been busy with construction of grant funded safety projects on Vision Zero high injury streets, including the Martin Luther King Jr.
Way Vision Zero Quick Build project and the Southside Complete Streets project.
These projects implement recommendations of the city council adopted transportation plans and were funded through grants matched by city funds.
In terms of our future efforts looking forward, our immediate goal is to fully staff the Vision Zero program and then to continue our programmatic and capital project progress.
Continued city council support, including funding for grant application matching funds and ongoing permanent rather than time limited program staff is important to enable Public Works to continue to win grant funding, deliver safety projects, and pursue programmatic efforts to respond to traffic crashes.
In conclusion, Public Works is constantly working to improve traffic safety on Berkeley streets.
As we advance into the next phases of reimagining public safety, we remain committed to investing in and expanding our efforts to prevent fatal and severe injury traffic crashes.
And I'll hand it to Chief Lewis.
Thank you.
Thank you, Eric.
Good afternoon.
Under phase two of the initiative, the police department partnered with city gate associates to conduct an in depth operational study with the goal of enhancing and improving our service delivery and effectiveness.
The study which was completed in September assesses our organizational structure and resource allocation and proposes changes that support community service, fiscal responsibility and staff well being.
We've identified four key themes emerging from city gates recommendations.
These themes are optimizing sworn resource allocation.
Second, building a supportive culture to improve retention.
Third, enhancing workforce capacity by increasing the role of community service officers and professional staff.
And finally, advancing process efficiency through technology.
These strategies collectively aim to enhance our operational effectiveness and ensure responsive community focused service delivery.
While some of the recommendations will require new future funding, much of the work can be accomplished within our current budget.
In fact, several projects are already underway, or have even been completed while the study was ongoing.
Next steps involve reviewing and implementing priority recommendations, and in just a bit city gate will provide a more in depth presentation detailing their findings, after which I'll provide some comments about the presentation.
At this point, I'd like to hand off the presentation to Chief Sprague.
Afternoon.
The fire department's focus has really been around supporting the dispatch needs analysis, which has looked at the staffing and operations assessments for the emergency communication center.
This staffing has mapped the path ahead to ensure that the city can meet the growing demand for higher call volume.
A greater diversity and more complex types of calls.
A modernized emergency communication center would also allow us to send the appropriate resource to the emergency response unit.
This would include new services like telehealth that we haven't implemented yet.
And alternative response programs, like the or our bear unit, which is our department's new low acuity medical response unit.
The traditional 911 resources, which are stretched thin.
A modernized emergency communication center would also allow us to send the appropriate resource to the right call for service based on a triage that happens at the time of the 911 call by dispatcher.
So, what are the next steps? Berkeley police and fire leadership are in alignment on the need to implement priority dispatch protocols and start processing the costs or assessing the costs.
Feasibility and the expanded physical space that's going to be needed in the communication center to accommodate more staff and enhanced operations.
What's key for the fire department is that by the end of 2025, we have to have the capacity to triage calls to get the most appropriate resource to each call for service.
So, we've got our partners from mission critical here who are dispatch subject matter experts, and they're going to briefly talk about how dispatch protocols work.
Bonnie.
Thank you very much chief Sprague and good afternoon and thank you for allowing to present to you today.
Both the dispatch need assessment and the subsequent validation study that completed included a recommendation to implement dispatch protocols.
There are several benefits to implementing dispatch protocols, including increasing the success of new recruits and confidence with higher retention and expanding the capabilities of the emergency communication center.
This is done through tiered dispatching and the delivery of pre-arrival instructions.
Examples of pre-arrival instructions include providing CPR or helping to control bleeding while waiting for field responders to arrive.
By implementing priority dispatch protocols, we also create additional opportunities for alternative response types, which are related to mental and behavioral health crisis and allow for engaging responses other than police, fire or EMS in favor of resources, such as 988 crisis specialists and mobile crisis teams.
There are 2 very important areas that are addressed by implementing protocols.
This is risk reduction and cost savings.
Beginning directly from the time a call is taken, the risks are reduced for call takers, potentially miscommunicating and unintentionally entering inaccurate information.
This also reduces unnecessary dispatches and the risk of field responder traffic and wake effects collisions.
Pre-arrival safety instructions have also shown to help mitigate risks associated before responders arrive on scene.
This all translates into cost savings.
As mentioned, we improve resource allocation, which helps avoid unnecessary dispatches, reducing operational costs, such as fuel and vehicle maintenance.
And, as previously noted, standardized protocols reduce training time and mitigate turnover costs.
This speaks directly to the findings in the validation study where we found that the ECC has a turnover rate higher than the national average and that losing and replacing a telecommunicator can cost around $200,000 when you include both traditional and hidden costs.
Next slide please.
MCP is an industry commitment to vendor neutrality and as such would recommend that the city exercise its due diligence from procuring a dispatch protocol vendor, ensuring the vendor can provide a protocol to support behavioral health and the bear unit.
Protocols would advance the city's commitment to reimagining public safety and because Alameda County Dispatch also uses Priority Dispatch Corporation protocols, the city would be in a good position to collaborate and align with your partner agencies.
The timeline of implementation is contingent upon the procurement process, the required staff training and vendor availability, but it can be done in 6 to 12 months.
Moving on to budget considerations, with regards to one time and ongoing costs, it averages about $125,000 per protocol set for implementation.
There are 3 protocol sets, Emergency Medical Dispatch, EMD, Emergency Fire Dispatch, EFD, and Emergency Police Dispatch, EPD.
If the city were to implement all 3 protocol sets, it would be about $375,000.
While this is likely a good budget number to get an exact figure would require the procurement process.
We also then have initial training requirements.
Currently, initial training costs $425 per person per certification.
And with the 45 personnel that was recommended in the validation study, it would be approximately $57,000.
After the initial costs, there are ongoing costs for recertification, maintenance, and updates.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present this information to you today.
We appreciate your time and will turn the presentation back over to Kerri.
Thank you so much to the team and our subject matter experts for those high-level report outs.
As we've done in the past, this final section of the presentation is going to focus on shared considerations and challenges, followed by an outline of next steps.
Since the May update, Berkeley's Reimagining Public Safety Initiative continues to face considerations and challenges that we must be mindful of to ensure progress and sustainability.
Starting at the top with funding constraints, the fiscal year 25-26 biennial budget adopted a tiered funding approach, deferring some of the Reimagining Public Safety budget requests to later phases.

Segment 2

to more closely align with the following fiscal year.
This tiered process reflects the need to prioritize initiatives while managing limited resources.
Additionally, we want to just note that there is a level of unpredictability when applying for grants.
However, the team is committed to continuing to explore grant opportunities, alternative funding, and reassessing resources to drive this work forward.
As it relates to implementation, delays in assessments and budget deferrals that we've experienced in prior phases have affected the initiative's implementation timeline.
Projects like standing the Department of Community Safety up, for example, have been pushed to phase four, which require adjustments to the broader reimagining public safety phased approach.
Moving on to staffing challenges, though hiring rates have improved, the city continues to face staffing gaps that may impact the initiative's implementation timeline.
So addressing retention through initiatives such as the employer of choice, I have it noted at EOC on this slide here.
This supports momentum and ensures long term success in many of Berkeley's projects beyond reimagining public safety.
And last but not least, ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local laws is essential to this work, and the city attorney's office is actively involved in keeping the initiative aligned with legal standards and compliance.
So overall, despite these challenges, the city remains committed to advancing the reimagining public safety initiative forward and will continue to take an agile and strategic approach to this work.
With all that said, here's what can be expected for next steps.
We'll continue to transition into phase three, taking that agile approach.
And by spring, summer, staff will be back again in 2025 with our next update that's going to have a special focus on next steps and progress related to the dispatch assessment, as well as the specialized care unit.
And that concludes our first half of our presentation, and we can pause here for comments before moving on to the second half.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the excellent presentation on all the work of our city team in advancing this initiative that we launched four years ago.
It's really incredible to see all the progress that's been made.
I have some comments, but I want to turn it first to my colleagues up there.
Any questions or comments before I begin? Who would like to start? This is on the reimagining report.
We could bring in council members.
Oh, yes.
So before we do that, we do have, we're not taking public comment yet.
So I want to do it after all the presentations.
Given that we have five members present, we can do the AB 2449 procedure.
Okay.
Council member Taplin is going to continue participating in this meeting as he did at the last one under the emergency circumstances justification under the Brown Act as amended by AB 2449.
A quorum of the council is participating in person at the noticed physical meeting location.
Council member Taplin has notified the council of his need to participate remotely.
Council member Taplin, please provide a general description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely without disclosing any specific medical diagnosis, disability, or other confidential medical information.
Okay.
Also, council member Taplin, please disclose if there are any individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room from where you are participating and if there are their relationship to you.
Okay.
And council member Taplin will participate through audio and visual technology.
And since this is a emergency circumstances participation, the council must vote to approve it.
Simple majority.
I move to let council member Taplin participate under AB 2449.
It's a procedural motion, so please call the roll.
Okay.
Council member Bartlett.
Yes.
Trayden.
Aye.
Weingraf.
Yes.
Munapara.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Mayor Aragi.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay, great.
So you are now able to fully participate.
So, let's now proceed to questions and comments on the reimagining public safety report.
And council member Munapara, then Humbert, and then I would like to make a few comments.
Thank you.
I first just want to say thank you to Kariana and staff for putting this together, as well as to all the former councils that have been working on this for so many years.
It's so evident how much work has gone into this program and how committed everybody is in realizing the goals of equitable and community driven public safety strategies.
It is really inspiring to see effective collaboration between so many city departments.
And I also want to thank the police accountability board for his comprehensive response to the report.
I think it was a critical element of understanding the larger picture.
I have a couple questions about the SEU to start with.
It appears that the program was originally envisioned as a response to a wide range of issues, which includes but was not limited to mental health and substance abuse.
However, a lot of the outreach material that I've seen, as well as the information in the CityGate report, describe the SEU's role as exclusively related to substance abuse and mental health crises.
Do you mind addressing this, please? Sure, I can take that one.
I think you're correct at this time.
Other than well-being checks, the majority of the calls that they have do all revolve around mental health, substance abuse challenges, homelessness.
But they haven't expanded into other things like, I know there's been comments that I've heard too, like around noise complaints or disturbances or those types of things.
So that has not started.
Okay, I see.
So under the pilot program, it hasn't.
Great, thank you.
I think as the SEU program in the next phases shift out of its piloting and into the full-blown version, hopefully, I think it's important to create very clear materials that explicitly outline its purpose and operations.
And it makes sense that currently it's limited, but I hope that moving forward, it could be expanded in the information because otherwise the confusion, I think, makes it difficult for residents to understand what the SEU is and how it operates.
I have another concern about the SEU.
I'm concerned that inadequate pay, from what I've heard from the Mental Health Commission and the Police Department, I'm concerned that inadequate pay is leading to a high turnover rate among SEU staff, which makes it really difficult for community relations and continuous and effective operations.
I just kind of wanted to put that out there so that we can think about how that is affecting the SEU's efficiency.
That's all I have right now.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We'll go next to Councilor Humbert, then Traycub, and then I'd like to join the discussion.
Yes, thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr.
Mayor.
I push the button just to say that I'm going to reserve my full set of comments and a couple questions until after the CityGate report.
Thank you.
Councilor Traycub? Thank you so much, and I want to echo my appreciation to all of you for working so hard on this.
My questions also are around the SEU.
My first question has to do with the hours of operation.
I know that that has fluctuated over time, and I appreciate that it is now much closer to 24-7 operations than it was at the same time.
Could you speak to the relationship between which time of day most of the calls for service are happening relative to the hours that are now being worked? Yeah, so the program is 24 hours a day, except for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and there's a four-hour shift there that they're looking at covering between 8 and midnight.
So hopefully that will be, and I think this also does speak a little bit to Council Member Lunaparra's statement about pay.
It's extremely difficult.
They've had extreme difficulty trying to recruit staff.
I think that's true of all of health care, actually.
So that is something that we'll have to look at in the retrospective evaluation.
In terms of the evenings and weekends, of course, is when the most of the activity is happening.
I can get you a specifics, Council Member, if you'd like.
We have a report that we get from them with clusters of data that we can put together.
Thank you so much.
I think I do have some comments that I will resolve to the end, but I have another broad theme around the education that it will be required for community members to use that number, as opposed to other non-emergency numbers or 911.
Can you speak to what kind of education and notification initiatives have been done or are being envisioned to be done? Personally, I don't have this number saved or memorized by admission.
I think if I maybe train myself to give it out a few more times, I will have it saved.
But it is not a three-digit number that is easy to remember.
If it's hard for me to remember, I can only imagine that it would be hard for our constituents to do as well.
Can you speak to the education, training, and anything being envisioned around the ease of actually knowing, okay, this is the number that folks need to use for certain calls? Yeah, absolutely.
So, we recently put this together for a presentation that we did because you're exactly right.
There is a lot of misunderstanding in the community about what the SCU is.
Specifically, they're receiving phone calls when there's violence happening.
And so, the SCU is really only designed to respond to non-violent situations.
And so, we work with Chief Lewis and we put together a handout that we've been circulating and trying to socialize wherever we can, which really lists what you call 911 for, what you call the Berkeley police emergency line for.
We have a description of what that's for.
Actually, thanks to the chief for pointing this out, we felt that it was important even to have that because sometimes 911 will go to highway patrol.
So, we have this handout that we're pushing everywhere that we can so that people can have it on their refrigerator.
Because we have 911, we have the Berkeley police emergency number, we have the Berkeley non-emergency number, we have the phone number for our mobile crisis team.
And lastly, we have the SCU number.
So, to say that there is confusion in the community is absolutely accurate.
And that's where we have to work on figuring out how can we do a better job of advertising these numbers, educating the community on what the numbers are for.
And then hopefully, as we go forward, we'll be able to combine some of those numbers down.
Okay, thank you.
I have more extensive comments, which I'll share later after the CityGate presentation and public comment.
But just a few points I want to note in questions.
I'm very glad that the fines and fee analysis is moving forward.
I know that we're engaging the SF Financial Justice Project and other partners to look at best practices.
Some additional funding will be needed to continue this work next year.
This is why I call attention to that.
And on the SCU, there have been a number of calls around staffing, but just kind of want to kind of touch on the scope.
I know the RDA is doing an analysis of the program that will inform the City of Berkeley's decision at a future point about the future of this program.
It might be worth considering expanding the scope of RDA's analysis to look at other calls that could be handled by non-police.
And I think this gets to an issue that we're going to talk about with regard to the CityGate report and what is the role of unarmed public safety responders.
And I think there's a need for a more refined analysis around what calls could be potentially handled by some of these other public safety responders.
On dispatch, and this is really the brain for our whole public safety system.
I just want to acknowledge that a lot of work is being done in this area, but we do need more time to determine the best approach and recommendations which are feasible to implement.
And this is going to be a really critical part of the whole implementation of the reimagining public safety initiative, because ultimately, this is going to determine which calls get responded to by which people.
With the goal of, one, making sure that we get a prompt and appropriate response when somebody calls around a behavioral health or public safety or emergency situation, and then making sure that we can adequately divert those calls to the appropriate responders.
So, that's a really, really critical piece, and there's just a lot more work that needs to be done, and I think that's going to be really critical towards the implementation of this whole initiative.
Okay, I'm going to suggest that we take public comments on this report at this time.
So, now we have some members of the public here in person on Zoom, so we're going to take public comments on the reimagining public safety update report, and who would like to start, and we'll take public comments on the CityGate report after.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Anaya Shergill, and I'm an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley.
First, I want to thank you all for your diligence and the efforts that you've been placing forth through the public safety initiative.
It's very empowering to see so many of you here today.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Anaya Shergill, and I'm an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley.
First, I want to thank you all for your diligence and the efforts that you've been placing forth through the public safety initiative.
It's very empowering to see impactful community concerns being taken seriously, as they should, and also to see effective progress being made.
So, thank you.
Thank you guys for meeting and talking about this.
To me, public safety means something very simple.
It's in the name, ensuring the safety of the public.
And with that being said, I would believe that the only rational purpose for any police guard or force on campus to exist, an educational institution such as UC Berkeley, would be to ensure the protection and safety of our students.
Yet over time, over the past just couple months alone, since I've transferred to UC Berkeley, there have been several prominent threats to student safety, such as threats of physical violence, sexual violence, verbal assaults, gunshots, as of just last week.
And the overall response times, reactions, and regard held by authorities with respect to these issues have remained quite poor across the board.
With recent increases in the presence in rent-a-cops or APEC security guards on campus, in addition to already having UCPD and Berkeley PD overseeing us, you would assume that the added element of security would make students feel safer or feel less threats on campus.
Unfortunately, this isn't happening.
The authoritative campuses or the authoritative personnel on campus, such as APEC security, are not required to provide identification.
A lot of them are not required to undergo background checks before exercising legal and authority on campus, which I believe is definitely important considering that the time, place, and manner policy at UC Berkeley asserts that students must identify themselves for any given reason at any given time.
So with this considered, with the time I have left, I would most certainly urge terminating the campus' use of rent-a-cops.
And furthermore, I would encourage the campus to discontinue the facilitation of private security contracts until they can implement a plan which warrants more accountability and transparency overall.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
First, on the SEU, it's a work in progress.
We need to look at other models across the country and see what's going to work better.
We need to have better data.
It has to be more than the number of calls that are being made.
We have to know about what's happening with those calls.
Some of these calls, the SEU is just arriving and the person is already gone, because that's a very common situation.
We need to know where they're being taken, etc.
There was a reference that Scott Gelman stated in terms of what's appropriate for the police and what's not appropriate for the police.
I earlier mentioned to counsel at a previous meeting how when I called about a situation that clearly was not a violent situation, the first question I was asked was, has this person ever done anything violent? And I mentioned them pushing somebody a couple of years ago or so.
And so I was told I had to call the police in that situation, even though the current situation was not violent.
And then the police referred me back to the SEU.
They said that we don't work together.
The SEU referred me back to the police.
This happened three times, and essentially nobody came out.
So these issues need to be resolved.
There does need to be some cooperation between the police and the SEU.
Moving to domestic violence, I'm concerned about what's going on.
Well, on the Commission on the Status of Women, we provided input on that.
So we had a recent resignation from a commissioner.
That's Councilmember Humbert's commissioner.
And she stated to me, I'm more frustrated with the fact that nothing was proposed gets any traction with the city than anything else.
And this is important because this commissioner is a domestic violence survivor.
She had a lot of input in terms of gaps in the system.
And we don't, the proposal that's coming forward is not taking into as much consideration as it should the experience of the community and the experience from providers.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
We'll take public comments on Zoom on the reimagining public safety report.
And after this, then we'll go to the CityGate presentation and take comments on that after that.
Blair Beekman, please unmute yourself.
Hi, thank you.
Blair Beekman here.
Thanks a lot for this item and the work that you've done over the years in the reimagined project.
Thanks for the words of a first public speaker who just, thank you for this work as well.
You first started this work immediately after the George Floyd incidents.
And I was just really intelligent thinking on the part of city government.
And it meant a lot to me that you guys put that much effort into this.
And you have the city manager, they give reports before every city council meeting for a year or so.
It was just, it was a good experience.
It was important.
And you're working it as an academic process.
And that's really, I think it's nice.
I think it's really helpful.
You've actually done some of the same things after the Israel-Gaza situations after October 7th, where you would, after, you know, people were demanding resolutions and you were working towards what can be good city government practices of public safety and to bring the community together around those terms.
Because, you know, a lot of war is going to be coming into our local level without accountable, open, good practices of public safety at the local level.
And you guys asked those questions of us.
That was awesome of you.
You did it again.
So thank you for that way of studying and working as a community process.
It's real important lessons for us in how to actually fight wars, to work openly and accountably at the local level.
This is what this work does.
Thank you.
I think that's, you know, the work I do with tech accountability.
It's a part of this process.
Good luck in working this good stuff.
Thanks.
We'll go next to Ilana.
Hello, everyone.
This is Ilana Auerbach.
For those of you who weren't here when this process initially started, originally it was called reduce, reduce the police footprint.
That is what some of you who are on the dais now got national news made national headlines because in the summer of 2020, we were going to reimagine public safety and reduce the Berkeley police footprint up to 50%.
Then unfortunately it got changed to reimagine.
So reducing the footprint, unfortunately of the police got lost.
All right.
I'm grateful that you have chosen our local experts to implement our gun violence prevention program.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And for those of you who don't know, and I've said this before, in the summer, two years ago, when the $2 million was first allocated this same team, National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform and Live Free USA, our local experts who know the people involved in gun violence, who have stood up these programs around the region, around the country, said that they could stand it up in three months.
Instead you all decided to have a grad student do an analysis and so forth and so on.
And really the tragedy is that we lost three teenagers to gun violence.
Three Berkeley teens have been killed in that time.
So that breaks my heart.
What I heard was reported.
Now I want to talk a little bit about the SCU.
I heard a hundred out of the 800 calls involved police that the SCU responded to.
That's about 13%.
For me, this is unacceptable because when the research and development part of this program was done and it was done thoroughly and interviewed many, many community members, and especially our black and brown neighbors, they said, if the police are going to end up at the end of the call, I'm not going to use this service.
And so to say 13% end up with police presence there, that's an issue.
That's a red flag.
I also want to say that I think the analysis, Jesse, that you were just saying about the calls that can be diverted to other, you know, non-armed officers or non-police, I think that's already been done by a previous consultant.
We've done a lot of analysis of this issue.
So before hiring new consultants, please let's look at what we've already done.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I know that the NICJR did analysis, and our auditor as well.
But I think one of the things that was clearly stated is the need for more refined call analysis so that we can better ascertain, you know, what kinds of calls could potentially be diverted.
Okay.
Any other questions or comments on the re-imagining report? If not, thank you.
We'll go to the city gate staffing study presentation.
Testing really quickly.
Can everyone see my screen? Yes.
Okay.
Wonderful.
All right.
Thank you so much again.
And good afternoon.
We will turn it over to our subject matter experts with city gate for the workload and organizational study of the police department briefing.
Good afternoon, mayors and members of the council.
Can you hear me? Okay.
Yes, we can.
Steward Gary public safety principal for city gate associates.
And with me is chief Richard ward, the senior police associate who managed your project.
Next slide, please.
Briefly about city gate.
You should know who the talking heads are.
Of course.
We're a virtual city hall model over 32 years, give or take old.
Now our police consultancy includes a very well-tenured police chiefs under sheriff, social justice, statistical and data specialists.
And in my case, so a former local elected official, we've successfully completed over 600 projects over those 32 years and over 400 communities.
We debate and deliberate internally to deliver an actionable recommendations that are customized to meet your needs.
I'd like the mayor and council to understand two things.
We are public safety servants.
Two of us on this briefing today live, have lived in and have managed public safety and studied other public safety systems in Alameda County.
We do know a tad bit more than an out-of-state a faceless consultant.
Second, we really appreciate the community conversation we just heard and have heard for months about the specialized care unit and your ability to persevere to stand it up.
Your work is not done.
And in our report, you'll see that there's a polite constructive tension between deferring to the non law enforcement caregivers while maintaining the appropriate sworn law enforcement, more critical emergency set of safety net that you have for public safety in Berkeley.
And if there was one single recipe to do this cleanly and quickly, especially without dispatch modifications, there would be success all over America and the work is tough.
It's slow.
It's a steep hill to climb, but you are climbing it.
And I'd like to leave you with as chief Ward starts with our study and our recommendations are not either or any other options you have.
They are complimentary for your council to make informed policy and investment decisions in all of the alternative response and safety needs that Berkeley needs.
Thank you.
Chief Ward.
Next slide.
Thank you.
I hope you all can hear me.
My name is Richard Ward.
I'm a police chief in three agencies, a former police chiefs association president.
And I used to teach for the commission on peace officer standards.
I would teach supervisors and I facilitated a pilot program for police chiefs.
I would teach a supervisors and I facilitated a police chief city manager workshop.
I'll start with our methodology, some data collection.

Segment 3

As you see there, I won't read the slides, but we reviewed a ton of documents, mostly CAD data, budget documents, training documents.
We looked at historical staffing levels, historical attrition.
And then we administered an anonymous online survey to staff.
We had 68 responses, a relatively low response rate, 18 professional staff, and I think 50 sworn staff.
And so I'll talk in more detail about that.
We have a separate slide where we will discuss that.
We interviewed, of course, sworn staff, professional staff, bargaining groups, city staff, elected officials, representatives of the Police Accountability Board.
We did site visits.
We did ride-alongs, numerous phone calls and Zoom meetings.
And then we, as a team, we conduct this gap analysis.
We look at what we're told versus the data that we see, and then we conduct the gap analysis.
And we try to resolve that.
We talk to staff, we talk to each other, we have debates before we reach findings and recommendations.
Next slide.
Our employee survey, as I noted, was a relatively low response rate.
We pushed for that.
Staff in the department were very helpful in getting responses.
But what we did learn, and let me first say about the questions that we did pose, we were looking at strengths and weaknesses, a SWOT survey, but also specifically we look at workload.
What's happening in this department? Some believe every department's the same, all policing is the same, and across the country it is not.
Every agency, in my experience, also has this unique personality.
We wanted to know the personality of Berkeley.
We asked about communication internally, the obstacles, what stands in the way of doing good police work, and then the hours committed to both their work, proactive work, and then any collateral duties, we call ancillary assignments.
We asked about 30 questions in the survey.
We talked about, again, what, and concerns, again, I'll speak more, I think it's on a subsequent slide, about some of the concerns voiced by employees.
Next slide.
This was the prominent issue, staffing and overtime work that we heard from both your professional staff and sworn staff, supervisors, lieutenants, those of rank.
That's a big issue.
Then supervisors feel they're, one described the work they're doing in the field as essentially secretaries.
They say they're taking on a large administrative workload that leaves them less time in the field where they can lead and coach and mentor, develop, oversee their staff.
They're craving more support, not only from the department, but from the community and the city council in communication.
That's so important.
Not simply email is what they told us in the survey.
And many carry these ancillary assignments.
Maybe it's their hostage negotiation team, FTO program, honor guard, many other duties.
Some are teaching in the defensive tactics and firearms.
And so these types of duties take them away from their core responsibilities.
And those were big concerns that we heard from staff in our survey.
And there's much more detail.
A lot of it's outlined in the full report.
Next slide.
Thank you.
In our police operations patrol overview, we found that 60 officers in patrol is not sustainable.
And you're spending a lot more than 60, as I talk about overtimes in another slide, you're spending a lot more than 60.
And so the overtime and ancillary duties on top of short staffing has led to, we believe, some burnout and morale concerns.
Some staff even stating, you know, if they can't address this, they don't care about us, maybe we should leave.
I mean, we heard that in some surveys and some interviews.
So we believe, and I'll detail that shortly, that adding staff to patrol, not just police officers, will allow the department to meet current operational demands and afford staff more time for proactive activities, including community engagement.
Staff told me personally that there's a lot they'd like to do, and they simply lack time.
One sergeant, I think it was, who said simply, you know, there are people that have found their cars in another city using these tracking devices, and the department has told them, you know, we lack the staff to leave the city to go help you retrieve it.
So they would go retrieve cars themselves, or at least attempt to.
So that's a public safety hazard that you don't want to experience.
But there's a lot that the officers and staff want to do, and they feel they lack the time to do it.
Next slide.
There's a lot of findings here, a lot of data points that all support, we believe, additional staffing and patrol.
The 34,111 overtime hours worked in patrol only captures the amount of overtime work that officers took in pay.
It doesn't capture the overtime work that officers took as compensatory leave or CTO.
It also doesn't capture the hours where people such as those in the bike team were transferred from their regular duties to the field patrol beats.
So you're paying money for much more than 60 officers, and it's a lot of hours that some of the same staff are working night after night.
Calls for service, we found, and calls per shift have increased over the last three years.
So has time, on-scene time has increased.
Officers tell us, and we've seen this with other clients, now that they have body-worn cameras, and residents have their doorbell cameras and other security cameras.
It takes time when you're at a call to look at this footage, to collect this footage, to find it, and then incorporate it into your report.
Sometimes, if you can't, the DA expects the department to go back out and make the effort to retrieve video.
That takes a lot of time.
Currently, it takes police officer or detective time.
We've noticed that part one crime categories, at least through 2023, I think there's been a reduction this year, have increased.
Median response time to priority two and priority three calls has grown since 2020.
And in case reports, crime reports have steadily increased since 2020.
Officer-initiated activity has declined significantly in the city.
And by that, we mean like maybe just pulling over a car, somebody who's speeding, and you're en route to another call or maybe a cover assignment, you can't make a car stop for safety reasons.
And then the sergeants, again, they're spending more time on administrative tasks.
They take them off the street.
And then there's some other operational demands that we outline in the report that are consuming more officer time, mostly around, again, video retrieval and also DNA, and they're experiencing more delays at the jail.
There's a lot of denials of booking prisoners at the jail for medical reasons.
And then an officer is having to leave the jail and take a prisoner to a local hospital.
And that can take hours and hours of an officer's time.
Next slide.
Here are some recommendations that we do make, and I'll go through those in more detail.
The full report, however, outlines, I think it's 54 recommendations and 74 findings.
I'm not going to go through each one for time's sake, but if you have questions on those, I'm more than willing to take those questions.
These recommendations, I think Stu touched on these.
The timing is, it's a menu, and we're asking the city council, the departments to look at this as a menu of options to help them improve their staffing and workload and ultimately morale in response to the citizens.
And so we understand that not all recommendations can be implemented immediately.
You may find viable alternatives in a couple of, two, three years.
Some initiatives to the chief's credit and to her staff, they're already underway, adding CSOs, organizational restructuring, dedicating an officer to a recruitment.
So that's good.
I mean, the chief was moving quickly as we identified an issue.
She was not waiting for the report.
She was moving to address those issues.
So we give her kudos for that.
Next slide.
Again, in patrol, we're recommending the addition of officers to patrol, more dispatchers.
And we believe the city will experience reductions in many overtime categories once you add back.
And we, again, we believe these positions are funded or they've been deferred.
So we're not suggesting you go over the authorized amount.
Adding CSOs, I have found personally CSOs to be very valuable.
They can handle so many tasks, writing reports, some criminal investigations, towing cars, transporting witnesses, transporting victims.
It's an excellent resource that I think the city will find valuable once you put them to work, once you get them trained.
Your efforts to reduce overtime have produced a 13% reduction over 2022 and 2023.
So that's positive.
I think reducing that beat size, beat number from 16 to 14 has been very good.
And the department has a very robust data analysis, data capture vehicle that they use, a transparency hub where they put a lot of it online for the residents and others to see.
I mean, it is really special.
I wish I had one when I was police chief, that capacity.
And we believe there's room to divert or refer more calls to online reporting.
Next slide.
Specifically, we're proposing the addition of 15 officers to patrol, five each to four each, I should say.
I'm sorry, to teams one, two, and three, and then three additional to team seven.
These officers are working during peak call demand times.
For example, team one works from 6 a.m.
to 4 p.m.
We're seeing a spike in calls for service at about 8 p.m., typically as I've seen when people wake up and they discover something's missing or something is broken.
And that's when you start to see call demands increase.
Adding four to team two would bring it from seven officers to 11.
They begin their shifts at 11, so there is some overlap, and they work until 9 p.m.
Team three, where we also recommend the addition of four officers, they currently have eight.
We would add four to that, bringing it to 12.
They work probably the busiest shift, swing shift, from 3.30 in the afternoon until 1.30 in the morning.
Very, very busy shift.
That team works Monday through Thursday.
We then recommend the addition of three officers to team seven.
Team seven currently works Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays.
They work at three, 12-and-a-half-hour shift.
They currently have nine officers.
We're proposing the addition of three, bringing it to 12.
And it's important to know, although you may be staffed with 10 or 12, typically, and we assume a 20 percent vacancy rate, where people take time off, comp time, vacation, sick leave, military leave, family medical leave, all of these different leaves, roughly amount to, we believe, about 20 percent.
An agency where I served as a lead consultant, they were closer to 30 percent.
More senior officers accrue more time off, and so they take that time off.
And so we think you need that flexibility in each team to provide not only service, because one major call can take five, six, eight officers, and you still need to provide adequate service to the rest of the city when you have a group on a major call.
We also propose, as I suggested, adding CSOs, community service officers, to patrol.
A non-sworn group to supplement and support patrol on weekday mornings and evening shifts.
Again, those most busy time blocks.
And again, the duties are so varied that they can take on and relieve officers, especially if they can take cold reports where there's no suspect on the scene.
A very valuable resource.
They can tow cars, those time-consuming functions that would relieve officers of those duties.
And we also propose modifying your use of force reporting.
Currently, under your use of force reporting, it's unlike local agencies that we looked at.
We looked at San Leandro, we looked at Hayward, we looked at Fremont, we looked at Santa Clara, we looked at Richmond.
All agencies report force at the lowest level when there's at least momentary discomfort of the subject.
Maybe it's a grab, it's leverage with the body, it's a hold, maybe it's a takedown, a controlled takedown.
Under Berkeley's policy, if a grab and it doesn't amount to momentary discomfort, you require a sergeant to go to that scene and to conduct an investigation.
He or she looks for video and it's consuming a lot of time.
That's the most frequent use of force level that they see.
There's over 500, I believe, of those levels of force reported to sergeants now.
And we're proposing to continue, officers continue to report those in their reports.
They also have their body-worn cameras.
And so they notify a sergeant, it's in my report, I have the camera.
And we're suggesting, of course, if for some reason a body camera footage is not captured, then a sergeant does respond.
And we also think the department has the capacity to periodically audit these lower level uses of force to ensure compliance.
And we think that would really free up your supervisors in the field to do a lot of the work that sergeants need to be doing.
But that's an important feature.
We're not saying do away with the reporting level, but to modify how it's reported.
Next slide.
Investigations, we believe a real-time crime analyst can help to enhance the department's data-driven efforts.
Somebody who can integrate data from different sources, such as your automated license plate readers, other camera sources, and then they can direct staff versus some random patrol.
You can direct staff to be more precise and make more informed decisions when you have real-time data analysis based on what's occurring.
We think that's important, and it's something that's emerging in the industry.
We believe a training matrix for investigators is needed.
They train now, but it's not formal.
It's not a regiment, a strict regimen that they follow.
We believe it should be more regimented and strict.
We believe you can add a CSO in your investigations unit.
Currently, police officers or detectives are making a lot of runs to Richmond, a crime lab, pick up evidence, drop off DNA evidence, and we believe non-sworn staff can handle that duty.
We also think you should think about hiring a cold case detective.
Many agencies have done this.
You hire possibly a retired annuitant to handle cold case homicides that aren't solved, sexual assaults especially that aren't solved.
It's a valuable resource that can help victim-survivors of those crimes.
We looked at your youth services.
There's a school resource officer, but there's over 3,200 students, as we see, at Berkeley High School.
So we think it would be wise to have a second officer there, if for no other reason than to be, and he can see this, succeed this current incumbent.
But we think there's work for two, that one is really overwhelmed given the number of students there.
And then we currently have four crime scene technicians.
They respond to crime scenes, usually called by police officers in the field, process that for evidence, DNA evidence, fingerprint evidence, photographic evidence.
Currently, however, though, if one takes off, the others have to backfill and over time to fill the void.
And so we're suggesting an additional crime scene technician such that staff can take time off.
Others will not have to work over time to fill that vacancy.
Next slide.
On the traffic bureau, it's a major issue, as I know you all know, and I've read, you're aware of, that's happening in Berkeley.
We believe, I think, when I last checked, there was one traffic officer, one motorcycle officer, one sergeant, one lieutenant.
Authorized staffing had been five.
We think, given traffic concerns, pedestrian fatalities and injuries, bicycle fatalities and injuries, we believe there's a strong need for more traffic, fully staffed, a robust traffic enforcement in the city.
We also think informing, expanding your use of social media, you do a good job now, but we think you can do a lot more informing the public of traffic safety and enforcement efforts and potential hazards and, you know, what patterns they're seeing and possibly, hey, here are some things that we're going to start enforcing.
Pay attention.
And so that's huge.
Adding a CSO, another non-sworn position, can aid and can assist in some collision investigations, especially if there's non-injury, non-serious.
We believe that's another valuable resource that can assist, again, to free up police officers.
Collaborate with city traffic engineering.
I think the department has already pursued this.
If they're not, they may have completed it, to update any outdated traffic surveys.
And then we recommend appointing an additional supervisor, a non-sworn professional within the parking enforcement unit to reduce the current span of control.
Currently has two supervisors and, I think, 21 authorized staff.
So we think the span of control of those two should be reduced by adding a third supervisor.
Next slide.
The jail, we found that there's a sergeant, he works a four, 10-hour shift, staff work 5-8, and the sergeant spends a lot of his time transporting prisoners to the jail, the Santa Rita jail in Dublin.
And so we think hiring a civilian manager to run the jail and then reassigning that sergeant to where he or she can oversee where there's a need for sworn supervision would be a more efficient use of resources.
And then currently in the jail, there's three community service officers that function as jailers, and they're present during every booking.
And talking to staff and our own experience, we found you probably only need two, as long as the booking officer, which is the practice, remains in the booking area until the prisoner is booked, processed, and held.
And so we believe you can reduce that, and then possibly consider using CSOs to transport prisoners.
And that can be done pursuant to 832 of a penal code, some training, I think it's a 40-hour training that CSOs would have to complete.
It might involve some, of course, some bargaining with that CSO bargaining group.
Next slide.
The records unit, not a lot of recommendations here.
We do believe that you need an additional entry-level position, a record specialist one, because they are really seeing an uptick in Public Records Act requests.
It's a large volume, a lot of work, a lot of research is required, a lot of redaction.
And so we think you need an additional entry-level staff person to support that work.
We also found some ergonomic assessments of workstations as needed, and the chief and her staff have already moved to address that issue.
Next slide.
Next slide.
In the Comm Center Dispatch, a very, very important function we all know, as the fire chief mentioned, too.
And we agree with some prior studies that spoke of adding staff, getting it to full staffing.
I know that the department has done well to hire staff.
I think they lack space, which is another bullet point, to hire all the staff they need.
They don't have space to train everyone, so some more space is needed.
And then we also believe another supervisor is needed.
Again, span of control.
We always look at span of control.
Not every supervisor currently works with his or her team, and so we think that's necessary just for accountability purposes.
You have a supervisor who works with his or her team.
We also found that one of the supervisors was temporarily assigned to the property room.
And so, I mean, that probably shouldn't be the case.
I understand you have to make do with the resources you have, and the department has done well to do that.
But we do believe another supervisor, if not two, is needed in dispatch, just to ensure a reasonable span of control.
Next slide.
My overall assessment, our assessment as a team, your department's a good one.
They've shown this strong commitment to strengthen its culture.
The department, in our surveys, we saw staff appreciate the focus on employee wellness.
Your transparency hub, I think that would be award-winning.
It's an excellent program.
A lot of great data is there.
They even have data, a dashboard for the executive staff where you can pinpoint issues relative to an individual employee.
And so, it's an excellent, excellent tool that I think every department should come look at and replicate if they don't have this information.
And the staff have worked hard.
As I mentioned before, they want to do more, but they know they don't have time.
A lot of people, as we saw in our CAD analysis, a lot of people are doing work that you don't see because it's not reflected in CAD, or they tell the dispatcher, I'm available, but they're not really available because they're writing reports.
But they show themselves as available in case a dispatcher needs them to respond to cover some other assignment.
So, CAD data is something we consider, but there's more to it, and we found that talking to staff.
And a big issue, I think, is having overtime officers on patrol versus regularly assigned beat officers, that last bullet point.
A regularly assigned officer is going to know the people in his or her beat, know the issues, and be able to respond, and know what resources are available to refer people to, where an officer in overtime may not.
He or she may be good, but I don't think you're going to be there long enough to establish the relationships needed for genuine, a real community trust and engagement.
You really need a full-time officer, and you're paying for it now when you have the equivalent, I believe, in overtime, 34,000 hours, 20 FTEs is what we estimate you're buying when we think you should restore 15 officers and five CSOs to fill that void.
I think it's a mistake, truly a mistake, to just stick to the overtime route, because it's burnout, it's fatigue.
An officer's fatigue is more likely to take shortcuts, and more likely to get him or herself and the city in trouble.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the presentation.
I'm going to now turn over to Chief Lewis, who I understand will be making some comments on the Police Department's analysis and approach to the implementation of the CityGate recommendations.
Chief? Thank you very much, Mr.
Mayor.
First and foremost, I do want to thank the CityGate Associates for their very comprehensive report and the extremely valuable insights that came out of it.
Despite the staffing challenges that our department has faced, we do remain committed to delivering the highest quality level of service for our community.
Our officers are working really hard, our staff are working really hard to ensure that public safety in our city is not compromised.
While the CityGate staffing report offered 54 recommendations, what I want to focus on today is some themes that we identified or emerged from this report that particularly resonated with our department's leadership, as we began to look through the report and determine how we could start to approach and prioritize all the recommendations.
So those four themes are sworn resource allocation, organizational health and retention, CSO and professional staff expansion, and finally process efficiency and technological advancement.
So with these themes in mind, I want to make some comments on specific recommendations that we believe will have the most immediate and meaningful impact on our service to Berkeley.
And by focusing on these areas, we intend to improve our operations, to better serve our community, and to support the goals of the reimagining public safety initiatives.
In the area of sworn resource allocation, as Chief Ward just shared, it identified that our patrol staffing levels need to be strengthened.
We absolutely agree that rebuilding our patrol strength is critical.
And while our officers are delivering what I think is exceptional emergency response service, despite the staffing constraints that they're under, they are absolutely impacted by the current deployment levels.
So fortunately, with Council's approval, we were able to enter into a contract with All-Star Recruitment, and that has changed our hiring outlook.
In the first month with All-Star Recruiting, we've seen five times more qualified applicants compared to the same month last year.
Based on these early results, we can reasonably expect to add five officers annually over the next three to five years.
And with this staffing growth, we can expand into proactive public safety work.
Each new patrol position will reduce overtime and will also create more opportunities for our staff to get involved in community-focused initiatives and build specialized units that will address the emerging challenges that we're faced with.
Those emerging challenges we plan to address with a flexible approach.
And so Council Member Taplin had an item a few years ago about building a flexible response team.
At that time, we didn't have the staffing available to build that team out.
But that team would be created with four to five officers, led by a sergeant, to flexibly address emerging public safety issues.
And they could be deployed to specific areas to address specific crime issues, to provide coordinated responses, to support our detective operations with surveillance and suspect apprehension, and also just to help with the community problem-solving around situations or crimes that are impacting neighborhood safety.
So moving on to the next theme, the CityGate report recommended recommendations.
There's a bunch of recommendations that connect to organizational health and retention.
That validated the work that we have underway with our focus on officer wellness and professional development.
So we're raising up our efforts and the recommendations in this area that support our personnel, specific steps that we can take to prevent burnout and reduce turnover.
And this includes building up mentorship programs, professional development programs, and really working to meet the emotional well-being needs of our staff so that they can best serve the community.
To be clear, I take very, very specific and distinct pride in the department's culture.
So our department stands out among law enforcement agencies for our progressive approaches.
We embrace individual expression.
We value diversity.
We value the individual life experience that our staff bring to our work.
And we champion ourselves as leaders at every level who are focused on long-term problem-solving for our community.
The next theme, CSO or community service officer and professional staff expansion.
That figures prominently in the CityGate report, and that figures very prominently in our reimagining public safety efforts.
So their analysis about the ways we can use community service officers and professional staff to handle many of the public safety responsibilities that currently sworn staff are involved in, would free up time for those officers to be engaged with emergency response and complex investigations.
With council's approval, this last budget cycle, we've begun hiring those additional CSOs.
These CSOs will first be assigned to patrol to support that during our peak shift hours as recommended by the CityGate report.
And they can pick up non-emergency calls, administrative tasks, and to the mayor's point, very much, we're looking to doing good analysis on our call data to know what kinds of calls that alternative response could pick up.
This has the benefit of reducing patrol sworn overtime expenditures, and also allowing those officers to get more engaged in the work that we know they need to be engaged with.
I'm happy to report that we're well underway with the administrative and logistical work that's necessary to raise up basically a return to having community service officers embedded into our patrol teams doing that kind of important work.
As an additional note related to alternative responses, I really did want to recognize and call out that our department continues to support the GVIP work and the SCUs work as the city develops that complete network for our community of alternative responses.
Okay, the last thing that we saw that emerged from the CityGate recommendations had to do with process efficiency and technological advancement.
And I absolutely agree that when we can step into that space to improve accountability, to improve transparency, to make better use of efficiency of our time, it's absolutely space that we want to get into.
There were recommendations around how to better analyze and use our traffic data, for example.
And so we have expanded the use of that data to deploy our traffic personnel.
And by doing that work, we can support the city's Vision Zero efforts.
I also agree there's a lot to be explored around the recommendation about level one force reporting.
It's important for me to be able to compare our jurisdiction, our agency with other departments that are reporting force and mirroring that level of force while still having data on it.
But reducing the administrative burden has a great deal of value that I'm interested in exploring.
And while I'm on the note of talking about comparison to other jurisdictions, I know there's also been some requests about comparing us our response times to other jurisdictions.
The one thing I want to share about that is while I understand the appeal of comparing performance among departments, we care very much, I care very much about the level of service that our community deserves.

Segment 4

Hans and know that our data standards and our staffing and our allocation of resources to the things that matter most to our community are going to be our priorities.
And using those metrics to guide our work are going to are going to be paramount.
So, just real quick conclusion conclusion, I just, I want to call out that our department is very committed to the re, imagining public safety work.
I believe very deeply and being smart with the way we use our resources, being fiscally responsible, maximizing the work that our resources are engaged in to the best work that they are capable of.
Making sure our officers are well, making sure that our department is stable that we're retaining quality employees, introducing those alternative responders, whether they're within our department, or they're in other city services, or there are partners and community based organizations.
And finally, never losing sight of our responsibility to be accountable and transparent to our community.
So, again, I'm appreciative of city gate staffing report.
I know there's a lot of work here and we're going to dive into prioritizing and completing as much of that work as we can within our existing budget.
But I'm happy to answer any questions if there are about about our next steps.
Great, thank you so much chief.
Let's hold questions until after public comment.
I want to give the vice chair of the police accountability board.
Leah Wilson, if she's still present, or the director of police accountability, Hansel Aguilar, an opportunity to make some comments about the recommendations on the city gate report and direct to Aguilar.
Good afternoon.
Mayor, can you hear me? Yes, we can.
Okay.
Good afternoon.
Mayor Adegin, council members, colleagues and members of the public.
My name is Hansel Aguilar and I'm the director of police accountability and the secretary for the police accountability board.
Today, I have the privilege of reading remarks on behalf of Leah Wilson, who's the vice chair of the police accountability board, and she worked closely on drafting the letter submitted to council on the past behalf.
With your permission, I will now read a vice chair's remarks regarding this letter sent to you.
Thank you for your time.
I'm Leah Wilson, vice chair of the PAB.
Our formal response to city gate report has been shared with council and includes four specific proposals, along with our analysis of several city recommendations.
I'd like to highlight key points from our response.
First, the city needs to formally select comparator agencies for benchmarking the Berkeley Police Department.
While city gate identifies potential comparators, consistent benchmarking across budget, performance, and operational metrics is essential.
Notably, critical comparative analysis are missing from the report, including budget and expenditures per capita.
Second, response time standards must be formally adopted.
Current staffing recommendations rely on national standards that don't reflect Berkeley's local priorities and needs.
Importantly, the report shows that Berkeley's sworn officer staffing per capita already exceeds all other identified comparator jurisdictions.
Third, before adding any new positions, three key steps must be completed.
Implement the recommended the recommended redistribution of work to community service officers.
Establish clear response time expectations.
Evaluate how the new specialized care unit affects police workload.
Fourth, city gates findings regarding organizational culture concerns within BPD warrant serious attention, investment in new positions won't be effective without addressing internal department culture and retention issues.
Two additional concerns stand out.
City gates recommendation to lower use of force reporting requirements contradicts Berkeley's 2020 community driven commitment to greater transparency.
Lastly, as community service officers take on more responsibilities pursuant to city gates recommendations, they should be brought under PAB oversight to maintain accountability to residents.
I urge the committee to carefully consider these points as you evaluate the city report.
Thank you.
And that was the the Vice Chair's commentary.
I just want to add one quick note that we do appreciate the Chief's transparency in getting this out to us.
We had roughly two months to be able to review it and she quickly uploaded it to the Transparency Hub for committee members to consume.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, let's open up public comment on the city gate report.
Are there any members of the public here in person at 1231 Addison like to speak to this presentation and then we'll go to speakers on Zoom.
Unless I missed something, I didn't hear a lot about community policing and that's extremely important.
There's much, there's a lack of it in the community right now.
We don't see, as we don't see patrol officers, we also don't see community policing where there's relationships built up between the police and the community.
I've spoken before about CIT International.
This is extremely important for both law enforcement and non-law enforcement to be from Berkeley to be attending this conference.
I have attended eight of these annual conferences since 2012.
And since Officer Jeff Shannon left, who was the CIT coordinator, we haven't had a CIT coordinator or anybody attending these conferences.
They address, there's a much misunderstanding about CIT.
It actually can address something like an officer, how they interact with someone who has dementia or autism.
Their conferences address officer wellness.
I have attended several workshops that were really, really informative and interesting regarding officer wellness and resilience.
The next conference will be in August in Anaheim, and I hope this time that Berkeley, both BPD and other persons will attend.
There are many workshops of different crisis response teams throughout the country.
It's interesting to see all these models.
And the Arizona conference in 2021 I attended is where I learned about the Crisis Stabilization Center in Bend, Oregon, which would be a model that would be very applicable to Berkeley.
This last one, which was in Indianapolis, I learned about a model that would be great here for teams to be supporting persons in supportive housing, where they have someone assigned to everybody in supportive housing, a team that responds 24-7 to the person when they have a crisis or responds to a complaint.
And it's extremely successful.
They've been able to reduce contact with the criminal justice system and violence.
It's really an excellent model.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, Emily Ragusa from the Berkeley Scanner.
I did just want to say, you know, I've covered BPD for 10 years and there's always room to improve everywhere, but I have the occasion sometimes to try to get information from other departments, and I think BPD really does stand head and shoulders above other agencies, as far as public information, and I think it's a great opportunity for us to be able to provide that information to the public.
And I think, you know, as we've seen in the past, you know, with COVID-19, again, everyone can always improve, but the department has put more and more resources over time to its communications folks, like who can handle public inquiries from the media.
And so, you know, I think, you know, as I do my job, I'm always hounding them for more information faster, and I do think they really, you know, I don't live in Berkeley, and I think Berkeley is lucky to have the responsive agency that it has, even though, as I said, there's always room for improvement.
Thank you very much.
Are there any other in-person speakers? If you're on the Zoom platform and would like to speak on the CityGate report, please raise your hand.
Blair Beekman, followed by Kelly Hamgren.
Hi, thank you, Blair Beekman.
My beginner's attempt to talk about this issue.
Thank you.
To me, it seems like, you know, these are ideas of reimagined that we're trying to work through.
You're considering how to use, you know, SEIU persons and, you know, to staff the future of policing, how to talk about.
You've tried to add the idea of five police a year.
Maybe that idea is one to three for patrol officers to really consider, imagine, and work on the staffing ideas using SEIU persons that you seem to be working on.
And it's from those steps, from what the first public commenter talked about, what he talked about, man, that's really doing it well.
That's talking about community policing, our future real community effort.
And you guys have made some good first steps here that I hope issues, areas like Oakland, you know, can take to heart.
I mean, they're going through something very austere right now in Oakland, but that it may offer some interesting ideas that we can be considering.
Thankfully, you guys are working it just a straight above board way to do it.
Thank you.
So we can make clear good choices.
Good luck how we do that and how we can help Oakland and Oakland can help us too.
And I think to work on reimagined, that's the most important thing, to limit the amount of future police officers, work on staff issues.
I think it's possible to think in those terms, one to three officers every year.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Okay, we'll go next to Kelly Hammergren.
Thank you for the reports.
This is just a little different kind of question.
And that is, when we reduce the overtime, have we looked at the impact on the police officers who have become accustomed to this higher income, that they are dependent on it? And how is that going to affect the goals of what you want to accomplish by reducing overtime? So that's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any other speakers on Zoom? If so, please raise your virtual hand.
Or else we're going to conclude public comment.
I see no additional raised hands, so we'll close public comment and bring it back to the Council for questions and discussion.
Thank you.
And I want to thank Chief Word for his presentation.
The clarity of his suggestions are well worth the time and effort that he put into this.
Well, thank you.
And I want to thank Chief Word for his presentation.
The clarity of his suggestions are welcome to me.
I want to focus on the issue of dispatchers, because I feel like the dispatchers are the central nervous system of our emergency response.
And we've discussed this before, but they're apparently working in not very good conditions.
And Chief Word did allude to the space issue.
So I'm wondering if somebody could fill me in on what we're doing about that and how many dispatchers we're trying to hire and what we're doing about the space issue.
Sure.
I'd be happy to try and tackle some of that.
So you're not wrong that they've been working under extremely short staffing for a long time.
I'm happy to say that over the last probably year and a half, we've had significantly more applicants and hires in our training program.
This is a very challenging job to do.
Our dispatch center is very challenging under our current training system and under our current dispatching system.
And so we lose a lot of people out of our training program.
One of the goals of looking to that priority dispatching for police, fire, and emergency services is to have a script-based reporting, which would standardize the way that they dispatch, which we think could make great inroads on getting staff through the training program and then retaining them.
You're not wrong also that there are space issues if we expand to the level that we'd like to expand to and even more if we grow beyond that, if work is expanded to include dispatching for SEU, for example, if that became something that we desired.
And so we have that in mind, and that's what a lot of dispatch assessment study looked at, kind of pricing those things out.
The fortunate thing about our unfortunate staffing situation right now is we do have enough consoles to dispatch with the number of dispatchers that we have.
That's not a great place to be in.
We know we need to expand.
And so the chief and I are in conversations around as the fire department looks to move to a new facility, is that where we build up a new dispatch center, or that would allow us to expand in our existing infrastructure, our dispatch center.
But we're very mindful of being responsible about what equipment we buy or how we look to do that dispatch work, knowing that we want to expand to the 36 number.
How many do we have right now? If you look at numbers on the books, including in training and actual, we're more in the area of 23.
Wow.
So we're about two-thirds of where we should be.
Okay.
Thank you.
My other takeaway from Chief Ward's presentation is that the way we're using our uniformed officers, our sworn officers, is penny wise and pound foolish.
That it's ending up costing us more and creating fatigue, morale issues, all of that.
You, Chief Lewis, suggested that we would be able to hire five new officers a year for three years to get us to 15.
But I know that those offices have to go through academy training.
Is that correct? So are we looking at a 12-year phased program before we get 15 more offices out on the street, basically? So a couple of things.
One, just real quick before I dive into the number of officers in our pacing, I did want to note that one of the things we did was assess the way we deploy.
And when we transitioned from the 16-beat to the 14-beat configuration to match call for service load, we've actually experienced a 13% reduction in our overtime expenditures.
So we are making inroads on.
We've built analysis tools that look at our resources and how long it takes us to get the calls and how many officers we need and are addressing it in that way to manage the overtime piece.
And then we are very close to launching the CSOs into patrol, which will bring that number down even farther.
Then the goal that we have targeted ourselves to do is to understanding attrition still go up by plus five annually.
So that's us considering attrition that we could bring in eight to 10 officers annually, knowing that we would lose three to five.
We know we are experiencing a problem that is being experienced nationally around hiring and law enforcement.
And so we were going to continue to explore the ways we can bring people into the profession.
Having CSOs is a great way and a great entry way into sworn position that would, you know, and then also bringing in lateral employees.
So there's ways to move beyond.
That's your thing, but you're not wrong.
They take up to 16 to 18 months from hire to fully solo officer.
But there's definitely a lot of work for us to do in the middle of that with technology, building efficiencies, CSOs, other alternative responses in the works.
Yeah, I don't know if this is true, but intuitively it feels like the more offices we hire, the easier it will be to hire officers.
The more we build mentorship programs and professional development and have a continue to build culture, the more options we bring in allows us to implement these flex teams and rebuild motors and all those things that get people to stay and retain.
You're absolutely correct.
Thank you very much.
Okay, colleagues, questions and comments.
I have a few questions, if I may.
So first around the issue of staffing.
So in a memo that we received in August, it said that we would not be able to reach the authorized staffing level 181 offices until 2032.
And I wonder if you can touch on what is the progress that we're making around recruitment and retention.
And, you know, we are still facing staffing shortfalls.
So are we looking at difficult trade-offs in terms of how we deploy resources given the staffing challenges in the next five years? You know, there's this rule of 60 framework that was talked about in the study.
And I'm curious about what trade-offs are involved in an environment where we only have 168 sworn officers.
That's perhaps enough to staff a full patrol under the rule of 60 framework, but what does that leave us in terms of how we're able to do the other work that needs to be done in the department? And then my other question is, what level of sworn staffing would be considered successful in the next two to five years given the attrition and current hiring climate? Okay.
Let me see if I can tackle, kind of make some comments that cover those questions and let me know if I don't.
So I would say that the information that you received in our projections about hiring were conservative assessments without All-Star.
With All-Star recruiting, we're seeing significant improvements in the number of applicants that not only are submitting applications, but are coming to information nights that are then applying.
And so we're seeing an increase in that, which we know will bring in more personnel.
The rule of 60, you're talking about 60 in our patrol, we understand that's not sustainable.
And the trade-offs that we get by having that means that any absence, training, illness, regular vacation, time off, whatever means overtime has to be spent.
So it's expensive.
Traditionally at 73, there was wiggle room on every single team to one, do special projects, but two, to absorb the personnel being unavailable for whatever reasons without having to go down staffing.
Now, the other piece about 60 talks about the percentage of time that were spent engaged in responding to crimes and dealing with crimes.
And so we know that if officers do not have discretionary time built into their shift, then wellness is affected.
The ability to engage with the community is affected.
The ability to be present on the beat and provide a deterrence in that way is affected.
And the ability to, when the case requires it, to spend more time on a particular call is extremely challenged.
And so it's all trade-offs.
And so right now, if you ask me what I needed to rebuild, I have a list, but I know what's critical.
Critical is getting patrol to a healthier level.
And then we know that the tools that are most successful for us are when we have a flexible approach.
So launching that team that works in partnership with the way our bike team responds, that can address issues that maybe are related to a shooting or merchant problem around quality of life issues, whatever the issue may be to really engage in that problem solving.
And so my goal in the next three to five years really looks at getting patrol to a healthy enough number that we can build that kind of responsive team.
And then I want to start looking towards rebuilding our detectives and our traffic bureau.
And that's where we'll just continue to find the balances in the work that we engage in.
But we do know that infusing that with the CSOs and some of these alternative responses will likely change where we might have to deploy moving down the road.
So CSOs may have left a great deal of burden on it, which would then free up or reduce the number of officers we'd have to have on patrol and also still allow them to have that discretionary time to engage in the work we want them to engage in.
Okay, thank you.
I know that this is a hard, these are hard questions to answer because our, you know, recruitment efforts are ongoing.
But I think this is very helpful.
And then my last question is around sort of the role of alternative responders.
In the CityGate report identified several call types that they believed could be handled by alternative responders, but didn't quantify how many calls they think could be shifted or the impact this might have on BPD's overall workload.
And this is why, you know, refining the call types as part of the dispatch analysis I think is really critical.
Do you, Chief, or does CityGate have an idea about how many calls could potentially be redirected to alternative responders such as CSOs or the SCU and what impact this might have on the overall officer workload? I know some of this is going to be determined, you know, as we're implementing these new programs, but I'm curious.
There was a conclusion that there is some potential to shift some of these calls.
I'm wondering if there was a, if that was quantified.
Yeah, sure.
I can talk a little bit about that.
So based on the data of calls that SCU is going to right now, they're handling roughly the equivalent of 1% of our total calls.
So the data from the city auditor's analysis looked at the potential of the SCU being able to handle up to 12% of the calls once they're fully implemented.
So that tells us that there's a current benefit and there's an opportunity by expanding that resource to broaden that alternative response model.
And so that's going to be us hearing from the pilot program report back about the call load and the things in the calls that they went to to explore the space in that.
As far as looking at our internal analysis on that, so I think we would agree that SCU could potentially pull off 10 to 12% of our calls.
And I, in looking at the kinds of calls we're envisioning that the CFOs could do, we think that could be an area of 7 to 10% of the calls.
Again, as we build both of these systems out, we'll know even more.
But that's kind of our rough estimate looking at that call data, what we think those numbers would be.
Thank you very much.
Okay, I'm going to now go to Council Member Humbert and then Luna Parr.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor.
And I am going to comment on both the reimagining presentation and the CityGate presentation.
I had some questions, but I think most of them, if not all of them, have been answered.
So I just want to articulate some of my comments.
I want to start by thanking a lot of different people for both reports and the reimagining report to begin with and their efforts.
And I also really want to thank the team at CityGate.
That was a great report.
Chief Wirt, his suggestions and his comments were really, really useful.
And I agree with Vice Mayor Wingraf that they were really cogent and I think are going to be really helpful.
I want to thank our former City Manager, Dee Williams Ridley, who no doubt played a role in the initial drafting of the reimagining report and also helped guide us through some very tough times and uncomfortable conversations around public safety, police accountability, and various reforms.
I want to thank our Police Chief, Jen Lewis, for her openness and collaborative spirit throughout this reimagining effort, including during her extended tenure as Interim Chief.
And I want to thank others at BPD who pitched in on this effort, especially when it comes to carrying out our vision for fair and impartial policing.
A big thank you to our Auditor, Jenny Wong.
She's been really at the forefront of helping BPD improve its operations.
Tremendously helpful.
Her work continues to be essential as we evaluate the cost and effectiveness of our public safety efforts, including reimagining.
And we're going to need more of her work as we get deeper into implementation steps.
Of course, I want to thank Deputy City Manager, LaTanya Bello, Fire Chief Sprague, Deputy City Manager, Ann Cardwell, former HHCS Director, Dr.
Lisa Varhus, Budget Manager, Sharon Fredrickson, City Attorney Brown, Rex Brown, Kariana Arredondo, and so many others.
And I'm really sorry, I apologize if I left your name off that list.
I do want to thank members of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force for all their work to get this effort off the ground and keep it moving.
It's really inspiring.
I want to thank the folks at the Specialized Care Unit.
This is where, you know, the rubber meets the road on some of the key elements of this safety effort, the reimagining effort.
I hope this unit can continue to get up to speed and fully play its role in alternatives to police response.
I guess I was not happy to hear that it's, you know, that right now they're just covering 1%, but 12% sounds meaningful if we can get there along with the contribution by the CSOs.
I think that can relieve a lot of stress on BPD, and that sounds hopeful to me.
I want to thank Neighborhood Services, especially Peter Reddue.
Their work is really critical in all of this.
I want to thank our downtown telegraph ambassadors, who are in so many ways our first responders when it comes to issues on our streets.
I want to thank the PAB and my appointee, Brent Blackaby, for his work on the board.
If I don't always agree with the body's police recommendations, their work remains essential to our efforts to ensure fair and impartial policing, and I want to thank the DPA for their support of the PAB in its work.
Reimagining public safety remains an important goal.
We want our police to be focused on crime, especially violent crime.
We want to allocate resources such that our police can focus on that while mental health professionals and others, including CSOs, address things like street behavior, quality of life issues, and the sort of things that you've work listed that CSOs can do.
I'm hoping to see the Specialized Care Unit ramp up its efforts.
As Councilmember Tragob mentioned, be better publicized, and based on my reading of the information, this SEU has only averaged about two responses per day since it began operation.
Clearly, the need is much greater than that, and given the level of investment, which is significant, we've already made in the SEU.
I look forward to the response levels.
Increasing dramatically so we can start to have a more visible positive impact on the mental health issues on our streets, which we see, I think all of us see every day.
I certainly do.
Overall, I'm struck by the fact that we've put a lot of resources into the planning phases of this effort, but now, due to a variety of factors, are being compelled to delay implementation.
The biggest hurdles we face, obviously, are a lack of funding and a lack of flexibility from the State.

Segment 5

when it comes to things like, for example, creating a Berkeley Department of Transportation, BercDOT, and allowing for non-sworn enforcement of traffic laws.
I'm not counting on ever being able to do that, actually.
I just am not confident that the state is ever going to allow us to do that.
I know that many of us are eager to carry out all the implementation steps, but as we move forward for public, for reimagining, but as we move forward, I want us to remain cognizant of these constraints.
Because of all the efforts we put in already, it may be tempting to jump the gun or spend beyond our means, but I don't want to end up in a situation where we're stuck with insufficient public safety staffing while also failing to fully stand up other programs or departments.
I'm hoping that our economic trajectory and election outcomes are such that we have a healthy budget in the next few years and can afford to do all the things we want to do.
But right now, funds are limited.
And in the event that we do face continued tight budgets, and I think we may, my focus is going to be first on physical infrastructure, then basic services, and maintaining public safety staffing.
You know, again, I really appreciated the report by CityGate and Chief Wirt.
It confirmed that our challenge, and we've been discussing this here this afternoon, remains staffing, especially patrol and dispatch.
And of course, that leads to reliance on overtime and all the problems that are inherent in that.
I do want to highlight the need to add a school resource officer, and it turns out that there was a group of parents, a working group of parents, who looked at this issue and have asked for an additional resource officer, and Chief Wirt and his team confirmed that that makes sense.
We talked about all the recruiting efforts.
I'm knocking on wood that they, you know, that our recruiting improves, it sounds like it already has, with our retention of this agency that Chief Lewis mentioned.
So that sounds good.
And I think, you know, I think it's critical as elected officials that we support our police department's ability to recruit and operate.
We need to push back, I think, when people make claims that are unsubstantiated or at odds with the reality of our police department, which uses very low levels of force, especially involving firearms, and the department has seen very low levels of sustained complaints.
I think that's really important to note, that we've got a really great police department that is really judicious in using force, and a very progressive police department.
And based on the data from the work of our own police accountability board, and the findings of this report, I stand by my contention that whatever its imperfections, we still have a really incredibly outstanding police department, and I hope my colleagues, especially those who profess their support for public safety in our city, will remain cognizant of that.
So thank you very much.
Councilmember Lita Parra? Thank you.
I want to touch on some of the issues that the police accountability board pointed out, some of which were already answered, thank you, Chief Lewis, from the mayor's comments.
In response to the city gate's recommendation to eliminate certain elements of the use of force reporting policy, as it has become administratively burdensome, I agree with the PAB's position, and in line with their suggestion, would also be interested in further analysis of how long it takes to complete a level one use of force analysis, and if the supervisor would otherwise be in the field before weighing the administrative burden against the importance of that accountability mechanism.
And I'm wondering if, Chief Lewis, you could speak to that aspect of it.
So as Chief Ward shared, the current way that a sergeant has to review a use of force is to review all the body-worn camera footage and complete, look for witnesses on scene, complete investigations and take statements.
And so when we're, and we're talking about the most common use of force, which is that level one instance, which can be very minor, like a hold on someone or directing someone down to the ground without any report of pain.
And so the idea is that that would still be captured as a documented or data point, but that the amount of, the level of review that would have to be undertaken by a supervisor that could be engaged in doing supervision in other areas would be reduced by doing that.
And so just to be clear, like level ones are 66% of all of our uses of force are that low-level use of force.
And the use of force rate is for all the calls for service that the police department gets in a year, we use force on 0.5% of those calls.
So we're talking about a very large administrative burden to review footage, to respond to a scene, to seek witnesses, to get, to do that work.
And could be a lot depending on the number of witnesses and depending on the number of officers involved, or it could be, could be shorter, trying to weigh the balance between those things.
And also being able to compare ourselves to, for example, other jurisdictions that don't record that level of force also, so we can understand comparatively how our level of force is applied in our state compared to others.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I understand that and also want to reiterate the PAB's position.
I am concerned that if we're not balancing the importance of this accountability mechanism that we may be overweighing the administrative burden, but I understand where it's coming from and appreciate your input.
I also wanted to talk about, I wanted to align myself again with the PAB's concern about how the result of a process that was created in response to demands from community members to reduce the size and scope of the police department and move police funding towards other vital services and resources has resulted in recommendations that we increase police staffing by 19 before we complete the redistribution of tasks that we were mentioning with the specialized care unit and other reimagining policies.
I also don't think it makes any sense to increase the number of positions when we are so far from filling our current open positions.
In the CityGate report, there's also a considerable focus on how public perception of law enforcement contributes to the issues of vacancy and retention.
According to the report, significant vacancy problems began in 2019 and were exacerbated by the pandemic.
From my conversations with police officers and community members, it seems that there was a notable shift in public attitudes towards law enforcement in 2020 stemming from a broader critique of policing and the systems of power that have historically marginalized communities, all of which also ultimately influenced the Council's efforts in reimagining public safety.
And I believe that this shift, which uplifts the voices of the systemically oppressed and enables healthy and necessary critique, is a positive development.
This body also acknowledged the need for critique in 2020 as the guiding philosophy behind reimagining policing was reduce, and then reimagine, improve, and reinvest.
However, since then, I don't think we have effectively reduced.
Instead, we have added more officers to the force and increased our annual budget.
I'm interested in further exploring the innovative work that this Council has committed itself to like the BPD Transparency Hub, its mobile crisis team, violence prevention programs, the Vision Zero program, et cetera, but we can't do that if we insist on clinging to outdated structures that are proving to be ineffective.
Ongoing recruitment and retention challenges prove the system is struggling, and we should take this public perception seriously, and we should expedite the increasing the specialized care unit's ability to take on more of that work.
I also finally want to share that as a young person who is in community with other young people and in consistent contact with Berkeley High students, many students, especially students of color and undocumented students, do not want police officers at their school.
It does not make them feel safer, and actually, for many students, makes them less comfortable at their own school.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll go next to Councilor Trageb, followed by Councilor Bartlett.
Thank you so much.
I have a few questions for the Chief.
I will try to group these.
The report touches on community policing, but to the point made by at least one member of the public, I would certainly be interested in hearing more, Chief, about what your vision is around community policing, specifically in relation to staffing levels as they go up that may allow more utilization of community policing, and similarly, I would be interested in hearing more about your vision for usage of bike patrols or other alternatives that give officers the opportunity to be out interacting with community members.
It's a great question, and it very much drives to the focus I have when I look at allocating our resources.
Currently, we do a lot of work engaging with our community, engaging with the youth, working with the Berkley Jackets, working with McGee-Baptist, working with Live Free and the GVIP work, but a lot of that work has to be done on an overtime basis, or it's done through our Community Services Bureau, who gets spread very thin, also working with Neighborhood Services responding to homeless-related issues.
So that's one of the reasons why it's so important for us to consider the Rule 60 in having available and discretionary time for officers working patrol.
That's why it's very important to have a robust patrol team so that we can pull officers out to do that kind of engagement and interaction with the community.
That's why it's important for us to be able to see and build a flex team that could do the same.
They work in partnership with, in similar ways that our bike team works, where they're able to slow down, get involved with the community, talk about problem-solving, connect community members with our other city resources that can help resolve things.
We're always looking for long-term solutions, and very much that it can exist outside of enforcement or involving the criminal justice system at all.
It's about finding good solutions and using the right resources to address those things.
So community policing, to me, means all of those things.
It means us engaging with and becoming partners with our community and maintaining that partnership with our community.
The policing piece is more of an engagement piece and a problem-solving piece.
Thank you.
This ties into my next set of questions around resource leveling.
In particular, there were recommendations made to beef up the number of CSOs, something that I fully support, and I'm glad that that is well on the way.
It was, you know, with the SCU unit and the fact that, if I understood correctly, a fully staffed SCU could lead to 12% fewer calls for service that require police response.
What is the approach or framework you use to leverage all of these latent or current resources, such as utilizing the SCU, utilizing CSOs once they become embedded in the patrols, relative to an overall evaluation of staffing numbers and, ultimately, the benefit to morale associated with less overtime or fewer tasks that may take a police officer away from what they came to Berkeley to do? Yeah, it's a great question.
And so the framework that I use is that we know that there is a lot of work that happens and needs to get done 24-7, 365 days a week in our city.
And a lot of things that were not traditionally law enforcement fell to law enforcement because that was the resource, you know, police and fire were the resources that were available during those hours.
And standing up a lot of these other alternative responses in, you know, weekends and after hours is challenging.
But that doesn't mean that the work that they need to be engaged in doesn't occur during those time periods.
And so I think, you know, SCU is a perfect example of the way the approaches that we have and the beginning to build out our CSOs is the same approach where we build a program, we collect data on that program about its effectiveness, we look at the calls for service that we have, and begin to understand what work could be done more fiscally responsibly with a different skill set or a different job classification to achieve that same goal.
I am very much a believer in this all being a very collaborative network of resources, of alternative resources.
And, you know, in the beginning, we may find that there are calls that law enforcement need to go to to ensure that they are safe calls and can then very much step away from and allow SCU or fire department, if it's more perfect, to come in and finish that call.
I'm in a perfect world.
I think that's how it works is that there and in the same way, you know, that see you may be the first on a scene or something, and may determine that someone there was victimized and needed police services.
And that kind of trade off of when things might need to go each direction allows us to sort of assess what the best resources are.
But the more robust and thorough approaches we have to deal with specific problems in our community, the stronger we are.
The problem, you know, one of the concerns I have around like keeping things completely standalone is you build silos.
And we all know that silos can be very, very challenging.
People duplicate work, duplicate work.
We don't use best use of resources.
So it's really trying to find that balance in there.
And so my framing is very much to be clear.
I think that the SCU could take 10 to 12% of our current calls.
There's probably a great need of service that they could provide beyond that, that maybe never would have even come to the police department.
That's the whole point of that also.
So I think there's definitely a need in our community.
We all see that need in our community.
And so we continue to build up that kind of resource.
I hope that answered your question.
DR.
HARTNETT It does.
Thank you so much.
And my penultimate question is I saw there was an item embedded in, I think, the index of the report around a grant that I believe we received and accepted for mental health and wellness.
And I was pleased to see that.
And I was curious what current steps are being taken to improve mental health and wellness outcomes within the force? And are there other opportunities for grants that are being sought or have been received? DR.
HARTNETT Thank you for the question.
So we are always actively seeking grants that can help support our work.
And in the area of wellness, we meet regularly.
I have a wellness committee that meets.
We look to a robust suite of services, whether that's meditation and sleep assistance, whether that's EAP programs.
We have a strong, strong peer support system in place, not only made up of members in our department, but also partnering with a psychological services company that works with our peer support staff and also works individually with personnel in our department.
We have on-site nutritionist trainer that we partner with the fire department on to ensure that the physical and mental health, nutritional health of our employees is captured.
So we're really looking at all of those pieces as wellness, as part of our wellness suite of wellness.
And we know that building a mentorship program is an important next step in that.
And we're looking to really step into that space with a stronger program over the next couple of months.
So it's everything.
It's everything that we can do to talk about how we're feeling to provide space for our personnel to be able to decompress and stay as well as possible as they do this really challenging work.
Thank you.
And lastly, and I appreciate the PAB as well for providing its report.
And there was a recommendation in there around indexing Berkeley's staffing needs to certain competitor agencies.
I was curious, Chief, if you had a response to that suggestion.
Yeah, it's, you know, looking at comparisons can be challenging when you use different data collection or different information.
You know, we look at some things when we look at contract negotiations.
We have comparative cities based on the tasks we ask them to do, and we recognize those for comparative cities.
But then we also have other things that we compare.
We are a city with a very large university, right? That brings a lot of people and we have a vibrant community in that sense.
And so we need to find comparators that have that same makeup, but that also have our value, our unique set of values that we have in our city.
And so some of the comparisons, when we look at like per capita and things like that, it might seem simplistic or just choosing a same size agency might seem simplistic.
But what we want to do is look at what our regional standards are, what national standards are, and not be rigidly focused on a single agency.
For comparison, like we may find a certain jurisdiction is more comparable in a certain area because they have similar philosophies, similar size, similar data collection.
And we would want to compare for that reason.
But then we might want to look at, you know, we might see other jurisdictions as really pushing the envelope on innovation and they're working around those other issues.
And so we'd want to look to that agency to be compared to.
And so what I always want to do is I want us to strive to be at the front end of, I want us to be the comparative city.
I want people to look at the work that our council is doing, that our community is doing, the way that we're engaged with our community and the innovative programs that we're launching and use us as a comparative city.
And I want to go and look at what other jurisdictions are doing that are working well.
And I want to look to implement those in our city.
Thank you so much, Chief.
So I will, I have a few comments and I promise it's just a few.
I mostly associate myself, actually, with the comments made by Council Member Humbert.
I think there is, well, I will speak for myself.
I know I have heard time and time again from my constituents that there is a general concern around them feeling safe and support for staffing the department at the level at which it is authorized to be staffed.
I also know from my experience in a federal agency that a few things are more critical to morale than a full staffing complement, whatever it is, whether it's a shift or whether it's a department.
So I am very interested in, I read the CityGate recommendations around staffing with interest.
I think it makes a lot of sense to me.
And in that vein, I would also, and maybe this is not the time to do this, but this comment is more for Scott.
As far as the SCU, and I want to give the opportunity for the SCU unit to be fully staffed up to 24-7 operations.
At some point, I would like us to look at what parts of the SCU could be brought in-house instead of contracted out, whatever the nonprofit is.
And I have no doubt that the nonprofits we work with are doing great work.
I have no doubt that the Bonito House is working hard on this.
So this is not meant as an indictment of the work that is being done.
And I also know from past experience that bringing more functions in-house can also be advantageous from a morale standpoint within an agency or department.
I would be interested to the Chief's comments around making sure that we're not working in silos, making sure that to the best that we are able to, we are minimizing duplication or eliminating entirely.
There are other models out there that are alternatives to how the SCU is set up.
I do understand, and I don't want to second guess what the SCU is about.
And yet, there is a CAHOOTS model.
There are other models that allow different levels of response to be response providers to be on a call together so that they can diagnose what kind of response is needed and then decide.
My understanding is the CAHOOTS model has been fairly successful.
And lastly, while I appreciate, again, the origins of why level one calls were made to require additional reporting, I think the data being provided is compelling to me that it may be time to, again, in the spirit of having a more efficient, a more effective department, as well as one that continues to be mindful of the needs of the community, to revisit what the level one requirements are around the reporting specifically, particularly if there are safeguards around that reporting elsewhere and how that data is tracked.
So I think my question really is for the mayor, is what is next? I understand that this is a work session and no specific action items being envisioned.
Well, I'd like to ask the city manager, William, but this is really intended for council to ask questions and to provide feedback that the city manager and the police department will take into consideration as they're working to implement the recommendations.
They're already implementing a number of these recommendations, but Mr.
City Manager, can you confirm the case? Yes, exactly.
So thank you all very much for your feedback and your comments and your questions.
It's been super helpful.
I'll quickly thank the team for the outstanding presentation that they did.
We'll take all this feedback in and as we continue to implement both the recommendations from the city gate study, as well as the reimagining work that we're doing, we'll then come back and follow up with you at a later date and report back on progress.
Thank you so much.
Councilman Bartlund and I have some comments before we wrap up.
Thank you, and I'll be brief.
It's cold in here, right? Is it just me? It's really cold in there, right? The AC is on.
Is it hot outside all of a sudden now? Thank you for the presentation.
I will be very brief.
My colleagues have really touched on all the points that I would touch on.
And the city gate recommendations were wonderful.
I see a lot of value in here.
And, of course, I want to talk about the SCU.
My baby.
The specialized care unit, when I drafted it, I was monitoring the fire department pilot that existed around that time.
They had a sort of a paramedic social worker SUV approach, and they were going out talking to people.
They were connecting seniors to care.
They were kind of doing what the SCU was doing.
And it was very efficient.
It was good because they're such professionals.
I do think the SCU, at the scale that we need to be at, is going to need to be reworked, I think.
I've spent time with them, and I attract them.
The provider is providing service to other jurisdictions at the same time.
So there is a possibility there's resource leakage that could be working against us here.
The number, too, as well, we've got to figure out a three-digit number if we can.
I know that the fire chief mentioned that earlier.
I've been giving the number out to people.
I can't remember it.
I can't.
But I'm not good at remembering numbers in general.
And the core element of the success of this, and this is important, too, because we did find that 80 percent of police calls were involving this sort of milieu of us.

Segment 6

and I think that staffing up, more effective staffing, more effective interdiction and investigation and an overall quality of life for the city in general require something like an SCU to really be functional and be robust 24-7 all over the city with a proper, quick dispatch that's not complex, that can operate with relative ease and finesse with the calls that come in.
The last element to achieve the success, we have to look at the duplicative nature of some of our providers.
For instance, so the crisis, the mobile crisis unit in the city's Department of Mental Health, how does that align or disalign or misalign or add to or take away from the SCU or vice versa? These are things to consider as we roll it out in the most cost-effective manner.
Okay, thank you very much.
So this is my last opportunity to share my vision for reimagining public safety since I will be leaving office at the end of next month.
So I want to just take this opportunity to reflect on the progress that we've made, share some of my insights on the CityGate report and offer a vision for Berkeley's future in public safety.
And this has really been a transformative process for Berkeley and I'm grateful for the dedication shown by everyone in building a balanced approach to public safety for our city.
I want to reinforce our commitment to a sustainable public safety model, one that integrates traditional policing with proactive community investments and innovative response systems.
This is balanced and a holistic approach means that each element works together, not separate, but together to build a safer Berkeley.
My hope is that Berkeley will continue to lead as a model city where progressive values and practical solutions work hand-in-hand to protect and serve all of our residents.
I want to just take this opportunity to recognize the department's innovation and leadership and really want to just address this issue or I think this false narrative that's often put out there that reimagining public safety and supporting our police are mutually exclusive.
I think that these efforts are designed to complement one another and working together will help our city achieve a more safer and resilient city.
We're fortunate to have a department that's committed to progressive community-focused policing, one that has worked tirelessly to avoid the tragic situations that we've seen in other cities.
And this report recognizes and builds on our department's strengths and it's important that we continue to celebrate their role in our public safety model.
The CityGate report highlights several examples of the department's innovative use of technology and data-driven decision-making.
This commitment to efficiency and resourcefulness helps ensure our public safety efforts are effective and focused where they're needed most.
I just want to take this opportunity to thank the chief for her leadership in creating the deputy chief position, the Office of Strategic Planning and Accountability.
These are efforts that are aligned with the CityGate report to strengthen the department's structure and to support transparency and long-term planning.
And I think that this report was never really about questioning our police department's commitment, but rather about understanding what they currently need and what additional support it may need as we shift some of our responsibilities.
Because at the end of the day, it's about building the best model for Berkeley.
I think it's critical that we maximize police staffing in a challenging environment.
And I also want to state our commitment to a well-staffed, responsive police department.
The City Council has provided significant resources in recent years to ensure that our officers have the support they need to serve our community effectively.
But we do have challenges and we have needs that are beyond our current resources.
Our ideal staffing level is just not a matter of funding.
The August 2023 memo that I referenced previously from the city manager projects that even with doubling our hiring rate, we may not reach our budgeted staffing goal of 181 officers until 2032.
This isn't due to a lack of support, but rather the challenges that many law enforcement agencies face that are beyond our control.
Limited hiring pools, the amount of time it takes to train officers, and the realities of attrition.
And so confronting this reality, I think, is necessary and I think demonstrates responsible leadership.
We are doing everything possible to maximize staffing and support for our officers, but we must be resourceful with the personnel that we have.
And supporting our police department doesn't just mean hiring, it means building resilience within the system by maximizing resources, providing wellness and support, and expanding the capacity to adapt to future needs.
This doesn't signal a lack of support for our police, instead it reflects our commitment to resilience, efficiency, and resourcefulness in meeting the needs of our community.
I think it's critical that we try to achieve complementary yet resource-constrained priorities.
We need a balanced investment in public safety that includes staffing and community safety investments such as violence prevention programs and a specialized care unit.
These shouldn't be competing priorities, they're all essential to our city's public safety response.
Programs like the SCU in violence prevention are vital, but currently lack long-term funding.
This will be something the city council will have to work to address.
Police staffing represents our largest public safety expense, and while we're actively pursuing grants and exploring options to leverage resources, the reality is that there are trade-offs that exist.
And so we need to work with all of our partners, federal, state, to identify resources that can help cities like Berkeley avoid these difficult trade-offs and fully support our police department and our community-centered safety programs.
But tonight, as we consider staffing recommendations, we need clear information on what these choices mean.
Understanding the trade-offs involved in funding police beyond the level we can realistically achieve in the near term is essential in understanding a balanced and sustainable public safety model.
Dispatch, as Councilmember Weingarten mentioned, is absolutely critical to making sure that we have an effective, multifaceted public safety response.
And really core to creating a diversified response is strengthening our dispatch system.
Dispatch is the central command of public safety.
Tonight's preview of the dispatch needs analysis is a critical step in ensuring our dispatch operations have the necessary technology, staffing, and space to support a modern, integrated emergency response system.
And I want to go back to a concept that I put out several years ago to create an omnibus department of community safety, where we'd have fire, where we'd have community responders, where we'd have police all integrated.
This has been pushed into the future as we're working to implement the FCU, the dispatch study, and some of the other core elements of the reimagining initiative.
But it's worth noting that I specifically propose this concept for a reason.
That we, as a city, build an organizational structure that can assess and address trade-offs across all these complementary safety resources and to deliver public safety resources comprehensively.
Such a framework ensures that we do not need to make decisions in silos, but rather consider the full picture of Berkeley's safety needs.
I just want to take this opportunity to second the many comments that our colleagues have made about the incredible work of our staff, particularly Kariana Arredondo, who's led this initiative, and Chief Lewis, who has also taken on this important work.
But I also want to recognize the community partners who have contributed to the implementation of this reimagining initiative, working with BYA, working with the Junior Jackets, working with our ceasefire partners.
So, as I close, I want Berkeley to continue to advance a vision for a progressive and practical public safety system.
My hope is that Berkeley will continue to lead with progressive values, grounded in practical approaches to public safety.
I'm confident that the work we started here will inspire other cities to take similar balanced approaches that reflect community needs and forward-thinking innovation.
Through strategic investment, resilience, and a balanced approach, we are creating a model that prioritizes safety and equity.
This reimagining work embodies Berkeley's commitment to serving the community with integrity.
And I'm optimistic that Berkeley will continue to set a standard, demonstrating that innovation, responsibility, and community-centered values that can work hand-in-hand to create a model that truly serves and reflects our residents.
So, those are just some closing thoughts from myself, my colleagues, and I look to our staff to lead this work in my absence.
I think we've done a lot of really outstanding work.
There's a lot more work to do, and I think we're moving in a positive direction.
So, thank you for indulging me.
All right, any other questions or comments before we adjourn? Okay, if not, I will adjourn the 3.30 special meeting.
Motion to adjourn is seconded by Trega to adjourn.
Please call the roll.
Council Member Kisarwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trago? Aye.
Weingraf? To adjourn.
Council Member Weingraf to adjourn.
Lunapara? Yes.
Umber? Yes.
And Mayor Arrogate? Yes.
Okay, thank you.
We are adjourned.
So, we just completed our 3.30 special meeting.
We need to take a captioner break, so we'll be back in 15 minutes to start the 6 o'clock regular meeting.
If you'd like to..
Recording stopped.
On the agenda, please fill out a speaker card and put it in the drums, so when we do the selection of speakers, we have your speaker card.
Thank you.
Thank you.