The city of Berkeley is moving forward with a one-of-a-kind proposal to replace police with unarmed civilians during traffic stops in an effort to curb racial profiling.
After hours of emotional public testimony, council members in the northern California city passed a reform measure that requires a committee tasked with policing reforms. They include preventing the police department from responding to calls involving the homeless or mental illness and finding ways to cut the police budget in half. The vote also called for the creation of a separate municipal department to handle the enforcement of parking and traffic laws.
The plan appears to be a historic move in a U.S. city, and comes as many regions across the country increasingly face calls to dismantle and dismantle police departments in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Numerous studies have shown that black drivers are much more likely to be stopped by the police than whites for minor traffic offenses, with sometimes fatal results. Philando Castile, for example, was shot dead after the 32-year-old was stopped by a broken tail light in 2016 in Minnesota. And Sandra Bland, 28, died in a jail cell three days after being detained for failing to indicate when she changed lanes in Texas in 2015.
At the council meeting, after residents shared personal accounts of police violence, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said he did not expect a new transportation department overnight because the talks will be difficult and detailed with a complicated logistics to solve. But he said that communities of color in his city feel attacked by the police and that this must change.
“There may be situations where the police need to intervene, so we must analyze all of that,” he said. “We need to look at whether we get the traffic enforcement out of the police department, what does that relationship look like, and how will police officers work in coordination with unarmed traffic enforcement personnel?”
Some progressive Bay Area activists said the move was a step in the right direction, but that it did not go far enough. Most commentators during a nearly nine-hour meeting that ended at midnight had called for a more radical proposal for immediate disbursement from the Berkeley police.
Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California and a former Berkeley police review commissioner, noted that enforcement of traffic law is one of the most common ways that the police interact with members of the community, resulting in It can have detrimental consequences: “Black and brown men are disproportionately detained for minor traffic offenses, and that’s when we see this escalation … That’s where you see the violence unfold.”
Mohamed Shehk, with the abolitionist group Critical Resistance, said he supported the idea of removing police from traffic law enforcement, but said it was vital that the alternative department Berkeley creates does not repeat the same problems: “We must also dismantle the systems of fines and tariffs that keep the communities that are the targets of these policies in poverty. “
Residents who spoke at the council meeting made it clear they wanted something “much bolder,” he added. “We have seen how incrementalism and cosmetic reforms are not substantial enough to reduce or reverse the enormous amounts of damage, violence, damage and racism that the police have inflicted on communities for decades.”
It could take months, even years, to create a new department, but the police and other law enforcement leaders rebuked the idea.
“I think what Berkeley is doing is crazy,” said Mark Cronin, director of the Los Angeles Police Protection League, a union for officers. “I think it is a great social experiment. I think it will fail. “
The Berkeley Police Department said it had no comment on the council’s legislation. But the Los Angeles, San Francisco and San José police unions issued a statement opposing the proposal.
Arreguín, the mayor, said creating a new department was a phase two development that was at least a year away and would likely involve making changes to state law.
Agencies contributed reports
.
