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Segment 1

Okay, thank you so much everyone.
I'm calling to order the Berkeley City Council meeting.
Today is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026.
It is 623 p.m.
Thank you all very much for your patience.
And, oh, our clerk is on his way back, so sorry about that.
I jumped the gun, Mark.
If you could please take the roll when you are settled.
Recording in progress.
Taking the roll for the regular meeting.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Blackabay? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mayor Ishii? Here.
Okay, quorum is present.
All right, I have a statement to read out first.
With respect to information item number 27 regarding the settlement between Berkeley's People Alliance and the city in Alameda County Superior Court case number 24CV064980, California Court of Appeals case number A172245, the City Council hereby commits, consistent with the Court of Appeals ruling, to no longer invoke Government Code Section 54957.9 as it is currently drafted to recess a meeting and reconvene it in a different room or otherwise relocate the meeting.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
And also to report out language for item number 1, the City Council met in closed session on March 16, 2026, pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9D, and provided directions to outside Council and approved a settlement by compromise and release with Open Future Medical Care as to a workers' compensation matter, assigned claim number BER2300091 and WCAB case number ADJ17101925.
And item number 2, the City Council met in closed session on March 16, 2026, pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9D, and provided directions to outside Council and approved a settlement by compromise and release with a release of Future Medical Care, or in the alternative by stipulations with request for award with Open Future Medical Care as to a workers' compensation matter, assigned claim number BER2400044 and WCAB case number ADJ18386036.
Okay.
Thank you very much, everyone.
All right, we have two ceremonial matters this evening.
And I am going to start with the Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation.
It was requested by Council Member Terry Taplin's office, and they're leading the coordination this year for the Holocaust Remembrance Day event, so thank you very much for that.
Today, the proclamation will be received by Anna Rabkin.
Anna, are you here? I think you're here somewhere.
There you are.
Yay! Who was our City Auditor for 17 years, so thank you very much for your service.
The actual day of Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 12, and also Council will allocate D13 funds for the event at tonight's Council meeting.
So thank you so much, Anna, for being here with us.
Berkeley's 23rd Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Whereas the Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution, annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, 6 million Jews were murdered.
Roma, people with disabilities, Polish people, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents were likewise subjected to systematic persecution, oppression, and death under Nazi tyranny.
And whereas Holocaust Remembrance Day stands as a solemn reminder of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, and anti-Semitism, and underscores the vital importance of education, vigilance, and action to ensure such atrocities are never repeated.
And whereas the City of Berkeley reaffirms its commitment to human dignity, tolerance, and mutual respect, while standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination.
And whereas it is our shared responsibility to preserve the truth about the Holocaust as a cornerstone of our collective memory, and to honor the resilience and courage of survivors who were able to rebuild their lives.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby proclaim April 12, 2026 as Holocaust Remembrance Day in the City of Berkeley, in memory of those who were murdered, in honor of those who have survived, as well as the rescuers and liberators.
Be it further proclaimed that I call upon all residents to join in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, to educate themselves about the history of the Holocaust, and to recommit to building a more just, tolerant, and compassionate society, free from anti-Semitism and hatred of any kind.
Thank you.
Did you want to say? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mayor Ishii and Council Members and Council Member Kaplan.
I'm very proud that Berkeley is the first, I think, of any city to have a Holocaust, a secular one.
So it's very important that we are doing this, especially now.
I also want to remember that it was former Council Member Worthington, Chris Worthington, who started and very generously started contributing to this event in 2002, so he was way ahead.
I don't have to tell all of you how incredibly important it is right now that we remember that history, that we teach that history, and that we make sure that it never happens again.
Unfortunately, we're living now with very, very dark times, and there are an awful lot of people who are in tremendous danger, and we have to come together as a community to help those people and make sure that they're safe.
So thank you again, and I hope all of you will participate on April 12th and spread the word about it.
Thank you again.
Thank you, Anna.
A quick announcement.
Looks like there's a blue Subaru Forester that is parked in a driveway on Browning Street, and the homeowner is calling the police.
So if your car is a blue Forester with a license plate 9UE227, you might want to attend to that.
Okay, we have one more ceremonial item, but folks, there are a lot of seats that are kind of open in the middle, and there are people who are standing or sitting on the ground.
So if you could please move inward so that way more folks can sit down, I would appreciate it.
And there are some seats up here.
It says reserve seating for those with disabilities.
So, you know, if you have a disability and you want to come forward and sit, please, I want to encourage you to do that.
I want folks to be comfortable.
Okay.
All right.
So we have one more proclamation.
That's for Elaine Williams-Bloom.
It was requested by Councilmember Bartlett, and it is a proclamation honoring the life of Elaine Bloom, who passed away on February 24th, 2026.
Elaine's son, Russell, is here, and we met a little bit earlier to receive the proclamation.
So I will read it to you now.
Honoring the life and legacy of Elaine Williams-Bloom.
Whereas Elaine Williams-Bloom was an educator and parent who was a lifelong advocate for social justice until she passed away on February 24th, 2026, and whereas Elaine grew up in New Jersey with her two brothers, Walker and Kenneth, and her sister Diane, finding homes in New York City, Greenwich Village, Pasadena, California, St.
Thomas, U.S.
Virgin Islands, and Berkeley, California, where she embodied her strong will, sharp mind, and sense of fairness everywhere, and whereas founder of an innovative daycare called Gingerbread in Greenwich Village in the early 1970s, which provided a nurturing environment for generations of young children to express and develop their voices, and whereas Elaine demonstrated her values by being involved in civil rights protest, community organizing, and citizen participation, and modeled that advocacy for fairness and justice is a lifelong responsibility, and whereas at Berkeley, Elaine participated in tenant organizing with her neighbors at the Harriet Tubman Apartments, where their collaboration created a community that received recognition from the city of Berkeley in 2018, and whereas Elaine Williams-Bloom will be remembered by her sister Diane, her brother Kenneth, her daughter-in-law Michelle, her grandchildren Gianni and Marco, and also the many friends, neighbors, and community members who have been positively influenced by Elaine's integrity, strength, and lifetime commitment to the pursuit of justice and dignity for all.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby honor and celebrate the life and legacy of Elaine Williams-Bloom, and express our deepest gratitude for her lifelong commitment to advocacy.
If I may, just offer my appreciation, Mayor Ishii, for your reading of this declaration.
My mother, as you mentioned, was a lifelong advocate and activist.
It would be important to her for me to say out loud here that she would encourage you to remain committed to protecting the vulnerable, including the elderly, to remain focused on accountability and justice, and I know that she would have asked me to appreciate your patience with her over the years, as she was a frequent flyer, as they say, and certainly was committed to moving forward issues of justice, particularly around the tenancy at the Tubman Apartments.
Thank you all for your support all these years.
Thank you.
Apologies.
We also have an adjournment in memory for Marsha Poole, which was requested by Councilmember Traigub, and so I will pass it over to him to share a few words.
Thank you so much.
This will be an excerpt of a proclamation that will be presented at our Celebration of Life in April.
Marsha Poole was a community member and a friend and advocate to many.
In 1999, Marsha demonstrated extraordinary courage when she intervened to prevent a Berkeley landlord from concealing the death of a 13-year-old girl caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Alongside of Dr.
Diana Russell, they organized, documented, and pursued accountability through the courts, persistently demanding just decisions.
Their efforts contributed to greater awareness and helped create changes in California's human trafficking laws.
In 2019, Marsha curated and directed Creativity Unhoused at Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, a landmark exhibition highlighting the artwork of people experiencing homelessness, reflecting her belief in the dignity and potential of every person, and bringing together artists, advocates, and the community in celebration and recognition.
Marsha was a tireless advocate for tenants, unhoused individuals, and disabled residents, consistently attending Berkeley City Council meetings, supporting initiatives such as First Day Came for the Homeless, confronting injustice, and advancing tenant protections, including Measure Y, which strengthen safeguards for seniors and disabled residents.
So we remember and we celebrate her, and I know Lewis is here to say a few words in a minute.
Pressure is power, Marsha! Three cheers for Marsha.
Thank you.
Thank you.
She really cared about Berkeley, honestly, honestly.
And what amazed me about this was my wife.
She never gave up.
I'm very proud this city came to agree to it.
And please come to the celebration of life.
It will be soon.
And it'll be a party with song, with poetry, with conversation, with everything.
So thank you, thank you, thank you very much to the city of Berkeley, and thank you for the city council.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, everyone.
OK, so we are now moving on to our city manager comments.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
A couple of comments.
One, on the consent calendar, I need to remove item 13, which is a pavement safety improvement project contracts.
There were a couple of proposals that were inadvertently left off of this list, so we'll bring that item back.
And then also a reminder for the Peace and Justice Commission, item 16, that, as we talked about at Agenda and Rules, that should be a budget referral.
That recommendation does have costs associated with it that are not budgeted, so asking that that item go to the budget process.
Thank you.
16.
Thank you very much.
Oh, and you're already here in time for our city auditor comments.
Our city auditor is here right in the front.
And then I think there are still some empty seats, so I just want to make sure folks are able to sit down.
If folks can make room, there's also some seats up here in the front.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
So tonight I'm going to, we're going to do a short presentation on item number 18.
This is our first whistleblower report.
And let me see here.
Okay.
I have with me Aaron Mullen, whistleblower manager.
She's also a certified fraud examiner.
And she will say more about our whistleblower program and provide counsel in the public with this report.
So thank you, Aaron.
All right.
So this is our first report that we're sharing publicly from our whistleblower program.
And I am glad to walk you through it today.
I'm going to share a little bit about what we investigated, what we found, and what we recommend to ensure stronger controls.
But before we jump in to the report, I would like to briefly introduce the program.
So this whistleblower program allows city employees and officials to report concerns of fraud, waste, and abuse of city resources.
Reports can be submitted anonymously and are kept confidential with protections in place to safeguard the identity of individuals who come forward, and also individuals who participate in our investigations.
We issue public reports when we identify substantiated findings or issues that warrant transparency or broader awareness.
This is our first public report, but we expect more in the future.
We also plan to expand the hotline to the public, but that expansion is currently paused due to anticipated budget constraints and to ensure we have the capacity to review all reports and prioritize high-risk investigations.
Now let's turn to this specific investigation.
So we received a report in late 2024 alleging that an ambulance had been purchased without prior city council approval.
Under the Berkeley Municipal Code, city council approval is required for purchases over $100,000 before the city can be committed to that expenditure.
This requirement exists to ensure oversight, transparency, and responsible use of public funds.
So in response to this allegation, we conducted an investigation to determine whether the allegation was substantiated and to identify any breakdowns in the purchasing process.
We found that the allegation was substantiated.
A former city employee committed the city to a $286,000 ambulance purchase without the authority to do so and without completing required purchasing steps.
Now I'll walk you through sort of the breakdown of our key findings and why they matter.
First, the ambulance was purchased without required approvals, including council approval.
That resulted in a $286,000 commitment without oversight.
When the ambulance arrived, the city could not pay the vendor immediately.
The vendor then withheld the title of the vehicle and delayed its use.
Second, council approved the purchase retroactively, but it wasn't clearly disclosed that the city was already committed to the purchase.
This reduced transparency for council and the public.
Together, these issues show how bypassing purchasing controls can lead to financial risk and limited oversight.
Folks, please, we have a presentation.
Don't interrupt her.
Based on what we found, our recommendations focused in four key areas.
First, making the rules clear that no purchases should move forward without a requisition or a purchase order or the required council approval.
Second, creating clear escalation steps so issues are raised earlier if those rules aren't followed.
Third, clarifying roles through targeted training so staff understand who has authority in the purchasing process.
And finally, improving transparency by notifying council when standard purchasing steps are bypassed.
Together, these steps strengthen oversight and prevent similar issues in the future.
And with that, I would like to thank city departments for their assistance with this investigation, and thank you all for listening.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate the presentation, and thank you.
I want to give some time to ask if my council colleagues have any questions here or comments.
Go ahead, Vice Mayor.
Thank you.
I don't have any questions.
I just really want to thank you for your work and your commitment to this.
Thanks.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
And Council Member Humbert? Yes, likewise.
I don't have any questions, but I want to thank you for this really important and good work ferreting out this problem and coming up with ways to avoid it in the future.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Any other of my council colleagues? I do thank you so much for the presentation, for the report, also really important.
Obviously, very disconcerting, this purchase, but I am very confident that we're putting things into place to prevent things like this happening in the future, and I think that this really shows the benefit of having this whistleblower program.
So thank you very much for the work that you're doing.
I also want to see if the City Manager wants to add anything, because I know you've also implemented some of these changes already, and so I want to make sure you have time to address that if you'd like.
I don't really need to.
I appreciate the work of the auditor on this item, and we've agreed with the recommendations, some of which, as you say, Mayor, we have implemented, so we're creating a stronger system moving forward.
That's great.
Thank you both so much.
Thank you.
Okay.
We will now take public comment on non-agenda matters.
Okay.
If you have public comment for anything that's not on this agenda.
Right.
So I'll draw five cards for the in-person speakers, and then we will go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom.
And again, this is for items that are not on the agenda.
So when I announce the names, you can come up in any order.
And it's too late to put in a card, so don't bother.
If you're speaking about, you know, the police stuff or the flat cameras, this is not the time for that.
So the five in-person speakers are Russell Bates, Carol Morozovic, CKD, Durant, and looks maybe like Paola D5.
So you can come up in any order.
You'll have one minute to speak.
Oh, okay.
Folks, I know there's a lot of whispering going on.
I know there are a lot of people here.
So even if you're speaking quietly, it's going to reverberate.
So I want to hear from Carol, but also Mark, if there's a way that we can maybe open more doors or turn off the fan or something, it's starting to get quite warm.
Okay.
If your name was called, feel free to come up a little bit closer so I can keep track of whose whose name was called.
Thank you.
Exploitation of vulnerable homeowners.
This recommendation was put forward by the Department of Homeland Security.
It's a recommendation from the Department of Homeland Security.
In June 10, 2025, a qualified positive recommendation, if the council referred to another commission, it never went back to council.
This is nine and a half months later, and this was a qualified positive recommendation.
Second, well, I have been the author of multiple recommendations from commissions that are just lost in the process.
In fact, ironically, another one I'm going to pass to you, and I'm going to pass it to you.
Second, well, I have been the author of multiple recommendations from commissions that are just lost in the process.
In fact, ironically, another one I'm going to pass to you was addressed at the agenda committee in August 2020, almost six years ago.
And that recommendation was also a qualified positive recommendation.
And this recommendation was addressing tracking commission recommendations by compiling them.
And the recommendation has qualified positive to explore short term solutions and recommended the commission.
Thank you, Carol.
If I could just finish it.
I'm sorry.
Reintroduced to feel free to feel free to write us about it.
Thank you.
Yep.
As soon as the person's finished, you can come right up.
Mayor and the council, you speak tonight, a new zoning density rules.
Yeah, you actively enable criminal density fraud at a 2425 to rent a developer's niches, 19 unit high density bonus with one hand while claiming 15 units with the other.
Just to pop the salaries of a mandate on site manager per state law for 16 and more units.
You allow him to have his cake while the tennis stuff was safety.
In front of the mayor, the zoning board and the council on October 9th and February 23rd.
And you voted yes and up for the permit.
Anyway, ever since the city stay silent.
This is not a mistake.
It's a calculated administrative silence.
This permit is void on district section.
1090 felon felony, convict interest to the council.
The record is clean.
Thank you.
I see my time.
Paula.
Good evening.
Council members.
My name is PJ Singh.
I represent the sick American community.
I'm here to voice my concerns.
My name is PJ Singh.
I represent the sick American community.
I'm here to voice my opinion about a street that was named after a South Asian woman.
Who was a wealthy wife of a spy who came here to spy on the people that are organizing for India's freedom.
One of them people were my own great grandfather who came here in 1907.
The story that was presented here was a story of a woman who was a victim who ran out of Berkeley.
When we discovered, going back, we were happy that someone from our community was represented.
But what we discovered was totally the opposite.
A wealthy socialite wife of a colonial spy who was sent here to spy on his own people who were making $1.50.
Came here with over $25,000 when a home in Berkeley was under $1,000 in North Berkeley.
So we have the evidence.
We have several authors that wrote about this.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
So $286,000 on an ambulance person.
That is so pathetic that that could even happen.
And I hope you're going to remember the Holocaust that's going on in Gaza.
The genocide.
It's 899 days.
899 days of the genocide.
People are still getting murdered every day.
A woman got murdered that was carrying twins over the weekend.
Twins.
They killed them all.
They're wiping out family members, generations, not only in Gaza, but now in Iran, Yemen, and all these other countries.
And what have you done? Absolutely nothing.
Say it again.
War.
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
And you all should be ashamed of yourselves.
Ashamed.
Free Palestine.
Free us all from the racist dumps.
Zionism.

Segment 2

Thank you.
We're going to take our online comments.
Russell, your name was called.
Hi everybody.
I'm looking forward at some point to see a Gaza genocide remembrance day because it's so necessary to point it out that 7 billion dollars of weapons just got sent to the Zionist entity.
This will enable them to keep on killing people in every country around the area there and keep on killing the people in Iran.
Iran is fighting back.
It's doing a lot better than the mainstream media will let people realize.
But Gaza needs to be remembered.
It needs to be remembered.
There's a genocide going on there and it's not going to stop until the people of America make it stop.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Russell.
Okay, so we'll go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom and the first speaker is Whitney Sparks.
Hello, can you hear me? I'm just calling to encourage you to cancel the contract with Flock.
This is just for public comment on items that are not on the agenda.
So you can come back and comment during that time.
Thank you.
Okay, next is a caller with a phone number ending in 2-1-1.
Hi, good evening.
Well, our store manager again handed you some paper.
Read it on this phone.
Please don't ignore it.
What Donald Trump has done under Netanyahu has been dreaming for 30 years to attack Iran.
He's totally against American laws, international laws, and this is a genocide of Iranian people after when everything is said and done.
About half a million Gazan men, women, and children were killed, murdered, burned, sliced, and evaporated by American bombs.
Shame on all of us.
I must not let it happen.
Especially Jewish people.
Don't search through the Holocaust.
Why are we doing another Holocaust? Religions should not be involved at all.
Peace on Earth.
Thank you very much.
Okay, next is M.
Jervis.
Hello.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Yeah, my name is Matthew Jervis.
I'm with the Downtown Berkeley Association and I'm here to invite all of Berkeley to join us for Make Music Day on June 21st.
Thank you to Council Member Shoshana O'Keefe for introducing us to the organization.
This is actually on the agenda.
So we're actually doing non-agenda items right now or comments on things that are not on the agenda.
It's on the consent calendar.
Yeah, it's on the consent calendar.
So there's a separate time for that.
Okay.
So this is for non-agenda comments.
Nothing on the agenda.
Della Luna.
Next speaker.
Hi, yes.
I wanted to say that it's been more than 30 days or right around a month that the pedestrian crosswalk by the Ashby BART has not been repainted.
There's been construction there.
It's been allegedly improved, but the paint has not gone up.
So you can't actually see the walkway.
It's not painted across the street.
There's no indication that the pedestrian walkway is still there.
And I think people, there's elements where you all are making progress and I mean the city and with the improvements, but it also there's a missing element to it.
Almost like maybe you're using AI to plan the construction project, but you need to close those gaps and get the crosswalks or whatever you remake, finish the project.
And if you can't finish it, then don't start it until you can make sure it's finished because people are being harmed in the crosswalks.
There's a yellow curb at Russell and MLK and it's not painted.
There's no reflectors on it.
This is also there's other curbs on MLK that do have reflectors.
So why would there not be reflectors on the curb that was put in the middle of the roadway at Russell and MLK? And lastly, I live in District 3.
Thanks, Doug.
Next is East Shore Alliance.
Hey, confirming everyone can hear me? Yes, fantastic.
My name is Ted Steen.
I run East Shore Alliance FC.
We're a Berkeley nonprofit youth soccer club serving over a thousand youth in and around the community.
I'm here to strongly support the proposed 300 million dollar Go Bond measure specifically to improve Gabe Catoffo fields at Harrison Park, including turfing the fields and upgrading the bathrooms.
This is should be a top priority as it relates to the health and safety of our community.
Right now access to safe and reliable field space is a big challenge not just for the youth but for all recreation goers in Berkeley.
Field is closed six months out of the year and even longer due to the extreme conditions with the fields being in a failing state as stated by the Berkeley Parks and Rec division.
For many families, soccer isn't just a sport.
It's a consistent positive space for physical activity, mentorship, and community.
Turfing Gabe Catoffo would make a huge difference providing safe durable surface that we can use year-round.
Upgrading the bathrooms is also important.
Thanks for your comments.
I'm sorry.
You're out of time.
Next is Mar.
Should be allowed to talk.
There you go.
As we go into this meeting tonight, I want people to remember that our police accountability board is completely collapsed because this city is entirely unwilling to listen to the accountability recommendations they have put out time and time again.
Thank you for your comments folks.
The last speaker is Jim.
Jim, you're the last speaker.
Go ahead Jim.
You should be able to unmute.
Jim.
All right.
We'll go to somebody else.
Let's go to Daniel Brownson.
Hi, we're on just non-agenda public comment right now, right? Yeah, correct.
Okay, so I'm not sure if it has been placed on an agenda yet, but I'm strongly opposed to the idea of re-legalizing the use of tear gas in Berkeley.
I have never seen an instance of tear gas used in any way except on protests.
It's the only thing I've ever seen it used on and that's going to be what it's used on if it's permitted to be used again by the Berkeley PD.
It was banned for a reason and we should trust our prior judgment and keep it banned.
There's no reason to use chemical weapons in Berkeley.
Thank you.
That's it.
Okay, great.
I love the positive engagement.
It's just that is totally encouraged.
It's just the booing that's not so it's totally fine.
If you want to clap for things, I'm very supportive of it.
Wow.
Comedians out there tonight.
All right.
So we're now moving on to our consent calendar and there's an urgency item from Council Member Keserwani.
So I will let her speak to that.
Thank you very much Madam Mayor.
I am putting forward an urgent item.
It is posted online and it's also available in hard copy in the supplemental communications packet in the back first.
I want to thank my co-sponsors Terry Taplin Ben Bartlett and Brent Blackaby.
I'm the council representative for this Park, which is now named Cesar Chavez Park.
So I felt it was important to take urgent action to respond to the shocking investigation published by the New York Times on March 18th about the substantiated accusations of sexual violence committed by Cesar Chavez.
This investigation was published after the deadline to submit items for this meeting had passed.
The reason why we feel this is urgent is because a piece of this item directs the city manager to remove signage bearing Cesar Chavez's name immediately, which is important to me and others in the community that I have heard from.
I also understand there's a desire particularly among members of the commemorative committee who were involved in the 1994 renaming of the Park who wrote a letter to the council today to engage in a process for arriving at a new name.
I had an opportunity to speak to one of the members of this committee former school board director Beatriz Leyva Cutler today.
So I do have some amendments that I would like to propose to this item to ensure that a community discussion can take place and that this item doesn't dictate a particular name.
So I respectfully ask for your vote to accept this item and I would suggest it be placed on action just so that we can spend a few minutes on the proposed amendments because I would want to share screen.
So everyone could see that.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
So yeah, I think it would be helpful to see some of the changes because I know you mentioned that you've gotten some feedback and I also do just want to comment that council member or vice mayor Luna para and council members Humberton O'Keeffe and I also submitted an item to refer to the city manager and Parks and Recreation Commission a community process to rename the park sites and the holiday.
There were a few different places that were mentioned in our item which will come to Council on April 14th, and I'd also like to refer to the city manager outside of any of this to change the the holiday on the website to align with the state name and which is now Farm Workers Day at least for this year.
And also I'd like to refer to the city manager the covering or removal of any signage related to Cesar Chavez.
So so I believe that we need a majority to two-thirds to put this onto our agenda onto an action item.
So I think it's probably easiest just to take the role when you have motion and a second.
Make a motion to your mic is oh, excuse me.
Just make a motion to add the item to add the item to the action calendar.
Yes, second.
Okay seconded by Councilmember Bartlett calling the role to add the item to the action calendar for tonight's agenda Councilmember Casarwani.
Yes, Kaplan.
Yes, Bartlett.
Yes, Tregev.
Aye, O'Keeffe.
Yes, Lackabay.
Yes, Lunapara.
Yes, Humbert.
Yes, and Mayor Ishii.
Yes, items added to the agenda for consideration.
Okay, very good.
Thank you.
All right.
Is there any other are there any comments from my council colleagues on the consent calendar or information items? Starting with Councilmember Tregev.
Thank you so much Madam Mayor.
I would like to first of all thank the Health Housing and Community Service Director Scott Gilman and staff for item five as the representative from the Council to the Mental Health Commission.
I support this important adjustment to ensure that this commission continues to comply with new state law and also helps increase the efficiency and effectiveness of this very important body with an important charge.
I also support item 15 reappointing Dr.
Edward Upton to the Mental Health Commission for a second term.
He has been a wonderful colleague.
Look forward to continuing our work together.
I appreciate the Peace and Justice Commission's leadership and work on items 16 and 17.
On item 19.
I would like to thank Councilmember Taplin for co-leading this very important event of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And we frequently request something from our fellow elected and appointed officials, but we don't always remember to thank them when they do the right thing.
Item 21 is a way of thanking the MTC for their full adoption and implementation of a strong and enforceable transit-oriented community policies with strong tenant protections.
I would like to thank my co-sponsors for being on that item.
I am very happy to offer item 20 along with Councilmember Taplin and with support of Councilmember Humbert.
This is an item that would refer to the city manager regulations controlling and restricting the use of glue traps.
I would like to read into the record and I checked in with the city attorney and the clerk on this.
It's a very narrow amendment based on some feedback we received.
So it would add the language, explore a narrow exemption for options of use for invertebrate pest control and scientific research and potential implications thereof.
And that would be the only change.
I really love that amidst all the tough news and grief that our community is experiencing.
We also find time and space for joy.
And that is why I'm proud to co-sponsor item 23, Make Music Day, and I'm looking forward to partaking in this beautiful event.
Thank you to the author for that item.
Thank you also Councilmember Keefe for sponsoring item 22, the Berkeley High School National Society of Black Engineers Junior Chapter.
As a recovering engineer myself, I recognize the importance of this item and would like to contribute $150 for my D13 account.
And last but not least, I would like to also contribute $150 to item 24, Berkeley Public Schools Fund Spring Luncheon and thank Mayor Ishii and Councilmember Blackaby for their authorship of it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much Councilmember.
Councilmember Blackaby.
Thank you Madam Mayor.
I'll be brief.
Just want to thank you Mayor and also Councilmember Keserwani for your work on the very quick action to rename Cesar Chavez Park.
I know we're considering one tonight.
We'll be considering one in the future.
It's really important that we do this process and respond as quickly as possible and engage our community in the process of what we want to name that facility going forward.
So I appreciate your leadership on this and proud to co-sponsor that.
On item 18, I know we talked about already, but thank you City Auditor for her whistleblower report on the ambulance purchase.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
On item 19, thanks to Councilmember Taplin and Councilmember Traigub for authoring the Holocaust Remembrance Day program item, allowing me to co-sponsor.
I'd like to contribute $500 from my office account towards that event.
On item 22, which is the Berkeley High School National Society of Black Engineers Junior Chapter.
Again, thanks to Councilmember O'Keefe for her work on that.
We'd like to contribute $250 from our office account towards that event.
On item 23, I think many of us were at a really wonderful event earlier today where we celebrated music in Berkeley Public Schools.
I'd like to take any opportunity that we can do to bring music to the community.
So item 23 on Make Music Day, again, we'd like to contribute $250 from our office towards that effort.
And finally, on item 24, I was pleased to be able to bring that forward with the Mayor, the Berkeley Public Schools fund luncheon.
I also wanted to add Councilmember O'Keefe as a co-sponsor to that item and look forward to that event as well.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And also, thank you, Councilman Keserwani, for your fast action representing your district with your park and controversy there.
Good work.
Thank you for being a part of that.
Item 13.
I'm really happy about this.
To the City Manager here, shout out to you, Paul.
My constituents need this badly.
You're funding some people to fix the pavement.
Thank you.
Constant, constant refrain.
19.
Councilmember Chagoo, I want to thank you for doing this.
I want to give you $200 for this event.
It's a wonderful event.
Holocaust Remembrance Event.
We have item 22.
This is a wonderful group.
The Black Engineers, the National Society of Black Engineers Junior Chapter at BUSD.
I'm happy to contribute $200.
I was never good at math, but I've become good at it.
Item 23.
Again, Councilmember O'Keefe, thank you for this.
Make Music Day.
You know, art is so important to you and to all of us and I'm happy to contribute $200 to that as well.
And then lastly, but not least, the Spring Luncheon.
I'd like to give $200 to the BUSD Spring Luncheon.
And thank you, Councilmember Blackabee, for your work and bringing this forward.
Thank you.
Councilmember O'Keefe.
Thank you, Mayor.
Okay, I have six things.
I'll go in numerical order.
Item 19, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
I would like to be recorded as donating $250.
Thank you very much for bringing that.
Item 20.
I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Trager, but I think that's an important issue and just really appreciate you.
Is there a co-sponsor spot or not? I believe there is.
Okay, great.
So can I co-sponsor? You didn't say yes, actually.
Fund me if we don't trap you into sponsoring.
Yes.
Okay.
I did it voluntarily.
Excuse me.
Item 22, my item.
Thank you so much to those who contributed.
I really, it's very personal to me that I teach computer science at Berkeley High School.
The class I teach is an entry-level class that's really mission oriented to bringing in more racial and gender diversity into programming.
So it's really an issue.
It's really close to my heart.
And Mr.
Ben Loss, who is a counselor at Berkeley High, one of my favorite colleagues.
He and I work closely together, but you know, I recruit from NSBE.
He recruits for NSBE from my class and we just, we work together every year.
We both are really supportive of the mission and he's just, he's an absolute gem.
And I really want to take another moment because he was going to be here with some of the students and they're not here tonight.
It's because they just went to their conference, the National NSBE Conference in Baltimore, and I heard they had a great time, but they were supposed to come back on Sunday and I don't know what happened, but something upsetting happened and they had a lot of trouble getting back and they got back last night at 1.30 in the morning, I think.
So they asked to come to another meeting and express their thanks.
But I think he asked me to express a thank you to all of you on his behalf.
So anyway, NSBE is great.
Mr.
Ben Loss is great.
And thank you so much.
Okay, I'm trying to go faster.
The other item that was mine, Make Music Day, I just want to say, it sounds like we will have some commentary on it during the consent calendar comments.
But just so everyone knows, it's an event I'm really excited about.
It's actually a worldwide event, different cities participated, originated in Paris, and it's always on the summer solstice.
And the idea is that there's free music everywhere in the city.
And so if you are a musician, even if you're not a good one, it doesn't matter, amateur, professional, anything, go to the city website.
There's a website that the Downtown Berkeley Association will publicize, or you can look for a venue that can be open.
It's like a matching website, basically.
So if you have a venue, which could even be just a sidewalk in front of your store, or a park, or anything like that, you can list your venues.
And then if you are a musician, you can sign up to perform at that venue.
And so the idea is on the summer solstice, Berkeley will be filled with music, and it's all free.
And it's just a really wonderful event.
They have a huge one in New York City, and we're bringing it to Berkeley, and I'm really, really excited.
So thank you, everyone who contributed.
And I'm almost done.
And item 24, spring luncheon.
Thank you for adding me as a co-sponsor.
Does that mean that I gave it money, or do I have to say that I'm giving it money? I'm giving it $250 in addition to co-sponsoring it, and that's all.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yeah, as to number 19, the Holocaust Remembrance Day program, I'd like to contribute $500 from the D8 discretionary account.
Item number 22, the National Society of Black Engineers want to donate $250.
23, Make Music Day, want to donate $250.
And the spring luncheon, another $250.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Lunapara.
Thank you.
I would like to donate $250 to item 19 and $150 to items 22, 23, and 24.
Thanks to all the authors of those items.
I also would like to pull item 7, a 2845 Woolsey Street Mills Act contract from the consent calendar and move it to action because the Landmark Preservation Commission didn't have a definitive, they didn't vote on this at all.
They got stuck.
So I would like to have more discussion about that item.
I'm happy to join you in pulling that item.
Me too.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to Council Member Taplin.
Thank you.
On items 22, 23, and 24, I would like to thank Council Member Zoe Keefe of Blackabay and relinquish $250 to each item respectively.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
All right.
So I just have a few comments myself.
I really want to, again, appreciate all the grants that our staff pursue to deliver quality services to the community.
Item number four is to conduct public health promotion protection and prevention services for our school-based health services, totaling $465,258 for FY27.
I've been really trying to highlight for folks all the grants that our city staff are applying for.
So you know that not only do we have tax money, but also we're trying to leverage those funds to be able to reach more people and provide more services.
So thank you very much to staff.
For item 15, I'd like to give a special thanks to Edward Optin for his commitment to continue to serve on the Mental Health Commission.
For our commissioners, this is, you know, mostly an unpaid labor of love.
So I really want to thank you all.
Lastly, I'd like to thank the Council Members for their contributions to the 2026 Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Berkeley High National Society of Black Engineers Junior Chapter, Make Music Day, and the Berkeley Public Schools Fund.
It's really a joy to see all of these, you know, community events that we're supporting.
Thank you all.
Okay, so I will now take public comment on consent calendar or information items only.
So come on up.
Oh, oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, Council Member, as you're coming up, Council Member Keserwani is going to give some comments as well.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I pushed my parliamentarian button late, so I didn't want to miss out on making my donations.
First, I just want to clarify for item 16, we've made that clear that that will be referred to the budget process.
Okay, folks.
And so I'd like to be recorded as donating $250 for Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as $100 for the National Society of Black Engineers Junior Chapter, $100 for Make Music Day, and $100 for the Berkeley Public Schools Fund luncheon.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, come on up.
This is for public comment for consent and information items only.
Folks, please.
We want to make sure we're hearing all of our public comment.
If you're having a conversation, especially here in the front row, Alana, if you could please just take your conversations outside, I would really appreciate it because I want to be able to hear everyone's comments.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
I want to, I want to appreciate Edward Opton for continuing to serve on the Mental Health Commission.
That is a very thankless job because there's not enough support for that commission.
We need y'all to get involved in the state of mental health in Berkeley.
You want to reduce the police budget? Well, guess what? If we can deal compassionately with people with mental health disabilities and going through mental health crisis, you'll save a ton of money and we won't have overpriced cops responding to mental health emergencies.
And of course, the mayor knows my passion for wheelchair accessible vehicles because the special care unit spent over a year outfitting in great detail two vehicles at a huge expense.
Nobody in the city.
Can somebody please tell me where they are? Where's the whistleblower? Where are those? They are vital for our city.
Can you tell me Mr.
City Manager? Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I want to speak to item number 17 and this is from the Peace and Justice Commission and this reaffirms the city of Berkeley's commitment to free speech and assembly in opposition to the detainment and deportation of immigrants without due process and it goes on and on in the text of this of this item about what this time is and what it means.
Are you talking about something on consent calendar item 17 Peace and Justice Commission? So, you know, it's it talks about our commitment for to free speech and how we have to reaffirm that commitment right now because of things that are happening right now.
And what I would like to know is has this Commission commented on any other very pertinent items on tonight's calendar like one that would completely up end what is in this text? What would be doing what we'd be doing here because we have an item later on that is terrible for free speech.
What would uphold deportation and I don't see their comments on this item, but I see supplementals from six of you that do the opposite.
Hi, my name is Matthew Mendez trick tree.
I just wanted to say I'm really glad for Berkeley City Council for item number 20.
Sorry for item number 20 to consider a ban on glue traps.
Hopefully will become legislation before too long, especially thank you for council members.
Trig of taplin and Humbert for introducing it and O'Keefe joining as well.
Berkeley has historically led the way on a lot of issues and I hope can lead on care for animals and include traps as an important part of continuing that legacy.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
Good evening, Madam Mayor and the City Council members.
My name is Madivala Anderson and I'm here to support item number 20 the glue trap ban for anyone who isn't familiar with glue traps.
They are a cruel and sadistic method of catching and killing animals.

Segment 3

Subjecting them to a slow and excruciating death.
After getting stuck to the glue, songbirds, squirrels, lizards, mice, and other small animals often suffer for more than 24 hours before dying from blood loss, dehydration, or starvation.
Some trapped animals even chew off their own limbs in a desperate attempt to escape and others suffocate to death after their nostrils and mouths become glue shut.
New traps have already been banned in several other cities in California.
It's time to ban in Berkeley.
Thank you for considering the ban.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Come on up.
Folks, I know a lot of people are standing.
I'm not sure if you're here for a comment, but go ahead and find a seat.
There are some more seats around.
And folks, please make room for everyone so that people can sit down.
Good evening, Council.
My name is Jacob Shaw.
I live here in Berkeley, a walking distance from here, which is very nice, coming from Southern California where I previously lived and had to drive everywhere and hate it.
I live in Berkeley and also work for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
And one of the things I do there is research wildlife control products like glue traps.
And as the previous speaker mentioned, these traps are already banned in England, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales.
They've been banned in three cities in California, which is what I'm used to saying, but it's actually four after today because the city of Ventura just adopted their second reading of an ordinance today.
This is just a very simple, easy thing that the Council can do to reduce some of the suffering that happens in the world.
There's so much of it, and a lot of it feels like it's out of our control, but this is just one small thing we can do to make the world a slightly kinder, more compassionate place for the animals who we get to share this, at times, awesome world with.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to take a minute from my husband.
I have two minutes.
Item number 14, this is like millions and millions of dollars.
I couldn't count.
I didn't have a calculator, but I got to like $20 million, and this is on consent for consultants.
When you're facing a deficit, what the heck is everybody else doing that's supposed to be working for the city of Berkeley when you have this much in consultants? I don't know.
I don't think we have a budget for this.
I don't think we have a budget for this.
I think that's kind of ridiculous.
As stated previously, today is 899 days of the genocide, and I hope you remember the genocide Holocaust that is occurring currently.
The drones continue.
The air strikes continue.
They stated that since the so-called ceasefire, over 677 Palestinians have been killed, 1,800-plus injured.
And so many people who are already in a catastrophic situation, no water, no food, starving, were affected by the sandstorms.
The air was orange in front of them.
That's what you saw if you looked outside.
So have some compassion.
You talked about having compassion in your Holocaust remembrance, but it doesn't seem like, you know, that was kind of a hypocritical thing to say because you were saying all these words, but you don't apply it to Gaza.
So, you know, you're just being really pathetic and sad.
And, you know, millions of dollars shouldn't be on the consent calendar.
Free Palestine, free Palestine, free yourselves from Zionism and AIPAC.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaking on behalf of Item 16, Grace Marazara and I have been authorized by the Peace and Justice Commission to speak on behalf of this issue.
The last time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked was during World War II, where Japanese, Italians, and German persons were placed in internment camps.
And this educational event is important.
We have reached out to the mayor's office so that perhaps where they're becoming lost in the budget process, an item can come before council where there would be contributions from council members' accounts as we develop this through a community organization.
I want to reference the Blue Trips item before Grace speaks, which is just, is this going to be another feel-good item that isn't enforced, such as the elevator ordinance, the no smoking ordinance near businesses, and the source of income ordinance, et cetera.
Thanks, Carol.
Good evening, everybody.
I want to first thank you all for putting this on the consent calendar.
I have to always speak personally if it's an item that speaks to about the Japanese-American experience in my own family.
I had a relative arrested on December 7th, disappeared for weeks, almost a month until we found him.
I mean, I wasn't then, but my family found him and subsequently died without seeing his children afterwards.
So just to tell you that actually I want to be very practical.
I want to say that for the Peace and Justice Commission, we had a panel, and it was a panel of experts talk about the Alien Enemies Act.
So I hope when you consider this, you will consider having a panel because I think the interaction and discussion and the learning deeply about how that affected us then and how it is, it really legitimizes.
Thanks, Grace.
Bye.
Thank you.
Okay, my name is Jeanette McNeil, and I'm authorized to speak on behalf of the Peace and Justice Commission on Item 17, the free speech and right to protest.
We wrote this recommendation about a year ago, and I will just say now more than ever, we must protect our rights to speech and to protest.
And yes, peace and justice is strongly speaking out on FLOC as well as the rollback of police accountability and tactics.
And we passed resolutions on all three of these issues last week.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening again, Madam Mayor and the council members.
Since you are making the – I'm all for Item 1, you are making the new zoning density rules, but I want to ask, what's the point if you're actively enabling existing density FLOC? And I report this multiple times, and the city just drowned me with procedure suppression without any response.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are you all in line to speak? There are a lot of folks standing in line.
Sorry, there's a sign actually that says no standing alongside this wall, and partially it's because it's hard for me to keep track of who's actually speaking or not.
There are seats up here.
I know there's some seats sprinkled throughout.
If you've got a seat next to you, can you raise your hand? Thank you.
Andrea, is that a seat next to you too? I don't know.
She's got a net.
Okay.
I just want to let folks sit.
I think there are seats spread throughout.
Thank you for those of you who are raising your hands.
Okay, go ahead.
Hi there.
Hi there.
I just wanted to appreciate the city auditor's report, and on that topic of auditing, I'm wondering who audits the police reports? Because I have data here, and it was contested, but this was data that was taken from the Transparency Hub that our police department provides that data.
Sorry.
This is about the auditor's report as an honor consent calendar.
You said about information items.
Okay.
Go ahead.
So racial profiling continues in Berkeley.
I'd like 10 seconds back or something.
Please let her finish.
Thank you.
Give her the time to speak.
You need to stop talking so that she can speak.
Okay.
All right.
You've got another minute.
There you go.
Give me two minutes.
A minute plus your additional 10 seconds.
I've got three minutes.
Another minute.
It's important.
There you go.
This was done by a man named Tarek Shaw, who will be here later, who is with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a serious data analyst who has a program that runs and takes the data from the Transparency Hub.
I know y'all don't want to hear this, Kastorwani and others, but the reality is that racial profiling is alive and well in Berkeley in 2025.
In fact, not only is racial profiling alive and well, if you are a black person, you are six times more likely than a white person to get stopped while driving.
You are nine times more likely to be stopped on foot if you're black.
And some of these folks on the dais were here in February 2021 when you all directed our police department to eliminate low-level offenses.
You said, do not do this anymore, people.
Some of y'all were on the council then.
Well, guess what? They're still doing it.
OK? They continue to make low-level stops.
But who do you think they target? Y'all know.
Black people.
OK? Because we know in 2025 there were 489 equipment violations.
489.
That's more than one per day.
45 seat belt violations.
And how did this affect black people? Black people were stopped for equipment violations 11 times more than expected from their representation in the population.
Black people were pulled over for seat belt violation 10 times more than expected from their representation in the population.
In short, the BPD stop data demonstrates very strong statistically significant evidence of racial profiling.
And so whatever they say about the veil of darkness in the BPD report, who's auditing their numbers? Is the police accountability board? Does the police accountability board, are they even checking it? Is anyone besides Arlo telling you what this data is? So I really want to encourage you.
We need the auditor to audit that because these numbers are real and we've got to stop.
Let's focus on stopping racial profiling.
We don't need to expand surveillance here.
We need to stop racial profiling.
Are there any more comments online for the consent calendar or information items only? Do you have a comment for consent calendar or information items only? Are we counting item 27 as an information item? Yes, I just have to scroll down to where 27 is.
The settlement? The settlement agreement, yes.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
My name is Nathan Mizell.
I'll be brief.
I'll be talking about FLOC shortly here.
I just want to talk about the settlement.
This is the case where I sued the city of Berkeley for violating the Brown Act.
And we won.
We won the case because sadly this city, and I want to acknowledge it was a different mayor at the time, sometimes it breaks the law.
Sometimes the folks we contract with break the law.
And sometimes we have to reflect on the fact that the public are the bosses of the people in this city.
Their voice is the voice we are responsible to.
Not our personal aspirations, not this and that, not our misguided reading of law, but the people.
And I think they're going to remind you of that throughout public comment tonight.
But again, I want to thank our attorney, Jonathan Weisglass.
I want to thank those.
I want to thank all the people who were part of the lawsuit.
And I'm glad we won.
Thank you.
So now it's time if you're on the Zoom.
If you're on the Zoom, you want to talk to an item that is on the consent calendar.
We'll go ahead and raise your hand.
We currently have 10 hands raised.
The first speaker is Mar.
Regarding item 16 about the aliens and enemies act and item 17 about free speech.
And we'll get into this later, of course, with the flock discussion.
I am just once again pointing out the hypocrisy of the Berkeley City Council to talk about one thing and then act in a totally oppositional way when it comes to our own city.
We want to talk about the history and how we feel about defending people's right to speak.
We want to talk about the history and how we feel about defending people's right to speak.
But then you don't actually listen to what we're saying when we speak.
That's, yeah, I'll talk more later.
Thank you.
Next is Seth Newman.
Hi there.
I'm here to express my support and gratitude for Councilmember Blackaby for initiating consent item 24 on behalf of the Berkeley Public Schools Fund.
Additional thanks to the mayor and the entire council for jumping in with their support.
I'll be brief.
The Berkeley Public Schools Fund is the singular nonprofit that champions equitable public education for all 19 schools across Berkeley from preschool to adult school.
This spring, we're bringing back the Spring Luncheon, which is a beloved Berkeley tradition that unites public education advocates from all across the city, including elected officials, educators, families, local businesses, and volunteers.
The event also raises vital funds to support Berkeley schools and Berkeley students and celebrates educators and community members who help ensure that Berkeley public schools work well for all of our students.
The Spring Luncheon is going to be on Friday, May 8th at CL Creative Space in West Berkeley, and information about ticket sales and sponsorships can be found on our website.
We really appreciate the city's support of our public schools, and we hope to see you all there.
Thanks so much.
Next is Allison.
Hi.
Yes, thank you.
Good evening, and thank you for this opportunity.
I'm commenting on item number 20, banning the sale and use of glue traps.
My name is Allison Hermans.
I have worked in wildlife rehabilitation and wildlife advocacy for the past 23 years, and in the wildlife hospital, without a doubt, the most heartbreaking cases we see are those involving glue traps.
As has already been stated, a glue trap doesn't immediately kill the animal.
Instead, the trapped animal must die slowly of dehydration, stress, starvation, and exposure.
Many of the animals brought to wildlife hospitals are actually the intended targets, rats and mice.
Most people, after they see the extreme stress and suffering a glue-trapped animal undergoes, are horrified, and they rush the animal to a wildlife hospital.
But glue traps are indiscriminate killers capturing small animals of all kinds, including lizards, snakes, baby opossums, other baby animals, and a shocking number of songbirds.
No animal should ever have to suffer the way a glue-trapped animal does.
I urge you to strongly vote in support.
Thanks so much.
Next is Erin Dean.
Good evening, council.
Thank you for taking my comment and speaking on item 20 in support of the referral to ban glue traps.
Thank you to council members Trageb and Taplin, and the co-authors Humbert and O'Keefe, and to the 146 organizations who signed on to this very important matter, and to all the people behind the scenes who worked on it.
As you've heard already, glue traps are just absolutely humane, suffering in all kinds of wildlife or impacted lizards and songbirds.
And I wanted to say thank you for the reference in the item about the significant declines in birds and songbirds, that we've lost one-third of all birds, that's 3 billion birds, since the 70s, and especially this quote that we are preserving biodiversity, including the city's wildlife.
Thank you for acknowledging the value of wildlife in our cities.
Personally, I've seen the photographs from these wildlife rehabilitation centers, and it is absolutely heartbreaking.
So please, thank you for this item.
And one request I have.
Sorry, your time is up, but thank you.
Feel free to write us if you have more comments.
Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 211.
Hi.
Again, the Holocaust, consent item 19, 6 million innocent Jewish people, men, women, and children were murdered by Hitler.
And the biggest genocide in history, actually, most people don't know what happened.
It happened in the 13th century by the Army of Kingdom.
He murdered 60 million people across the planet.
60 million.
Maybe more.
Eventually, he had conquered all the way to northern Europe and Asia.
He was defeated in the Battle of Enceladus in the year 1260 A.D.
by Egypt.
Egypt has a lot of many thanks from us to Egypt.
The last thing, Netanyahu is a big criminal.
He was about to go to prison.
And he used the Abishteen file to scare Trump to do the genocide happening now in Iran.
Thank you for your comment.
Next is Kelly Hammergren.
Okay, I'll talk fast.
So on 13, I'm glad that was withdrawn, but I hope that since this is FF funds, that safe streets will meet and actually be able to see the projects before they go forward.
On 14, 34 contracts really is too many to be on consent.
On number 16 from the Peace and Justice on the Alien Enemies Act, I hope this doesn't mean that it's going to get dumped in the budget committee.
I hope that we actually go through with that.
On number 20, this is really just needs to be a high priority item.
So I hope that this doesn't get pushed to the bottom of things to do and that we get it implemented as soon as possible.
And considering what's on the rest of the agenda for tonight, I'm hoping that all of you will reaffirm.
Thanks, Kelly.
Thanks for your comments.
Next is a caller with a number ending in 405.
Press star six to unmute.
Caller phone number ending in 405.
Okay, well, on to the next.
We have Della Luna.
Yes, thanks.
First, I would like to say about item 20 with the glue traps.
I wish that this item came with recommendations for what people should be using.
I don't think it addresses why people buy glue traps because they want something that can work.
And that is, so I just feel like without providing an alternative, it's just kind of an empty item and I would have liked it to be.
Also, I know vector control exists, but I don't really see a lot of activity with the rodents.
And the city outside of the lepto outbreak, so I just wish there was more proactive times instead of just banning glue traps.
And then I wanted to speak also about the auditor's report.
I'm super grateful that this work is happening and we need to see more of this from the auditor and more robustness.
But this is evidence that what's happening in the city and what's happening at the city council doesn't always drive.
And if you're not going through and double checking and doing due diligence, then there's often instances where negligence can come about where things are happening where you are not aware.
So, thank you.
Last speaker is M.
Jervis, downtown Berkeley.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Hi.
Yeah.
Matthew Jervis from the downtown Berkeley Association.
I'm calling in to speak on item 23 make music day.
Make music day Berkeley.
Very excited to have this in our city.
And I wanted and I also appreciate the council support on this and thank you everyone who's been able to donate some money to this super fun event, making Berkeley a stage for the afternoon of June 21st.
Anyone who would like to host or music performance or be a performer sign in on online make music dot org backslash Berkeley.
And if you have any questions, contact me at info at downtown Berkeley dot com.
And I'd also like to thank visit Berkeley for their partnership in this.
We're going to have a lot of fun downtown Berkeley is administering the registration process online and we're looking forward to seeing a bunch of folks out on the streets, making music.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
And thanks for coming back to give your have another speaker.
We have McKay Freeman.
Hi, you should be able to unmute.
Thank you.
Street.
I'm not safe.
It's too much money that the consent calendar and does not take account the safety.
We have your access to the curve.
And we find you for those of you in five, 10 years.
You may see what we fight for.
And I hope what you look for.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Collar ending in four or five still has their hand raised, I guess.
Caller ending in four zero five, you should be able to unmute.
Press star six on your phone.
No.
All right, that's it.
No more speakers online.
Okay, thank you very much.
Is there.
Oh, Councilmember Chaplin.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
On I'm 19, the Holocaust from first day program.
I would like to thank my co author comes for a group and my co sponsors Mary, she encountered black could be, as well as all my colleagues for their support.
As I mentioned, this April marks the city's 23rd observance and I encourage all to attend and with that I move adoption the consent calendar.
Second.
If there's no opposition to approving the consent calendar.
And we will approve it.
Okay, consent calendars approved.
Thank you very much.
Okay, so just to recap for folks, we've just finished the consent calendar.
We are now moving on to the action calendar.
We had a couple of things move down to the, the action calendar.
One is Councilmember customer one is urgent item.
The Cesar Chavez renaming item, and then also item number seven, which was on the consent calendar.
That's the mills act contract for 2845 Woolsey streets.
We have two other items, which are adopting resolution, authorizing the temporary employment.
A retired annuitant Kathy Lee is interim director of police accountability and then item number 26, which is the public safety technology item.
So, I just want to give you all an accounting of where we're at.
And then I really would really like to make it through these top three items before we take a break.
I know it's already 750 and it kind of depends on how much public comment we get on each of them.
So, I'm just saying that out loud so you all know what to expect.
We have a number of items to cover still.
So, okay.
So, what I'd like to do is start with the Cesar Chavez item.
I'm Councilmember customer money.
I know you've got some changes that you've made to it that you wanted to share with us.
So, I'm going to start with there and let you present.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
Would you like us to do the mills act contract item first? Okay, let's do the mills act contract item first.
That's the 2845 Woolsey street previously item number seven on the consent calendar.
Since you pulled it, Councilmember, Vice Mayor Luna Par, would you like to speak to this item? Yes, I think we should continue this item to the next regular meeting.
So, I move to continue this item to the next regular meeting.
I second.
And Mark, let's just take the, actually, if there's no opposition, I'm just going to have us continue that.
Do you have a question? Does anyone know whether the landmarks failed to act on it? The landmarks commission heard it.
They took a vote and the vote failed.
A vote to approve it, the vote failed and it came to Council.
Okay, I see.
So, actually, also clarifying.
So, if we continue it, will they have time to review it again? Or what's your hope? So, I understand.
My understanding, they chose not to move forward with it because the majority did not think that it was worthy of a Mills Act.
I think we should just continue this discussion.
Go ahead and put your mic on so we can hear you.
I'm just curious if they didn't.
How did it reach us? Because they took no action.
So, yeah, it just comes to us for us to decide.
I see.
Thank you.
Okay, so I'm fine with continuing it.
I'm going to see if there's any opposition to continuing it until the next meeting.
Sorry, were you saying something? Yeah, we'll take public comment on it.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay.
I just want to get a sense of where everyone's at.
Okay, so is there any public comment for item number seven, the Mills Act contract for 2845 Woolsey Street? Who were the two people that took it off consent besides Luna Parra? There was three.
We don't typically respond to public comment, so go ahead and give your comment on it.
Well, that's what needs to happen.
Are you changing the rules? I mean, you should just be transparent because you mumble and nobody can hear.
There were three council members that removed that item onto action.
Go ahead.
Come on up.
Hey there.
I'm the owner.
I'm the owner.
It wasn't exactly that's not exactly what happened at Landmarks.
A bunch of people actually decided not to vote at all.
And that's why it ended up here.
So there actually was quorum.
And then a bunch of people said, oh, I don't want to touch this.
So it got kicked up to you all.
So to the extent that there's a ability to have this conversation before, you know, all this stuff, there's some deadlines have to be hit.
That's great.
But just want to make sure that that cadence is kept and that the kind of the full totality of understanding, like.

Segment 4

How we got here, what happened, and the changes that have happened over the course of this.
Like, the law effectively was X, but the change that happened was Y.
And I just want to make sure that, like, we can get through this.
I'm just, you know, I'm trying to follow the steps, and it feels like the steps keep changing.
So if the steps keep changing, then, like, we should make some other amendments, but that's all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your public comment.
And certainly, yeah, if there's some confusion about what next steps are, we definitely can check back in and make sure that it's clear, and can update you on when this would be heard next, because it would be heard at the next City Council meeting.
Yeah.
April 14th.
April 14th, yes, because this is right before our spring recess, unfortunately.
But feel free, if you have other comments or you want to talk more, feel free to reach out to my office.
Thank you.
Is there any other public comment online for this item? This is public comment only for item 7, Milzak contract 2845 Woolsey Street.
There are 2 hands raised.
The first is Jeff Baker.
Hello.
Thank you very much for pulling this into the action items for more debate.
I do think it makes good sense to continue this, since there doesn't seem to be a lot of clarity on why this is on the council agenda.
I believe if you gathered up the 6 members of the commission who did not vote to approve this.
And ask them what they thought happened, they would say that they thought they killed the item.
So, it was very surprising to me when it appeared on the council agenda.
Certainly, it is a stretch to say that if the commission doesn't make findings specifically to deny the contract, then it just arrives at council that really defies the meaning of consent and approval of the commission, which is what the local ordinance says.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate your comment.
Actually, the other person lowered their hand, so that that's it for public.
Okay, very good.
Then we can move on to the Cesar Chavez items.
Madam Mayor.
I just have a question for.
I just have a question for staff.
Is there.
Is there any trigger like, is there an exploration or anything we need to worry about? If we continue it to April 14th.
Council members, this is Jordan client director of planning development.
Sorry, I'm not in the room with you.
For the contract to take effect during the.
2027 28 fiscal year, we would need to.
Take action on it by the end of the calendar year.
So April should be fine.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, so there didn't appear to be any opposition, but just confirming there's no opposition to moving this to our next meeting.
Okay, we will move that to our next meeting then and move on to the Cesar Chavez item.
Thank you, Madam Mayor for the change of the changing of the order so I could bring this on screen.
So, just to keep things simple, we've just modified the recommendation.
First, I want to acknowledge that I've added the co sponsors, Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett and Brent Blackaby.
And with further discussion with community leaders, I wanted to strike the.
The renaming and simply refer this to the parks, recreation and waterfront commission.
According to the council rules of procedure, appendix a, the parks commission is granted this authority to rename parks.
So we do need to do this referral.
And what we did was strike the certainty about naming it for Dolores Huerta and simply saying that we want to initiate a community process, which should incorporate feedback specifically from the commemorative committee that we heard from today.
This was the committee that initiated the first renaming process of the park in 1994, as well as input from other community members and stakeholders.
And what I did here is I just said that we recommend that Dolores Huerta be among the options considered for renaming.
And then in conversation with the city manager, we have added removing or covering signage bearing the name Cesar Chavez from park property as soon as practicable and just making it clear.
We want to leave intact signage related to directions and park rules.
So those are the changes.
So we will now take council questions, which I have a couple if no one else has questions.
Okay, so I'm curious, since we put forward an item that addresses more than just the park, it addresses anything bearing Cesar Chavez's name, including the site that's within the park.
I'm wondering then if that would move forward just without the park, essentially.
I'm not sure.
I'm not aware of any other item.
This is the item before us tonight.
So I can only speak to this item.
So you're asking about some other..
I'm asking about an item that was submitted on Monday that addressed a process for changing everything with Cesar Chavez's name.
And so I'm curious if this would just essentially make the part about the park specifically moot.
We could remove that part.
I just want to understand how to move forward practically.
I'm not sure I understand your question.
I mean, are you wanting to add something to this item to the effect that other Cesar Chavez names get removed? For example, on the website, or are you saying..
That might be simpler to do, to include that in here.
I guess I'm just trying to figure out practically how it looks.
Yeah, okay.
So I'll just ask to make a friendly amendment then to include the items that we included within our item that we submitted on Monday, which I don't have that list in front of me.
You should probably state out what those are, yeah.
And I think this is just, Madam Mayor, respectfully, I just I'm not aware of your item, you know, because I know we had different brown acts, and so I don't know what it was requesting.
I don't think that item has been made public as far as I know.
Okay, right.
Sorry, I'm trying to get this..
The other items on here.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry, I just want to make sure my staff knows I'm trying.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So that would be the items that were listed on here were Cesar Chavez Park, Cesar Chavez Day, which is March 30th or 31st.
And then Chavez Huerta Tribute Site and Solar Calendar.
Cesar Chavez Dolores Huerta Commemorative Period.
And Cesar Chavez Park Perimeter Trail Project.
So, I appreciate that.
I think the issue is on a lot of these, you know, the Parks Commission is tasked with renaming parks.
Some of those names are a little different.
And so I would suggest that maybe we should keep them separate.
Because I think we need to figure out what kind of process is put in place for changing these other things that are not actually the name of a park, right? That's fine.
So, I don't think that this item is equipped to handle that.
And I do appreciate how comprehensive your list is.
So, I would just for simplicity's sake, because I know we have a heavy night tonight in terms of other items and everyone is here for the following item.
Maybe just keep this one simple.
That's fine.
Get the park process going and the removal going.
And then look at everything else, which I think we do need to put more time into how, you know, which community group or commission would look at that.
If that makes sense.
Yes, that's fine.
Okay.
Okay.
That's why I was asking.
Okay.
So, with that, I will see.
Sorry.
We're going to say something more.
No.
Okay.
With that, I will see if there's any public comments on the item.
Seeing no public comment in person.
Is there any public comment online? There's two hands raised.
This is for public comment on the urgent item regarding renaming Cesar Chavez Park.
The first hand raised is Lisa Teague.
Go ahead, Lisa.
You should be able to.
Lisa.
You're unmuted.
Sorry.
Are you saying you know, Lisa, it shows that you've unmuted.
You should be able to provide comments.
Lisa, are you there to give public comment? All right, we'll come back to Lisa.
I just wanted to note for the record that I'm actually witnessing you all, like, move swiftly.
This happened, I believe, last week, Wednesday or Thursday.
And here, four or five days later, you've already got something on the agenda and you're passing it.
So, this is evidence that you all actually can move quickly.
Thank you.
All right.
Anyone else? The other person lowered their hand.
So, that's it.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Any council comment on this item? I can move the item as amended.
Second.
Okay.
Moved and seconded.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, no comments.
We put together this comprehensive list in having our conversations with the community.
We went and visited the Berkeley Historical Society.
They had an exhibit on Latinos in Berkeley throughout our history, which was really incredible.
So, I'm sorry if you missed it.
Hopefully, they'll have it again.
But in those conversations, they expressed extreme feelings of being very upset at finding news out about these allegations about Cesar Chavez.
So, I do think it's important.
I know we have a long meeting tonight, but I think it's important that we address that, that that was incredibly disturbing to a lot of folks.
And that they wanted time to kind of figure out how they were feeling, what process would be good to change the names, and to give the community time to address this in a way that they felt comfortable doing so.
So, I just wanted to explain, you know, why we also included other items as well in our item.
And I'm looking forward to that item coming forward later.
So, thank you very much.
That's all I wanted to say about it.
Yeah.
And Madam Mayor, I do want to thank you.
And I do appreciate how comprehensive that list is.
I hadn't seen it.
And we do need to make sure we are, you know, look at everything and have the community process.
So, I feel very good about not dictating a name right now and making sure that we hear from the commemorative committee as well as other stakeholders and arrive at a new name, you know, as a community.
So, thank you very much.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay.
And with that, I will see if there's any opposition to approving this item.
Okay.
Council Member O'Keefe will be noted as absent.
Okay.
Thank you.
Council Member, is there any opposition? Okay.
To approving this item? Okay, great.
So, we will approve this item as well.
Thank you very much, Council Member, and to those who are co-sponsoring.
Okay.
So, now we have item number 25, which is adopt a resolution authorizing temporary employee of retired annuitant Kathy Lee as interim director of police accountability.
Actually, I know Jose is here.
Did you want to say anything? So, I will.
Yes.
Okay.
So, I have some remarks to read on behalf of Kathy.
She says, Honorable Mayor Ishii and members of the City Council, I first want to thank you for deciding to fill the director of police accountability position temporarily while you search for a permanent director.
With that decision, you have signaled to this community the importance of ensuring that the vital work of ODPA and the police accountability board continue.
Second, I thank you for putting your trust in me to be the interim DPA.
You have my word that I will serve with all due gravity and integrity.
A few friends and colleagues, upon learning of my plan to un-retire, have wondered whether congratulations are in order.
And I have to confess that my immediate reaction upon being asked to consider back was a hard no.
But the more I thought about it and about my tenure as the police review commissioner, commission officer, and then as the interim director of police accountability, the more I realized how strongly I felt about making sure that meaningful civilian oversight of our police department lives on.
I had become a true believer in the value of community members helping keep our police accountable and ensuring that police policies, practices, and procedures reflect this community's values.
Civilian oversight has a long history in the city of Berkeley, starting in 1973 with the voter adopted ordinance creating the police review commission.
I believe that this early institutionalization of police accountability in Berkeley has resulted in a police department that has been relatively responsive to the community's needs and concerns and one that is committed to working with our diverse population.
As policing methods, patterns of crime, and the makeup and needs of our residents change over time, continued oversight is needed to ensure that our police remain accountable to the public.
Since 1973, more jurisdictions have adopted some form of civilian oversight of their police departments.
Berkeley, at some point, was no longer the leader but lagged behind other agencies in its powers and independence.
Thus, the charter amendment creating the ODPA and PAB in 2020 was proposed, and its easy passage showed that a huge majority of Berkeley voters favored a more robust system of police oversight.
The framework for an independent body no longer under the city manager's office is in place, but as we've seen it, the devil is in the details.
Just as the police department wants effective tools to do its work, the ODPA and the PAB need effective tools to perform meaningful oversight.
It's more than a little sad to me that permanent regulations for handling complaints against officers are still not in place, although I understand we are close.
I read with great dismay about the resignation of two PAB members, longtime PRC commissioners with whom I had worked, due to their frustration with how PAB and ODPA did not seem to have more real powers than under the old structure.
And I find no joy in the circumstances resulting in my appointment today.
I guess I love a challenge, and I confess to being an eternal optimist, although that outlook is being sorely tested by the current president.
I intend to work collaboratively with all stakeholders while representing the voices of the community as we navigate our work to find common ground on so many significant issues, including the use of emerging new technologies and revisiting the use of forced policy.
I look forward to reestablishing relationships with those whom I have worked previously, and I'm eager to forge new relationships, especially with the members of the Police Accountability Board and with the staff of the ODPA.
Speaking of whom, I want to thank Jose Murillo for holding everything together as acting director and to Chair Josh Cayetano and the other three PAB members for their heavy lifting during this period of transition.
I regret the timing of my appointment coincides with a long planned trip out of the country.
However, I look forward to seeing all of you in the near future.
Last but not least, I understand that some of you without current appointees to the PAB have candidates in the pipeline.
For those of you who do not, I respectfully urge you to make your appointment a priority.
Again, my thanks.
Kathy Lee.
Okay.
Well, okay.
So I do also.
Yeah.
We can clap for that.
Yeah.
I want to say that I have had numerous conversations now with Kathy, that she has been incredibly supportive, very excited to get to work, has already reached out to both Chair Cayetano and Jose and other staff, has actually gone in person, that she continues her relationship with folks who are in the police accountability sphere and attends conferences.
So I have a lot of confidence in her ability.
And just her letter, I think, really shows that she has been following what's going on, really understands these issues and cares a lot about it.
So I am very excited to have her on board.
And so are there any questions from folks? I do want to mention, as we have the opportunity, that we already have formed a subcommittee with Vice Mayor Linapara and Council Member Humbert in order to find a permanent replacement for the PAB.
And we've already had, sorry, for the ODPA, Director of Police Accountability, and we've already had our first meeting.
And I'm very excited about that process moving forward.
So, Kathy, don't worry.
We are going to find a permanent replacement.
I know that's something she's eager for us to do.
So, okay, as long as there are no questions, is there any public comment on this item? Yes.
Kit, come on up.
I had some occasion to work with Kathy Lee when she was in the role, both as the Director of Police, the Interim Director of Police Accountability, and before that with the Police Review Board, I think that's what it's called.
And she is really very good.
I am very happy that she's accepted.
I'm very happy that you appointed her.
Thank you for reading that letter.
I hope we all sort of reread that letter several times.
There's a lot in there.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kit.
Other public comment on this item? Hi, folks.
Nathan Mizell.
I served on the PRC and PAB with Kathy Lee.
There is no finer public servant than Kathy Lee.
The issues with police accountability in the city do not emerge from her or her service or her time as interim.
They emerge from this council's refusal to pay attention to police oversight.
It emerges from the city attorney's office refusal to enforce what the voters of this city passed into law in 2020.
It emerges from a city manager who has seemingly fallen asleep at the wheel as a police chief overwrites our city's use of force policy that was passed by this council completely unlawfully.
So Kathy is a great public servant.
I'm thankful she's here as interim.
Y'all fired the last director as he tried to defend our charter.
Let's hope you find someone decent to do the job, and we'll be paying attention on who you decide to select.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, good evening.
My name is George Perez-Velez, longtime oversight practitioner at the City of Berkeley.
I'm here actually on behalf of NACO, the National Association of Civil and Oversight Law Enforcement.
I'm the vice president of the organization to say thank you very much for your thorough and fast appointment of Kathy Lee.
We hold her in high respect.
She is an individual with high integrity, and her work is second to none.
So we congratulate you for this move, for her appointment.
We're confident that she will reach out to NACO for whatever work she needs and other support.
We're here to support the council as well.
On a side note, I would say that as you look at the next candidate, and I said to some council members, please do your search for someone who works in the state of California.
I think somebody who is from California will understand the dynamics of oversight in California as well as stakeholders.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, George.
Good advice.
Hi.
Thank you.
I appreciate everything that can be done to uphold police accountability, and I want to note the 85 percent mandate for police accountability, independent police accountability in the city.
And we're seeing a trend of center-right city councils undermining such independent oversight in cities in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco and Oakland.
And we're seeing that pattern here with the two recent resignations of two members of this police accountability board.
In the name of really supporting this board, for the four members left on the nine-person board, were they given enough time to evaluate a very important item that's coming up next on today's agenda? And what did they say? Because I saw some supplementals from some of you, but I didn't say what the police accountability board had to say about something that is horrible for sanctuary city policy and law right now.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't have a lot to say about the appointment, but I do have some historic memory of meeting Bobby Seale in a program where, before we had the police accountability board passed, he was trying to make comments and make us aware of why it would fail.
And one of the reasons that he gave was that there is no power in it, and that the city council and different city authorities will strip it of its ability to do anything under the way that it's constructed, which doesn't give it any power.
And now I see it taking place.
And Chip Moore was removed when he was trying to do a good job.
And as we see, the flock thing went through, and it caused disintegration of whatever police accountability board we had.
And now we're trying to piece it back together.
So there's a lot of mismatch and disconnect with the city and what the police accountability board should be and the rights that it should have.
Thank you.
I do believe I have another minute.
I also am a former police review commissioner.
I quit that body because it was so unable to hold the police accountable.
I quit in great frustration.
Kathy Lee always, she has lots of integrity.
She's a wonderful person.
She's a wonderful person.
She's a wonderful person.
And I say that because we jumped out of the pan and into the fire because the police association mangled the revisions.
We were trying to make the PRC stronger.
And two years of meet and confer.
Two years.
So that they could write what they wanted.
Against the formation of the PAB, because they knew how weak and declawed and powerless it was.
This is a crisis in our city.
If you don't believe us about racial disparities, look at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Their police reporting, their RIPPA data is saying that 8.9% of police stops in the city of Berkeley were of black people who were let go.
There was no basis for the stop.
There's no control in the police.
And to be honest, to sit here and watch you guys compliment them, it looks like a Trumpian cabinet meeting.
Absolutely uncritical.
Absolutely unquestioning of the data that you are spoon-fed.
There is no outside auditor.
There's no outside agency.
So Kathy Lee may succeed.
If she is allowed to.
If she is given independent counsel.
If she is given the opportunity.
If she is given the support and the funding.
But right now, the PAB is a total, absolute waste of time.
And there's a crisis in this city.
Thanks, Andrea.
Speaking to the subject of actually having an accountability board with power, I still think there's a lot of accountability that needs to happen around the firing of the last director.
And maybe we need to have a policy set up where the director isn't immediately fired for doing their job too well.
We would love to know why they were fired.
We won't know that because they were fired in a closed-door meeting.
And it was acceptable because they were given 200 grand of severance.
That's our money.
This is a bad use of resources to just take everything apart the way you are.
Everyone speaking to it, please do better.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there any public comment online for item 25, which is adopting resolution authorizing temporary employment of retired annuitant Cathy Lee as interim director of police accountability? We have John Lindsay, Poland.
Good evening.
John Lindsay, Poland of the American Friends Service Committee.
I worked with Cathy Lee when she was at the PRC.
Highly competent, highly skilled, lots of integrity.
And as she noted, there are five vacancies.
And those vacancies are for the districts of Councilmember Toplin, Councilmember Bartlett, Councilmember Trego, Councilmember Blackaby, and Mayor Ishii.
And the reasons, there's no other city commission that has that many vacancies.
Why could that be? The reason is because you have dissed them.
So when you approve Cathy Lee's appointment, which I am sure you do and I support you doing, I want to hear you say that you're going to give more support and more attention to the PAB's recommendations coming in the future and now, tonight.
That's what I want to hear you say when you approve Cathy Lee's appointment, because that's going to make her job more effective.
Thanks.
Next is..
Sorry, I was just confused because Councilmember Blackaby had put his, but okay, go ahead.
Were you going to respond? I just wanted to state that my commissioner resigned because he had a baby and was in a hurry to leave.
And I have a new person now.
Well, let me jump in too then.
My commissioner moved away and I replaced him two months ago.
He'll be on the board soon.
A great young man, I must say, by the way.
Sure, so yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Who's next? Okay, next is Kieran Chinoy.
Good evening, Mayor and members of Council.
Kieran Chinoy here.
I just wanted to commend you, Mayor, for bringing forward this resolution to appoint Cathy Lee as Interim Director of Police Accountability.
I've had the unique opportunity to observe Cathy's work from an earlier chapter in Berkeley's police oversight system.
In 2013, when I was serving as chair of the Police Review Commission, I sat on a panel to evaluate candidates for the commission officer role.
At that time, the commission was in a difficult place.
We had gone through three officers in just two years and operating in what I would describe as a very charged and at times unstable environment.
During that panel process, it became immediately clear to me that Cathy Lee was the right person for the job.
What stood out was not just her qualifications, but her demeanor.
She brought a calm, steady presence into a room that needed exactly that.
Just as importantly, she projected an unmistakable sense of impartiality.
In a role where credibility depends on public trust, that quality is not just valuable, it is essential.

Segment 5

She went on to serve for nearly a decade in that and similar roles, providing continuity, professionalism, and consistency in a space that had previously lacked it.
I strongly support.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate your comment.
Next is Mar.
So you have a lot of confidence in her abilities.
So I really hope you do listen to Kathy's recommendations while she's working as the interim director.
And I hope that whoever you do select as the permanent director is not just going to tell you what you want to hear, say that everything in Berkeley is good, and that we should just let Chief Jen Lewis do whatever she wants.
The PAB does need to be given independent counsel, especially if the city attorney is going to side with the police and choose to represent them over representing the police accountability board.
And if the city manager is going to keep siding with the police every time a complaint comes up.
And it's very frustrating that you guys keep choosing when you get to respond to public comment.
Earlier, you said you can't respond.
But then when it comes to defending yourself or making yourself look better, you guys do respond.
So either you can respond to us or you can't.
Either you ask our questions and respond to our questions or you ignore us.
Like, why? You're doing both ways.
It's really frustrating.
Thanks.
Thanks for your comment.
And to clarify, it's typically not our practice to respond.
Sometimes folks choose to respond.
And I allow them to do that when they want to.
So continue on.
Daniel Brownson.
I hope that under Kathy Lee, the police accountability board will have some actual teeth and that you'll actually take the PAB's recommendations and make policy based on them.
That's all.
Thank you.
Okay, that's it.
Okay.
Oh, you have a comment on this item? Come on up.
So yeah, the police accountability board did not get voted in for like a lot of percentage so that people could weigh in on what goes on.
And look what's happened.
So many people have resigned.
And I don't know this person, but Lee, but I've seen her in the meetings and she's conducted herself well.
And let's hope that happens.
And I just also wanted to remind people that Pamela Price is running for re-election and we can vote for her and free Palestine.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Council Member Blackaby, did you have comments? Yeah, very briefly.
Thanks.
Madam Mayor, I just want to thank you for moving so swiftly and bringing this appointment.
It is really important that we have someone in that chair.
So thank you for doing that.
I want to thank Kathy Lee for being willing to step into the breach, as plenty of people have noticed and observed.
This is not an easy job in any circumstances, particularly not an easy job right now.
So we just really appreciate that she's willing to come out of retirement to do that.
I also want to thank Chair Cayetano and Vice Chair Leah Wilson and the current board members for really stepping into this challenge.
Significantly reduced board, that means more than twice as much work that they're bearing.
So I just want to thank them for doing that and join the call to urge colleagues to make our appointments.
I'll also say that we've made our nomination.
We talked to multiple candidates, made our nomination.
It's in the pipeline now.
I'm confident that we're going to be filling the vacancies soon.
The other thing that has never been done that I would like to do as a council is nominate a permanent alternate commissioner so that in the future, again, it's sort of a unique feature of this particular body in the charter because everything is council approved.
We need a council approved alternate commissioner, unlike other commissions, or alternate board member, so that we always have someone that can step up and serve when there is a vacancy.
So I'll also be working on that component, but we can nominate that as a full council.
Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to Kathy for agreeing to serve.
Thank you, Council Member Humbert.
Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank you for moving swiftly to appoint Kathy Lee.
I fully support that.
She sounds like an incredible blue chip person to fill the role, and I look forward to working on the search committee with you and Council Member, Vice Mayor Lunapara.
I want to commend my very excellent PAB member, Randy Wells, who's been serving for some time now.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you.
I want to say Kathy Lee is a wonderful person.
I served with her on the PRC when I was on that board many, many years ago, too many years ago.
She was really very astute, very fair.
She taught us all a lot.
She taught the system.
She was wonderful, and so she'll be a good stand-in, and hopefully she can work with the new person and kind of get them on track.
Thank you.
Council Member Tragob.
Thank you.
I wish to add my voice to the chorus of voices praising Kathy Lee while I never had a chance to work with her directly.
Her excellent reputation precedes her in a variety of different ways, and I am looking forward to having the opportunity to work with her again.
Also wish to thank members of the PAB and Chair Cayetano, and as for our appointment process, it has been extensive.
We are taking this extremely seriously.
It is an important board.
We're very close, and as one component of the process, there's the opportunity for the folks that we have met with to connect with our previous PAB member, former Commissioner Calavita.
So look forward to moving that forward and helping make sure that the commission is at full strength in short order.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Lunapara.
Thank you.
I haven't met Kathy Lee yet, but I've heard great things all around, so I'm really excited to work with her.
I also really want to thank Chair Cayetano and Deputy Director Murillo for all the work that they have done in the meantime.
Seriously, it has been so amazing and impactful, so thank you.
Yes, I want to add my thanks to both as well.
It's really been a pleasure to work with both of you as we've been moving this process forward, and I do want to just address that at our council retreat, we talked about coordinating so that all of our appointees to PAB came forward at the same time, essentially, so that way they wouldn't have to do as much onboarding, because we know with our smaller ODPA that it's a lot of work to onboard multiple people, so it's actually better if all of us put our folks forward at the same time.
I see a lot of head nods, so I just want to make sure folks understood why that was happening.
But just to say that, certainly, if anyone, especially anyone here who's interested in applying to be a PAB member, please feel free to write us.
There's a process online.
We are really looking, so please feel free to send folks our way.
I know there are a lot of folks here who are interested in their work, so thank you very much, and I would like to make this motion.
I'd like to make the motion.
Second.
And let's just take a vote on it.
I think it'd be better to take the roll.
Okay, to approve the resolution authorizing Kathy Lee as the Interim Director of Police Accountability, Council Member Kastarwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Traigum? Aye.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackaby? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay, item carries.
Motion is approved.
Very exciting.
Thank you, and thank you all for your public comments on that as well.
So it is 8 30.
Like I said, I knew it was going to be at least around eight o'clock, so we are at 8 30.
We are going to take a 15 minute break before item 26, and we will come back after that.
And just as a reminder, so just so folks know a little preview, how that will go is we'll have our Chief will present on this item, and then we're going to have the PAB present on their recommendations.
And then we have a number of different supplements that are, our supplementals that are coming, so we do.
I think we're at four.
We're at four supplementals, so we all need to present our supplementals.
And then we will take Council questions, and then we will do public comments, and then we will have deliberations.
So just so folks are clear on what the process is going to look like.
That's what it'll look like, and we're going to take a break from now.
Hey folks, please, can I finish? All right, it's 8 34, so we will be back in 15 minutes.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
If you're tired of the City Council, and you want some people different, we've got a group going called Flip the Berkley City Council.
Get on board, join the organizations that are doing it.
Let's throw these bums out.
We have a group.
So So So So So Oh Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So So.

Segment 6

Secondly Now I would request that those of you outside Message to the Board All state representatives Turn around And bring up the right hand side of your tablet Please 발yer trah this So I ask that all University District Supervisors processing from now until it's ready that they are what they're there and that they are here in sufficient times Now please ifiably take their tablets and bring up the right hand side of your tablet please Now I would request that those of you outside Message to the Board all State representatives turn around and bring up the right hand side of your tablet please I ask that all University District Supervisors processing from now until it's ready that they are what they're there and that they are here in sufficient times Now pleifiably now please take your tablets and bring them up please now I would request that all University Supervisors processing from now until it's ready that they are what they're there in sufficient times Now pleifyably pleifyably pleifyably pleifyably Now Now Just Now Now Please Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Now Earlier today we gave a presentation detailing crime trends and public safety initiatives over the past year While we have a lot to be proud of we know we still have work to do and support to support a thriving vibrant community What we're presenting tonight is our best proposal on how we do that under very strange strained budget and staffing circumstances So I want to start with the big picture this slide shows how all of the technology that we're discussing tonight fits together The model we're proposing is called a real-time Information center or an arctic on the left.
You see the technology feeds the lprs fixed cameras community video streams and drones In the center, you see the analysis you see the investigative software used by an analyst Gathering that information that we receive and and making actionable information from it situational awareness case intelligence and and Trend analysis that information then can guide our patrol officers and our detectives so that they make more precise informed decisions in their work I want to emphasize that in all of this all these decisions remain human driven This provides us resources in a more efficient way gathers and correlates data in a way that lets us Make intelligent decisions, but it's all human based I also want to emphasize that an arctic is not a novel concept We routinely do this kind of work when we activate our eoc in the city that is Applying those same principles of centralizing information improving coordination and getting the right resources to the right place faster With that I want to hand it briefly over to the fire chief to talk about that arctic model Thank you chief good evening all I want to speak briefly to why the arctic matters To the fire department and to our city's emergency operations center When the city activates the eoc for a major incident an earthquake a wildfire a large-scale planned event One of our biggest challenges is getting real-time information So we can have an understanding of what's happening in the field we're pulling information from multiple sources trying to coordinate across Trying to coordinate across sources across departments and making resources resource decisions under pressure Many local jurisdictions have built partnerships between their real-time information centers and their emergency operation centers When those cities activate for a critical incident the rtic is one of the first resources they bring online For berkeley this means the investment The police department is describing tonight Doesn't just serve daily law enforcement Operations it builds infrastructure that strengthens our citywide emergency management posture And I see that as another significant benefit to this investment that should be considered Okay, so, uh, I know this might seem like a lot but most of this technology that we're talking about isn't new to the city um the the four technologies on the screen here, uh involve Renewals or updates or tools that the department already uses um drones as first responder, uh in community video streams are new but Only in that they are an expansion of the current way that we use those technologies So this slide gives you a quick reference for each of the previously approved items that the department already uses um lprs these cross Reference license plates against hot lists for stolen vehicles, uh missing persons felony warrants.
We already have 52 cameras The ask tonight is to renew the contract Uh fixed ptz cameras We've had cameras for several years at the marina and at san pablo park Uh council approved 16 solar powered cameras at high traffic pedestrian intersections Uh last year and we're asking for authority to sign that contract field deployed Drones, these are drones that officers carried incident Incident scenes for aerial views and interior building searches during high risk warrants and emergencies Council approved use of these a few years ago in a mutual aid capacity and it's that we're proposing to purchase our own drones And the investigative software brings together databases that we already have access to So not adding anything new just think are like computer aided dispatch records management And digital evidence just bringing all that into one searchable system Uh, and this is as part of a grant to directly support our gun violence intervention and prevention program Thank you Okay, so to turn to uh, the two items that are new to council, um Community video streams and drones as first responder community video streams This is a proposal to allow businesses that already have cameras to give the police department direct access to that footage so under this proposal, uh The department you're being so respectful.
I really appreciated the quiet.
Let's let arlo finish, please Thank you, uh, the police department wouldn't install or own any cameras under under this program Um the cost to the city for hardware would be zero.
So, uh, we'd just be utilizing privately owned cameras Which is a concept that might sound familiar because we have had a camera registry for several years and this kind of just builds on that concept Uh, so before any camera is activated in this system Our proposed policy would require that we conduct a pre-integration review with an in-person site assessment We would require that there be signage that indicates that this program is in place at each location And each integrated camera location would be published on the city website And camera owners retain full ownership of their cameras and their data and can revoke access at any time Um, so the public safety benefit here is is the same as our fixed ptz cameras Visual awareness of a scene before officers arrive, which is critical during ongoing crimes Directly support our investigative efforts after the fact, you know right now officers, uh go door-to-door canvassing for video footage and They this would uh replace that slow manual process with something immediate and and coordinated And so this is the theme for all the technologies that we're talking about tonight is swifter investigations with a higher likelihood of solving the crime Uh privacy protections on this one, uh access would be restricted to active investigations only facial recognition Of course is strictly prohibited and all accesses are logged and audible And the footage would not be shared to outside agencies Thank you, i'm going to cover the drone as first responder on this slide, uh, so this is a second new item and here's how it works drones launch theoretically from Rooftop docking stations at the public safety building and fly directly to the scene of a call Real-time crime information center analysts will view the live aerial video and relay critical information to the responding officers And agencies across the country operating dfr programs Drones routinely arrive on scene within minutes And often faster than patrol officers and in some cases, it's only two minutes So operationally, this is a shift before an officer arrives.
We already have eyes on the scene We can assess whether there's an active threat a medical need or if the report is unfounded That level of certainty allows for better tactical planning and supports de-escalation when officers don't know what they're walking into They prepare for the worst and when they know they can respond proportionately to what's actually happening Peer agencies using dfr report that about 25 percent of calls that drones respond to can actually be resolved without sending a patrol unit at all So that's a meaningful resource multiplier Freeing our officers to focus on higher priority needs while still delivering service And on privacy our draft policies are clear drones are deployed only for specific calls for service never For random patrol or general surveillance and cameras face the horizon while they're in transit and only orient downward once they're at an authorized scene So every flight path is logged and published to a public transparency portal typically within about an hour of the drone landing And these drones will never be weaponized and they will not carry facial recognition And this isn't just a police tool dfr Also has significant value for fire and emergency medical response and i'd like to invite chief sprague from the fire department to speak about that Thank you When we get dispatched to a structure fire the first minutes On scene are about gathering information Where is the fire? How far has it progressed? Are there signs of people inside? Where might the fire spread? Right now that assessment happens at a ground level When our first engine company arrives An aerial drone that's already overhead When we pull up gives my incident commanders a view from the roof the rear of the building And adjacent structures that we simply cannot get from the street For wildfire incidents the value is even more direct We need to see how the fire is moving through terrain Where spot fires are developing? And which evacuation routes are still viable? A drone gives us that picture in real time Without putting a helicopter in the air or waiting for mutual aid air resources from the state On the emergency medical services side think about a mass casualty incident or a major traffic collision on the freeway A drone overhead lets us do a rapid triage before units arrive How many patients are there? Where are they? What access routes are clear for ambulances and other responders? That helps shape our entire response For water rescue incidents where a drone can use technology And search for heat signatures in the water much more rapidly than manually deploying rescue swimmers in watercraft And for hazmat incidents, we can assess the scene Read placards and evaluate vapor spread from a safe distance rather than sending personnel into a hazardous environment I'll wrap up with a real-life example of how this technology has been used The video you're watching demonstrates one example of how a mutual aid drone was used during a four alarm high-rise fire on university A drone was used to support early firefighting operations by guiding our water stream application It continued to assist as the building smoldered over the following week The structure had been so severely compromised by fire that officials feared It would collapse which led us To the decision that we could not send firefighters inside the structure to extinguish the deep-seated fires Drone footage provided a bird's eye view Allowing crews to identify where the water was needed without sending firefighters into the unstable structure The fire department is supportive of the dfr program and looks forward to the operational partnership.
It represents A Thank you chief I want to start with a real example that shows exactly why these tools matter Last september we investigated a six case home invasion and burglary series that were targeting women who were home alone Three were home invasion robberies and three were residential burglaries Alpr cameras were critical to solving that case in the first incident the victim's vehicle was stolen and then later recovered investigators identified a suspect vehicle and a flock alpr data the flock alpr data showed That a vehicle following the victim vehicle just three seconds behind Directly directly linking it and the primary suspect to the entire series That suspect was ultimately charged with all six cases That outcome matters without alprs it would have taken significantly Significantly longer to build that case And that individual would have remained free to continue targeting women in their homes In 2025 alone alprs generated more than 120 arrests and investigative leads That's the investigative impact Now zooming out.
This is also about capacity We're operating below authorized staffing while the city is managing a structural deficit And arctic addresses both today officers often respond to calls with limited information and with an arctic a single analyst can integrate Multiple live data streams drone footage fixed cameras community video and alpr data all in real time from one dashboard That's not surveillance.
That's preparation.
It means faster response better decisions and safer outcomes And in a department below authorized strengths strength that makes every officer more effective on every call The data supports this cases supported by real-time centers have shown up Shown up to 66 percent higher clearance rates.
So this program delivers real public safety value Which is victim closure safer outcomes stronger investigations Data driven policing and it pays for itself from existing departmental budget I Know there have been some questions about our vendor selection.
So let me address that directly When council directed us to explore these technologies, we assembled a team to evaluate best practices capabilities and vendors across all categories The review was comprehensive and included technology conferences dfr certification training hands-on demonstrations Site visits to active arctics and direct engagement with agencies already using the systems We evaluated multiple vendors.
No other single vendor can deliver alpr fixed cameras drone as first responder analytics and community video integration on one unified platform axon Came closest but their system currently lacks real-time alerts and hot list functionality Which are core to how we operate? On drones performance was decisive and side-by-side demonstrations flocks dgi drones Dji drones could clearly read license plates at 400 feet while main competitors struggled at half that distance And in one case the other product completely lost signal That level of clarity matters because dfr is about situational awareness and understanding what's happening before the officers arrive It's in everyone's best interest for officers to have the ability to know what someone is holding in their hands before an officer arrives on scene We also spoke with nearly 20 agencies where flock consistently received the strongest feedback to include richmond Which is currently operating the system and describes it as invaluable There's also a critical regional advantage Every city in alameda county uses flock for automated license plate readers That creates a network effect When a vehicle linked to a robbery in berkeley crosses into oakland Fremont or hayward the system doesn't stop at the county line Officers across jurisdictions are working from the same platform alerts and data standards and crime doesn't respect boundaries This system reflects that reality And the ecosystem matters one platform means one dashboard one audit trail and one master services agreement That simplifies compliance with the surveillance technology ordinance and the police equipment ordinance strengthens accountability and enables real-time data integration across all systems Something that simply isn't possible when stitching together multiple vendors Finally because this is a leasing model the city retains flexibility If needed we can transition to another vendor at the end of the contract term without being tied to owned infrastructure Uh, the other side of the the why flock question is about our contractual protections and data security, so I want to spend a minute there um on the Come on, please So many of you are being respectful Thank you I appreciate that on the technical side every every flock product line uses an end encryption Uh, the cybersecurity infrastructure meets the same standards that all of our most sensitive data is held under All access across every technology is logged through a single dashboard with a single audit trail And flock is contractually required to promptly notify the city of any data security incident that occurs um, so more on the contractual side that the city attorney's office reviewed the master services agreement and Every single red line that the city proposed was accepted by flock Um, so so what does that mean in practice the city owns all this data? A flock is prohibited from selling sharing or distributing our data the city's data ownership and control survives even if the contract terminates and we have Contractual financial penalties for data breaches or unauthorized disclosures, which mirrors the framework that oakland's council approved for their flock agreement in december um, we know that there are multiple supplemental reports tonight that we think will help strengthen the the msa and We are supportive of re-engaging flock to make sure that our msa has every protection That we need to feel confident in the in the agreement um I know that there are concerns about federal access to data Um federal immigration authorities cannot access our data with anything short of a court order signed by a judge uh in an administrative Hey, come on, i'm i'm really looking forward to hearing your public comments I'm going to sit there and i'm going to listen to everything you all are saying.
I'd like you to be respectful You will be respectful of our city staff while they present.
So this is consistent with our sanctuary city ordinance, uh, and with state privacy law Um, and in the case that they do receive a warrant They're required to notify us which would give us time to assess its validity and decide on how we want to respond And I also want to note that flock has made meaningful changes nationally in response to the same concerns communities like ours have raised Uh flock has added filters for impermissible search reasons, uh restrictive by default permission controls And in california has made it impossible to share alpr data outside of the state Okay, so i'm going to bring it all together and as we wrap up our presentation And tonight we're asking council to take three categories of action.
We try to lay that out for you First under the sto accept the acquisition reports and use policies for uas and community video streams And approve the updated use policy for fixed cameras Second under the police equipment ordinance accept the impact statement and use policy for unmanned aerial systems program And finally third provide contract authority to amend our existing flock contract to renew alprs and include dfr fixed ptz.

Segment 7

Cameras and the NOVA investigative software.
So thank you, and we're looking forward to hearing both PAB's presentation and answering questions.
Thank you.
Okay, so we will now hear from PAB and ODPA.
They have a presentation, so it'll probably take a minute to switch over the mics and all that.
Thank you, Chiefs.
Both Chiefs and D.C.
Tate and Arlo.
All right.
Whenever you're ready.
Thank you, Honorable Mayor, Honorable Councilmembers.
Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today.
I'm here with Acting Director Jose Murillo and my Vice Chair and colleague, Leah Wilson.
I also would like to thank the community members who have attended the community sessions put together by the Mayor and the Council, and also BPD for discussing with us our recommendations.
But most of all, I'd also like to thank the four PAB board members who have really risen to the task in providing Council with our best set of recommendations under very difficult circumstances.
Some of these recommendations we reviewed within 24 hours, and I still would stand by every single one of them.
With that, I'm going to pass to our Vice Chair, Leah Wilson, to present on the first item.
All right, so our core recommendation this evening is that the Council defer action on all three of the surveillance items before you.
Council is ultimately being asked to approve four programs, that's the ALPR, the fixed cameras, the community video streams, and drones, that will operate as one integrated tracking system using acquisition reports that have never analyzed what that combined system can do.
In fact, two of the acquisition reports were submitted to you prior to the department's move to a consolidated surveillance environment.
That's ALPRs and fixed cameras.
The combined capability where one operator can query a license plate, pull fixed camera and community video footage, and dispatch a drone in real time creates a privacy impact that is categorically different from the sum of its parts.
This development represents the largest surveillance expansion in the city's history, and it deserves careful and deliberate consideration.
Unfortunately, speaking as your Police Accountability Board, this has not occurred.
This decision is too important to be rushed.
It's me again.
I would, I would, I love the support.
I would, I would support a quieter clap so that we can hear her speak.
I want to make sure I hear her too.
I want to protect all of our rights to hear these presentations, so thank you.
Is it, is it okay for Council, can you feel responsible in waiting? The answer is yes.
The Chief alluded to the presentation of the department's annual report earlier today, and you see on the slide some very impressive crime statistics.
We see that crime has gone down in all categories, significant categories, not only in the last year, but over the last four years.
These trends mirror what we've seen nationally.
In fact, in 2024, the FBI reported that violent and property crimes across the country were at their lowest level since 1969.
There is not a crisis in this city, and that should compel you to feel again like you have to rush a decision that needs to be carefully made.
Advance the slide.
So, you don't have to rush, and to do, to act today would be premature.
First of all, we have serious concerns about the intention to partner with Flock Safety.
There are the concerns that obviously you will hear this evening from our chair, and I'm sure from many of the community members that are here today, but what I want to speak to you is the fact that we have not seen any documentation of the vendor's intent to partner with Flock Safety.
In fact, tonight in slide 7 of the department's presentation, that's the first time that I've seen any of the metrics that were used to base the decision to go with Flock versus a different vendor.
That is good procurement.
I've been told that the reason that the department does not have an articulated list of requirements for the surveillance vendor is that this was not put out for bid.
However, those of us that are familiar with procurement know that even when you don't put something out for formal bid, you do need to document the requirements for the system that you are trying to procure.
We've never seen it.
I don't know if you have, but this is good government to have a very transparent and clear vendor selection process, and we don't think it's been done.
Another reason that action tonight would be premature, there's been inadequate time to review these materials.
I don't want to repeat what you did hear briefly from our chair.
We had 24 hours to review the master services agreement, and we are down to four members.
We were able to identify many material provisions, which several of you, and I appreciate that, have reflected in your supplementals.
This is not reasonable to expect us to catch all of the MSA modifications that need to be made, as well as the compliance issues that are existing in the policies as the department has put them forward.
We simply haven't had time to do that work, nor is it reasonable again to expect us to be the catch-all auditor of what the department is putting before you.
The third reason action tonight would be premature.
There has been no combined assessment of this entire surveillance architecture that you are being asked to approve, and I'm going to speak to that a little bit later.
The fourth reason is that, as I mentioned, with 24 hours to review, we were able to, yet and still, advance to you over 30 instances of either MSA modifications that needed to be made, or material non-compliance issues with the policies that were presented to you.
And when I say material, I mean that the policies in the acquisition report contain failures to comply with the Berkeley Municipal Code, as well as state law AB 481.
You simply cannot approve these without first demanding that they be legally compliant.
I'm going to talk about the second question about why FLOC safety.
For us, the PAB really focused on considering the unique benefits that the department says FLOC can provide through a consolidated centralized surveillance system, and whether they outweigh the privacy risks and community safety risks posed by the vendor that BPD selected, And so when we analyze that risk, and we consider all the publicly available data, we didn't see that analysis reflected in the acquisition report.
The acquisition report that is before you, I believe, on page 15 of the agenda, if I'm understanding that correctly, does not, the BMC specifically acknowledges that FLOC safety is a risk.
Does not, the BMC specifically enumerates specific things that the department is required to put in there.
For example, the experience of other entities.
As we all know, the experience of other entities with FLOC has been in the news for the last six months, and yet that is not mentioned in the acquisition report.
At the community meeting, different community members raised concerns of different police chiefs, Mountain View Police Chief, the Ventura County Police Chief, who have publicly spoken out and said that FLOC is not to be trusted, and yet that is not reflected in the acquisition report.
And we think that that should have been, and that the risks of that should have been weighed and publicly available for the community to understand.
Another example, Senator Ron Wyden said in a public oversight investigation that he conducted further oversight and determined that FLOC cannot live up to its commitment to protect the privacy and security of Oregonians.
An abuse of FLOC cameras is inevitable, and FLOC has made it clear that it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that.
That statement was not reflected in the acquisition report.
The analysis of whether the risk that is represented by the experience of other entities, which is reflected in Berkeley's municipal code, specifically the surveillance technology oversight ordinance, specifies that the experience of other entities is to be reflected in the acquisition report, and we don't think it was accurately reflected.
Another issue is we see certain flaws in the massive services agreement.
I think that Vice Chair Leah Wilson will speak a little bit more to that, so I'm going to skip over that item.
We also didn't see reflected in the acquisition report the concentration risks.
We saw an explanation of why consolidation under a single vendor would be beneficial to the department, but we didn't see the flipside analysis of why concentration risks would actually pose a threat to privacy.
And then the lack of documented vendor selection process, Vice Chair Wilson also talked about.
The last thing I wanted to mention is really this conflict with sanctuary city commitments.
That was not mentioned a single time in the acquisition report, and I think it was important to note that even though FLOC has publicly stated that they're contractually bound to notify of an instance, I think we have an example of just two weeks ago where the Modesto Police Department discovered that their nationwide lookup was turned on without their consent, and they turned off their cameras.
This was five months after the first police department notified FLOC that this was an issue, and yet five months later, Modesto City discovered it on their own through a public records request, not through an audit.
I think it's a concern.
I also think it's a concern.
The PAD was really reflective that Berkeley has a sanctuary city commitment, and what that means is, is it okay for Berkeley to contract with a vendor, even if Berkeley's own data is safe, if that vendor and their business model relies on the sharing of data and that other police departments can then share their data, maybe not Berkeley's data, but other data with ICE for immigration enforcement purposes and whether that's consistent with the Berkeley's sanctuary city commitments.
I was reminded of another example.
I'm talking to one of our staff members who's a trans man, and he reminded me that FLOC, and part of the contract with FLOC is to allow Berkeley's data to become aggregated and anonymized, and that will be used to train its AI model, and they are concerned that without consent that their data will be then used to train a model that will be then employed by Kansas' police department to then prosecute crimes about entering bathrooms that they think that they should not enter into.
I think it's a concern of the community, and I think it's a concern that was not addressed in the acquisition report.
So I think all these examples should have been in the acquisition report, and they weren't, and the community was concerned at the last community meeting that there was no weighing of the balance of risk with the operational benefit that FLOC specifically provides, that they say FLOC provides.
Next slide.
All right.
So we're asking you tonight to defer action, and then we're also asking you to direct some action.
So the first affirmative ask is that you direct the department to complete a consolidated BMC 299 report, an acquisition report for the entire surveillance ecosystem.
Our chair mentioned some of the risks of having such a consolidated system, irrespective of who the vendor is and the fact that the current acquisition report only speaks to the benefits.
There are significant risks.
There's operational dependency.
When you consolidate all of these programs with one vendor, you're extremely dependent on that vendor.
That vendor has significant leverage over you over time in terms of cost, in terms of changes to the system, and in terms of their independent ability to make changes to policies and the parameters for the operating system for their program.
Once we have all four of our surveillance programs running through one vendor, we are very unlikely to readily leave or feel that we can leave, and that is something that must be addressed in an updated acquisition report.
And then I want to speak to another element.
I mentioned before that we have not had the opportunity to view the entire surveillance architecture for what it truly is.
You saw in BPD's slide, it was interesting, the slides, they highlighted only two things as being new and kind of skipped over the new investigative power software.
I thought that was interesting because I think actually Flocknova is what is referenced there, and I think it's quite new.
And I think that Flocknova and its capabilities really do highlight some of the issues that need to be addressed in this new consolidated acquisition report.
So the very purpose of Flocknova is to aggregate data across all systems and for that data to be accessible to Flock clients.
That's the very purpose of Flocknova.
That's something new that we don't have the right to today that we will under this proposal.
Neither the MSA or any of the materials that we've reviewed give Berkeley the right to consent before NOVA is activated or expanded, nor do they give us the right to control what kind of data is submitted to the NOVA system.
So this is vital information that should be included in an updated consolidated acquisition report.
Thank you.
All right.
If the city council chooses to move forward today and contract with Flock Safety, we believe you need to modify direct modifications to the agreement with Flock.
This is reflected in several of your supplementals, and I'm sorry, Council Member Bartlett, I have not had the time to analyze yours, but I did have the time to take a look at the other two.
And I do believe that all of these points on this particular slide are addressed in one of the two supplementals directing further modification or amendment to the Flock Master Services Agreement.
I will say that some of what I heard in the department's presentation this evening surprised me because there are some assertions that suggest that some of these items have already been addressed and agreed to by Flock.
That is not information that has come to us previously.
Let's move on to the next slide.
Even with the supplementals, there are additional modifications to the MSA that I would encourage you to consider if you do decide to go ahead with Flock today.
I did see a suggestion, first of all, that the penalties for breach violations be increased from $75,000 to $150,000.
I reiterate here what was shared in our written material, that Oakland has a penalty of $200,000 per violation, Richmond $290,000.
It's unclear why the City of Berkeley would agree to any less of a penalty provision.
In addition, none of the supplementals address the exemption in the penalty language for the look-up tool, data violations that are done pursuant to Flock's look-up tool.
This is a really important feature, which our Chair just alluded to.
I want to make it clear that this is one, as my understanding, is one of the central benefits of Flock.
This is a tool that allows participating jurisdictions, and I believe the Deputy Chief spoke to that, to actually look up and access data for other jurisdictions that are on the Flock system.
And they can do that without getting the affirmative permission of the other jurisdictions.
Right now, in your penalty provision in the MSA, any data breach or data violation that is done pursuant to a jurisdiction's use of the look-up tool is entirely carved out of the penalty.
That needs to be amended.
Last but not least, we made a recommendation that the City preserve its full legal remedies when actual harm exceeds the penalty amount.
So right now, as the MSA has written, the entire remedy or recourse for data breach violations is a monetary penalty, currently $75,000, as several Council members have recommended $150,000.
Imagine if a disclosure leads to an immigration enforcement action against a Berkeley resident.
They are detained, deported, their family is separated.
Do you feel that $150,000 is a sufficient remedy for that violation? I think it most likely is not.
Imagine if a data breach exposes information about many thousands of your Berkeley citizens, and you are asked as a City to pay for the cost of remedying our credit or credit monitoring services.
You would face potential civil liability from your community.
You wouldn't be able to go after FLOC for any of that the way the contract is currently written.
You need to pursue amendments that protect the City's bottom line.
If FLOC's negligence is egregious or repeated, you may want to pursue punitive damages or injunctive relief.
You're not able to do that either, as the MSA is currently structured.
So while I appreciate the amendments that have been put forward in the supplemental, I strongly urge you to consider additional amendments, really to protect the City from a fiscal perspective, if nothing else.
We have two more topics.
Sorry, can you give me a sense of how much? Yeah, five minutes.
Okay, thank you.
We have two topics.
One of them is very brief to discuss.
Next slide, please.
And then skip that slide, too.
The first is about all the use policies and our recommendations that cover all policies that have been submitted to you.
Our first recommendation is that you impose consistent audit requirements across all policies.
One of the issues that we've seen is that jurisdictions are not identifying noncompliant issues until months later, because they are not consistently auditing their data.
And so our recommendation is at least monthly audits and then biannual reporting by the Department to the PAB.
The second is inconsistent notification standards.
A month ago, the Council asked the Department to notify them within 72 hours of a request by ICE for any information from the Department.
And that's only reflected in one policy.
Right now, we would like to see it reflected across all policies.
Next slide, please.
The last set of recommendations specifically concerns the drone use program and the use policy that the Department is presenting, which was not touched on so far, so I think I'm going to spend my last few minutes on this slide here.
The drone use policy, as the Department is proposing, does not limit it to specific authorized uses.
Instead, it says that the drone may be used for specific authorized uses and then does not limit it to those specific authorized uses.
And I think that's an issue for a couple reasons.
The first is that the municipal code actually requires that BPD explicitly identify each authorized use for any surveillance technology ordinance.
And so instead of limiting and making transparent what each authorized use is, they've decided to make it permissive such that there's an unwritten authorized use that is effectively whatever else the Department says is permissible that is not explicitly prohibited by the policy.
We think that's an issue.
It's an issue for transparency's sake, it's an issue for auditing's sake, and it's an issue because Berkeley residents deserve to know why and how they're being surveilled.
The second recommendation specifically ties to data retention policy.
BPD's data retention policy, its proposed data retention policy is 60 days.
We recommend tying the data retention policy, tailor it to each use, tailor it to the uses that BPD says and the purposes that BPD says they're actually deploying the drone for.
For example, when they deploy a drone for vehicle pursuits, the purpose is officer safety in order to understand the terrain.
None of that purpose requires, achieving that purpose does not require retaining the data.
We think that the narrow retention data respects Berkeley residents' privacy rights and it also protects from warrants requests from immigration officials because the only protection when they come with a judicial warrant is if the data doesn't exist.
We also think that there are concerns around the oversight and accountability mechanisms.
Right now, the BPD use policy for drones does not require supervisory approval and it doesn't require BPD operators to actually specify the reason for the drone deployment.
We think those two things are common sense parameters to ensure oversight.
We also, I want to highlight what's in the second, the second recommendation in the bottom row about First Amendment concerns.
One of the authorized uses that BPD is proposing is to respond to criminal activity in mass gatherings and the police department, excuse me, the police accountability board was specifically concerned about this because the pliant nature, the pliant definition of criminal activity.
Criminal activity could encompass anything from failing to adhere to an unlawful dispersal order that's issued in the moment.
It could be responding to, for example, someone who is in the crowd who's an instigator and that could be a pretext then to use and to capture drone surveillance footage of everyone who is in that area.
And if the data is retained for 60 days per BPD's policy, they would be able to look back at that policy, to look back at that footage and to see if there's any other potentially criminal, if there's any actionable activity in that footage.
And I think, you know, for me, this specifically was a concern because before joining the PAB, I was working with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, specifically in litigation against the county of Sacramento Police Department.
And the police department ended up having to settle for hundreds of thousands of dollars, specifically because they were using their drones to surveil protesters in a way that chilled First Amendment rights.
And the drone use policy that BPD has presented has essentially the same prohibitions that Sacramento Police Department had.
And so they are inadequate.
I'm going to leave the other ones on there so that we can conclude our presentation.
But thank you for listening.
Thank you for your presentation.
We now have four supplementals that need to be presented.
I don't have a strong preference for order.
Is there anyone who would like to go first? Don't we need to accept one of them first? Do we need to vote to accept? Set this up three? Sorry, Mr.
City Clerk, can you weigh in here, please? So there was the revised agenda material from Council Member Bartlett.
It needs to be voted to be accepted for consideration by two thirds vote.
That's this one.
Yeah.
Yes.
So here's my supplemental.
I saw these other submittals.
I want to get involved as well.
I felt lonely out there.
And so my submittal.
No, no, I think it makes sense for him to say what's on there before we decide if we're accepting it.
So go ahead.
I've never seen I've never done a submittal before.
It's my first time.
I got to learn the litany.
OK.
So this is a this is a these are my efforts to join the conversation and offer my edits to the to the contract.
The master service agreement.
And I guess I can read the language inside this box on the page.
The purpose of the supplemental material is to clearly define the legal boundaries within which the city may utilize automated license plate reader, LPR technology and other surface service, other surveillance services.
The supplemental will ensure that any vendors who are contracted to provide LPR and surveillance technology services operate within specific parameters that will safeguard residents, privacy, civil rights and Berkeley Sanctuary City ordinance while maintaining city city control of access and usage of data generated from the technology.
The supplemental incorporate good of the city provisions to ensure full transparency, control and accountability in the deployment and operation of the technology.
These provisions will include strict mutuality of contractual obligations, material increased penalties for an unauthorized data access or disclosure, and a clear private right of action for affected individuals, including statutory damages and injunctive relief.
OK, there are some council members who have marked there.
Do you have something you'd like to say? Council member Humbert? No, I just like to I would like to present my supplemental.
We're not.
Yeah, not quite yet.
We're just voting to bring it.
I understand that.
Yeah.
OK, so it's for later.
OK, so council member Keith, did you have something you wanted to say? I have a question for council member Bartlett regarding a supplemental.
Has the city attorney's office reviewed this? No, they have not.
OK, thank you.
OK, so you are making a motion.
Motion to include my supplemental.
Second.
OK, I'll call the roll.
This is to accept the supplemental from Councilman Bartlett for consideration.
Council member Kessler-Wanning? Yes.
Taplin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trego? Aye.
O'Keefe? Abstain.
Blackabay? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
OK, motion carries.
Now, council member Humbert, would you like to present your supplemental? Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yes, I'd like to present the supplemental that I and council member O'Keefe and council member Taplin and council member Kessler-Wanning have brought.
First, I want to thank BPD Chief Lewis for all her work on these policies and on the master services agreement.
And I especially want to thank our city attorney and Stephen Hylus in the city attorney's office for their suggestions and review of our supplemental.
And also the city manager's office for their guidance.
And of course, I want to thank my co-authors who I just who I just named.
Everyone was working over the weekend on this, and I deeply appreciate folks taking time out of their schedules and lives to address community concerns and strengthen this agreement.
I also want to thank the PAB for.

Segment 8

I want to thank the Berkeley City Council for its thoughtful comments and for its presentation here tonight.
I want to preface the rest of my comments by saying that I deeply respect the positions of all my colleagues and the concerns that I have heard, and I'm sure that I will hear further tonight.
I want to be clear.
I agree that these concerns are justified.
We know the federal government is out to get people.
There is an inappropriate access to ALPR data in other cities via FLOC, and in some cases those cities have sought to exit their contracts.
At the same time, and as I discussed at our special meeting some time ago, I think there's good evidence that ALPRs and other technological tools are creating true public safety benefits that have real weight.
We've heard that tonight in the prior meeting in detail and also through the BPD's presentation earlier in this meeting.
The question that I have grappled with is, what tips the scales for me? Can we get to a place where we have sufficient protections for our data and ability to get out of this agreement, but the risks are outweighed by the public safety benefits? First, I think it is important to point out that in the context of a federal government that is literally snatching people off the streets just for how they look, the marginal risks from inappropriately accessed ALPR data are relatively small.
That said, I understand and can respect the argument that any marginal risk in this regard is too much.
That is a principled position that someone can take, in fact.
My view, please don't interrupt me.
Folks, you are entitled to your positions, you're entitled to your opinions, but you will let everyone speak so that we can hear them.
It's okay if you disagree, it's just not appropriate for you to yell at them.
My view, though, is that our residents face public safety risks every day.
One of my constituents, who's a senior, was brutally mugged and thrown to the ground in 2023.
And she was not alone in being a senior who was targeted.
And I know that other parts of Berkeley, most notably West Berkeley, South Berkeley, and District 2, face constant threats of gun violence.
Robberies and car thefts, too, of course.
These are the real, concrete, everyday safety threats against which I'm weighing the more marginal impacts of things like data leaks from ALPRs and a limited number of fixed surveillance cameras and drones.
I believe that with the right amendments and with the ability to swiftly exit this agreement for any reason, and that's critical to me, the ability to walk away, we can provide adequate protection to get these risks down to a level where they are outweighed by the public safety benefits.
Please don't interrupt me.
And I'd ask Council Member Casarwani to put the supplemental up.
Anyway, as I'm going to repeat it, I believe that with the right amendments and with the ability to swiftly exit this agreement for any reason, we can provide adequate protection to get these risks down to a level where they are outweighed by the public safety benefits.
And that if changes we have made, and if that changes, we have the ability to get the heck out of Dodge.
So with that, I'm going to listen to the basic versions of our group's six recommendations.
And there are more details in the supplemental itself, which will be up on the screen.
One, increase the financial penalty for unauthorized data sharing from $75,000 to $100,000, $150,000 per violation.
Two, establish a termination for convenience right under which the city is not refunded for payments already made, but is not obligated for the remaining contract value, can walk away for whatever reason we want.
Limit FLOC's license to use anonymized data to the term of the agreement rather than in perpetuity.
Four, require FLOC to obtain the city's prior written consent before making any changes.
That's any changes to the city's data sharing settings or configurations.
Five, revise the special terms section to clarify the MSA, Master Services Agreement, may not be modified without city council approval.
And six, remove the amendment and incorporate provisions on restrictions on data sharing into the MSA and stipulate that such provisions shall not be modified by subsequent FLOC amendments or attachments without further city council approval.
At this point, I also want to say, and I've read this Council Member Blackaby's supplemental, I also want to say that I'm very open to all of his recommendations and would be delighted if our supplemental and his could be integrated into a consolidated set of recommendations that would go to our city manager and city attorney's offices.
Now, his recommendations include serious monitoring efforts and requirements.
I think that with our powers combined, we would have a very strong Master Services Agreement that I think would go very far to address community concerns and ensure that we can make use of these very helpful tools, again, with the option to get out if we want to and need to.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
So would you, Council Member Blackaby, like to present your supplemental? Sure.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
If I can share.
Thanks to Council Member Humbert and team for their supplemental.
It was interesting on Monday to see all the supplementals together and to reflect that there's a lot of commonality in the points that they've made and the points I've made.
I will say that their six points are a superset of what I've presented.
My three are basically a subset of what they've presented.
But the whole idea here is, you know, the thought behind this is that, as we've heard earlier tonight, that public safety technology does play a critical role in supporting the BPD's investigations, clearing cases, enhancing officer safety and strengthening overall public safety.
However, FLOC's previous unauthorized sharing of surveillance data and promises that they've fixed these problems, that must be monitored, verified and ensured that they are actually following through on those commitments constantly, underscores the need for more robust safeguards in the Master Services Agreement if we move forward, in our use policies, as well as enhanced program reporting and auditing to ensure full transparency, informed oversight and accountability as we move forward, especially, I would say, at the beginning as we're getting the new program off the ground.
So my supplemental is similar in some respects with what we've just seen from Council Member Humbert.
There's the penalty component, which is doubling the penalty, allowing the city to terminate the MSA for convenience, ensuring that we are not paying if we cancel early.
We're only on the hook for what we've spent and what we've consumed, but not future payments.
We want full flexibility to be able to exit the agreement, which also gives, again, gives us more leverage and also an incentive for FLOC to actually perform and maintain their commitments because we can exit at any time.
In addition, again, there is an existing technology ordinance, there are existing reports, but I don't think that given the changes that are being asked for that just the biennial process is sufficient.
And so my recommendation here is more frequent reports that are coming from BPD through the city manager to the council.
Even before the system is operational, quarterly reports about installation, what's the progress in timeline, what are any early results for components that may go live before the full system, and any issues or concerns that arise during installation.
Once the system is in use, we need monthly reports for at least the first six months of operation.
We'll be open to extending that, including but not limited to early results and performance of evaluation of each component, issues and concerns, proposed solutions or fixes by the department, and also short case studies or synopses of what the technology is actually supporting.
Can we actually see what it is doing and get a better grasp of that? And then three, thereafter align with existing practices for auditing and reporting.
We do have these existing audits for the ALPR twice a year.
They get shared with PAB.
We do have an annual surveillance technology report that comes to us.
So that's the component.
So there is a contract component, which is largely similar, and a subset of what Council Member Humbert and Council Member Castelhanian team have proposed, and then additional reporting and auditing requirements, especially early in the process to ensure that FLOC is adhering to the commitments they've made to the city.
Thank you very much, Council Member.
Council Member Bartlett, did you want to also share so folks can see the more detailed version? Sure.
I think you might have to stop sharing, Council Member Blackbee.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And thanks for honoring me with your attention for my supplemental, my first supplemental, as I said, my first one.
So listen, so, you know, we're here debating and kind of engaging in this classic tension between security and liberty.
And America has always had this, even from the very beginning with the framers or the founding fathers, as they're called.
This issue was talked about a lot, and it still is.
And it's something that we all negotiate with ourselves and our families, our communities, our neighbors, in our states, our countries, within our laws all the time.
So tonight, this is the latest sort of negotiation of a line of scrimmage between liberty and security.
Now, I want to say this regarding the FLOC vendor.
I can tell you, we worked on the privacy policy for a long time, like three years worked on it.
So we tap and brought it in response to crime in this district.
And I didn't love it at first.
We hammered out.
And we do have the best privacy policy in the state, probably the country, as a city.
And did I tell a joke? When I make a joke, you'll know.
That was a joke.
Come on, folks.
Come on.
Let him finish speaking.
Yeah.
You people.
And so, you know, so here's what I've seen.
One, in front of my predecessor's house, a car drove into and ran over a baby in a baby stroller crossing the street on Alcatraz.
They caught the guy within the hour.
Another time, someone set off 12 shots outside a playground in Malcolm X School.
They caught him.
A little while later, it wasn't the same technology.
There was a rapist caught in a different district that was caught due to this technology.
So I know it's effective.
And, you know, so that aspect of the security piece where I feel responsible for your safety in my city is real.
And I want you to put yourself in my shoes for a minute.
However, however, that effectiveness alone is not enough because we could just have a soldier in our house all the time, right? And on this issue, policing works best when there's trust.
And so many of our constituents and all of my constituents, every single one I've talked to, I've talked to all of them, many, many, many.
Not one person supports it.
They are fearful, fearful of the company we're working with because of what they've observed and what they've heard and what they've seen.
And the impacts are on TV and all around us.
People are living scared.
People are getting abused.
There's a secret police force loose in the country, dragging people around, and people feel that.
And so, you know, I want I want stuff to work.
I do this job to make things work for people.
And I want to say this.
And that is we negotiate the scrimmage line again between liberty and security.
District three has chosen liberty.
So.
So.
So in this instance, my notes here, my edits to the master service agreement, the MSA, I've done my best to give it balance.
By that sparkly towards us a bit.
And to make it make it have teeth and make it work.
Right.
And so I've included a million dollar violation provision.
And that's intentional because because it recognizes that in the corporate world, only one thing matters.
And that is the bottom line.
So let's talk to language.
And I do this for a living.
You know, so basically I'm treating I'm treating you as if you're my client.
And if you had hired me to do your MSA, this would be the result.
How do we do here? Where's James? James.
Where is it? Where is this thing? How do I do this? Just there it is.
There it is.
Just keep speaking.
I need to share this.
Ladies and gentlemen, James Chang.
No, it's already on the zoom.
The documents right there.
Just going to make.
Hi, everybody.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
We're okay.
So perfect.
So going through this here.
It's not moving.
Section 2.4.
This is a section where essentially the original version wouldn't have a lot of control of things.
So if they update the platform, we can't we have no say in it.
And I use the larger word, which is change, because you can typify an upgrade, but you can also have a change.
So I just say, I replace it with the original language to replace changes.
So not implement, activate, or deploy any modification, enhancement, or new functionality that affects data collection, analysis, sharing, access, or retention of the customer's prior written approval without the prior approval, which shall require approval by the city council.
And this includes, without limitation, fears involving predictive analysis, pattern recognition, vehicle tracking, network sharing, or integration with third party systems.
And it's important because so many of the reports you heard about third parties accessing the data on a basis that may not be so evident to others.
And all data sharing settings shall be disabled by default.
Any deviation must be expressly approved in writing by the customer, which is us, and publicly disclosed.
All right, now we're going to section 4.1.
We are removing the revocable language.
Perfect.
And now section 4.1, this is the irrevocable license requirement, just scratching that.
This license, let's see here.
What's the good language here? This is a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-transferable license.
They also had a transferable language, which is not going to work for us.
Use customer data solely to provide FLOC services to customer during the term of this agreement.
And this license shall automatically terminate upon expiration or termination of this agreement, and FLOC shall have no right to retain, use, or access customer data thereafter, except as expressly required by law and only for the minimum period required.
Okay? Now, 4.2, this new language at the bottom, there's a loophole in there.
It allows them to share things that are mentioned in the agreement.
All right, so let's close it up here.
It says, notwithstanding and to the contrary, customer-generated data shall not be used, shared, or accessed for any purpose other than providing services to customer and shall not be subject to any broader rights under Section 4.3 or elsewhere in this agreement.
Now moving down to the perpetual rights, removing those again.
I have a different version of this, actually.
The anonymized data, okay? FLOC may create anonymized data solely for the purpose of providing services to customer during the term, and FLOC shall have no right to use anonymized data for product development, commercialization, or any purpose unrelated to services provided to customer.
And all rights granted under this section shall terminate upon expiration or termination of this agreement, and FLOC shall delete all anonymized data derived from customer data in accordance with this section.
Data deletion down there, okay? There's a new section that restricts the way they share the data.
So FLOC shall not disclose, provide access to, or enable access to customer data to any third party.
And again, third party is important because it keeps coming up in the reports that I read about third party access to customer data by this organization, including any federal agency, except pursuant to a specific written authorization issued by customer for each individual request.
B, access by a federal personnel embedded within or assigned to any state or local agency shall be prohibited unless expressly authorized in writing by customer for each instance of access.
C, use of any shared lookup, query, or network-based access tool that permits third party querying of customer data is prohibited unless explicitly approved in writing by the customer.
D, indirect access, including access facilitated through another agency, shall be deemed a violation of this agreement.
And this, I think, came up earlier, termination for convenience.
This is a standard one for customers that have weight.
Remember, too, when you do these things, we're a valuable customer.
We have leverage in these agreements.
Yes, we do.
You just got to act like we do, you know? Again, that wasn't a joke.
That's like actual real stuff.
You should know this.
Mark knows.
He's a lawyer.
Assignment.
This gives COB controls, our controls, right? So notwithstanding the foregoing, FLOC may not assign this agreement to any affiliate, successor, or acquirer without written consent of the customer, which shall not be unreasonably withheld and shall require city council approval.
Okay, and now there was this morality clause that held that FLOC could break the contract with Berkeley if Berkeley all of a sudden did something bad.
I'm like, but not them.
So it's made it mutual.
Customers shall have the right to terminate this agreement immediately upon written notice if FLOC or its officers or affiliates are indicted, found liable for violations of law, or determined by customer to have engaged in unauthorized data access, sharing, or misuse.
And now the unauthorized sharing section down there in the amendment.
This really gets to the core of it here.
Any unauthorized access, disclosure, sharing, or use of customer data shall constitute a material breach of this agreement.
For each unauthorized access event, FLOC shall pay customer liquidated damages in the amount of $1 million per violation or $10,000 per affected record, whichever is greater.
Each individual query, access event, or data retrieval shall constitute a separate violation.
And the remedies set forth herein are cumulative and shall not be deemed the sole or exclusive remedy.
Customer retains all rights at law and in equity, including the right to seek injunctive relief.
FLOC acknowledges that the unauthorized access to surveillance data creates irreparable harm.
Customers shall be entitled to immediate injunctive relief without the requirement to post bond.
Prior right of action, another important one.
Any individual whose data, image, likeness, or identifying information is accessed, disclosed, or used in violation of this agreement shall have a direct right of action against FLOC.
FLOC agrees that such individuals may bring claims for statutory damage of not less than $5,000 per violation.
Actual damages, punitive damages were permitted, and reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
Mark.
He's an attorney.
It's a joke.
That was a joke, see? That was a joke.
FLOC is supposed to waive any argument that is not a data controller or that individuals lack privity under this agreement.
And then, of course, mandatory data deletion within 30 days of termination or expiration of this agreement.
FLOC shall permanently delete all customer data, customer-generated data, or any derivative data, including anonymized data.
And FLOC shall certify such deletion in writing, signed by an officer of the company, and no data may be retained for product development, machine learning, or any other purpose.
So these are the elements I put in here because I could think of no other way to make my constituents feel safe with this agreement.
Okay, folks, please.
All right.
So it is, I think we're now finally on the fourth supplemental.
So I am going to present our fourth supplemental.
Give me a second.
Okay.
All right.
So this is a supplemental brought forward by myself, Vice Mayor Lunapara, and Council Member Trageb.
And as it says here in our supplemental item, we offer amendments to the policies, balancing benefits, and guardrails.
What we've suggested here overall is that we reject the contract specifically with FLOC.
Hold on.
Let me finish so that we can get to your public comments, right? Okay.
And also we make recommendations based on conversations that we had, both with the PAB, other members of the community, also had conversations with the chief and Arlo and our city attorney's office.
So I'm going to go over these a bit more.
Okay.
So this is a chart that just kind of goes over some of the things that we're suggesting.
So rejecting the FLOC contract across the different items, referring some things back to staff, and also approving or approving with amendments certain things.
Because what we realize in these conversations is that we could approve a surveillance use policy that doesn't include the contract with FLOC.
So we could separate those, which is why it's written this way.
So the first thing on here is to refer the community safety.
Excuse me, let me just amend this.
Okay.
Refer the community video stream acquisition report and surveillance use policy to the public safety committee for further review.
Request that the city manager work at the committee level to address the PAB's concern and clarify operational ambiguity.
So apologies, the way this works on here, I have to kind of jump back between my notes and the document.
So there are some more details here about adding an explicit prohibition on surveillance of First Amendment activity, unless there's clear, articulable, and imminent public safety threat that's actively occurring.
Specify concrete data retention periods with the four elements required by the BMC.
Conduct disparate impact analysis addressing whether camera coverage is concentrated in areas with particular demographic characteristics.
Supplement section 11 of the acquisitions report to disclose adverse findings from comparable jurisdictions.
Update immigration-related search reporting to match the 72-hour standard and named recipients in policy 351, section 351.6, prior sanctuary city ordinance.
Consider developing a use policy to address combined cross-platform use of all integrated technologies, regardless of the vendor used, including ALPR fixed cameras, community video streams, and drones.
Institute semi-annual audits of CVS similar to council directive on fixed camera established in June 2025.
You know, I'm sorry.
I think that I'm..
Actually..
This is not lined up.
Okay.
All right, I'm going to just keep going.
So for amending the surveillance use policy for the unmanned aerial system, to include the following provisions, I'm going to focus on the high level here.
So limiting the retention period for non-evidentiary footage to five days.
As was mentioned in one of the recommendations, it makes sense to tailor the amount of days that are kept based on the purposes for the technology.
Strengthening the oversight for requiring semi-annual audits, supervisorial approval, except for drones as first responders, and removing ambiguity for when UAS can be deployed.
There are a couple of minor edits that we'd like to make to this as well, including to clarify language to our supplemental.
So for the supervisory approval, it would say subsequent to supervisory approval for all deployments, with the sole exception that supervisory approval is not required for drones as first responders, and also edit the language around clarifying the language for the audits.
So the Office of Strategic Planning and Accountability shall conduct monthly audits of UAS use to check permission settings and ensure that data is not shared with out-of-state agencies or federal law enforcement.
A report of these audits shall be published semi-annually and should be sent to the Police Accountability Board.
And we're also referring to the City Manager-developed performance metrics, data governance, policy development, and deeper research on alternative surveillance technology vendors capable of meeting Berkeley's safety and surveillance needs, while balancing the need for privacy and civil liberties protections.
Okay, so that's that one.
Okay.
All right.
Amending the surveillance use policy for fixed cameras to include monthly audits with a semi-annual audit report, same kind of edit there where it clarifies that it would be monthly audits, but then the actual report back would be published semi-annually.
Okay.
Okay, and this is for the Police Equipment Ordinance, which is amend the UAS Equipment Use Policy to include the same revisions as the recommendations for the UAS Surveillance Use Policy, which is above, and refer the following request for information to the City Manager to quantify the need for UAS, something also mentioned in the PAB presentation.
Okay.
Okay, referring the UAS Military Equipment Impact Statement to the City Manager for research and analysis of alternative surveillance technology vendors capable of meeting the City of Berkeley's safety and surveillance need, while balancing privacy and civil liberties protections.
And then for the contract authority, reject any renewal, authorization, approval, or execution of the FOX safety contracts.
Some information there.
I refer to the City Manager to amend Ordinance 2.99 to include a violation termination clause.

Segment 9

Laws for Surveillance Technology Vendors, and refer to the City Manager and City Attorney additional contractual language to require a vendor to inform the City of any requests for information, including, but not limited to, subpoenas, discovery requests, or requests under any federal or state statute to the extent permitted by law it receives related to the City-controlled data and safeguarded to the fullest extent allowed by law.
So, these are all of the different pieces.
What I really want to highlight for folks, because I understand this is incredibly wonky, is really just this piece up here at the top, which is this chart.
And I think that that kind of more clearly explains what it is that we're trying to do here.
So I'm going to keep that up for a little bit longer so that folks can take a look at it.
Okay.
Madam Mayor.
Do you need to make it bigger? Yes.
Knowing that we've got a ways to go, I just want to step in.
I move we suspend the rules and extend the meeting time until 1 a.m.
Second.
I'd suggest 1.30.
Okay, 1.30.
Yeah, I want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to speak.
I also second.
Okay.
All right.
Is there any objection to extending the meeting time to 1.30 a.m.? Folks, I'm sorry.
You don't get to vote and we want to hear you speak.
Otherwise, we're going to end early and then you're going to be sad that we didn't get to hear from you.
So, all right.
So, all right.
So, is there any objection? Okay.
So, we will extend the meeting time until 1.30 a.m.
Okay.
I'm hoping that we don't go that long.
It's just so that we don't have to cut off.
That's the only reason why we're doing it.
Okay.
So, now we have presented all four supplementals.
Typically, this is where we get a chance to ask the questions, but I want to get a sense from folks about how many questions approximately they have.
So, if you could just take a quick poll and then let me know, that would be really helpful.
Six.
Can I ask one clarification? Is Mr.
Chandler available? Okay.
Yes.
I do have some.
The representative is available for, yeah, in the Zoom for questions.
Five, eight, eight.
Sorry.
Seven, six, two questions? Okay.
I have a couple.
Questions? I don't have specific questions right now.
Okay.
I'd like to ask, because we have so many questions, that we take public comment first, then we come back.
Otherwise, we're going to lose people.
I'd rather.
I think even if you have a couple of questions, there are so many other questions on the dais, it'll take like a long time.
So, can we just, let's take, we're going to take public comment first, and we'll come back then.
Okay.
I don't want to lose.
Too many people, because it will take an hour to ask our questions, I think.
So, okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
So, if you have public comments, please come up to the dais.
Okay.
How this is going to work.
It's totally fine if you want to clap.
I prefer the snaps so that we can keep it moving.
We have so many people here who are giving public comments, so we really want to hear from all of them.
I ask that you all please be respectful, whether you agree or disagree with whoever is speaking.
I ask that you respect them.
Folks, I know you're discussing horse trading over here, but please, I want to ask that you all be respectful when folks are giving their public comments so we can hear from everyone.
And then as soon as someone's finished, please come up and speak so that we can keep the line moving.
Okay.
Go ahead, Kit.
Okay, folks, so that means you have to be quiet now.
Thank you.
Go ahead, Kit.
Thank you.
Although I heard the chief talk about the fact that the federal government could use a warrant to gain access to this information, and then that could be reported, and we know.
I did not hear the chief acknowledge the fact that the federal government has the legal right to get information without our knowing.
They can do it through a FISA warrantless search, they can do it through a FISA warrant, and they would be legally obliged not to tell us, so then we wouldn't know.
So I think that fact is worth acknowledging.
And then I really want to ask all of you to talk to each other.
I think the city attorney and the city manager may be wanting to rethink whether this is a good idea to do this right away, and I want to praise my own council member.
I want to praise the supplemental from the mayor and two other council members, and I really want to acknowledge the wonderful work that the PAB has done.
Thank you.
Thank you, PAB.
Okay, come on up.
And if you're getting a minute from someone, please try to organize that beforehand because it'll be easier.
Go ahead.
I guess I'm going to say several things to you.
One is I think this is the most inopportune time to bring something like this up.
People are dying.
People are being locked up in prison.
There is a war going on, and in a sanctuary city that has a history in this country and in the world, to have this come up, I don't understand why it's so important right now.
I want to congratulate the members of PAB because they gave the most extraordinary explanation of what is going on.
In my time on the city council, I would have been so grateful to have people like that around me, and our city attorney and our city manager would have said, whoa, I think it's time that we put the brakes on this and we do a little more investigating because too many questions have been raised.
I think another thing I want to say is this is an assault on the psyche of this city.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Someone is giving you a minute.
You're giving me another minute? Yeah, this person here is giving you a minute.
Thank you to whoever.
I started to say that this feels to me like a real assault on the psyche of this city.
You know, it's not just the laws we put in.
It's what we do to people's emotions, and that's part of your job as politicians.
It's not just looking through all of the rules and all of the amendments and everything else that you do.
I spoke with someone in the office of the assembly speaker, and they have put a hold on something with Flock.
So that's another one added up to all the other cities.
I guess the last thing I want to say is that Berkeley gets itself in the news many, many times.
I just hope that we are not in the news because in this sanctuary city, you have not heeded what has been said to you and taken time to reconsider this.
And as I'm feeling it, not go with Flock for sure.
Thank you.
Come on up, Betsy.
Come on, Betsy.
Wow.
I think there's a minute for me, but I'm going to try to be succinct.
My name is Betsy Morris.
I have the privilege of being the co-convener of East Bay Berkeley Gray Panthers.
Keith, too.
I would like to say I ask council, or at least four of you, possibly five, I guess we need five, to reject the new contracts on Flock.
Just reject.
And I ask Councilmember Bartlett and O'Keefe to perhaps support that measure.
Thank you for all your good work.
I want to compliment the Police Accountability Board.
My God, the effort, the detail, the thought, they proved why so many of us voted to have that board.
And the fact that they're carrying on with this detail on such short notice was incredible.
Yeah.
And they have produced a series of recommendations that I would very much like to be brought into the conversation around the contract.
I was here last time I was here.
The city auditor spoke strongly about the consequences of doing sole-source, non-bid, non-competitive bid contracts.
But overall, those have been detrimental, certainly to the budget, and in this case, to the spirit of so many people here in Berkeley.
So you lauded her tonight.
Let's listen to her.
We elect her, along with you, to provide that kind of information.
And so I know I want to thank the folks who are already supporting rejecting signing of contracts tonight.
Finally, I have eight minutes.
I need to say that Elaine Bloom and Marsha Poole would have been much more fierce in their rejection of this tonight.
Thank you.
Thanks, Betsy.
Thank you.
Okay, a minute.
Okay.
So I'm a former Berkeley High student.
My brother is a current student.
It's nice to see you.
It's nice to see you, Ms.
O'Keefe.
But today, he was discouraged from coming to this meeting, actually, because he was told the vote already happened, that there was a no, that we've dropped the contract already.
So he's not here tonight.
I don't think the vote already happened.
Has the vote already happened? No.
The vote hasn't already happened.
So that's kind of embarrassing that he was told that he's your student.
Other thing, Terry, you're my representative.
Sorry, you can't speak directly to council members, but you can speak to us generally.
Go ahead.
Terry, you're my representative.
I like your suit, but honestly, I think you need to be evaluated.
We have a rule around addressing the council as a whole.
Okay, council, I think you need to reevaluate your stance on this.
You need to drop the contract entirely.
This is an opportunity to do so.
This is not an opportunity to renew it at all.
Everyone here is here because we do not support this in any way.
You guys are representing us.
And honestly, that's all I'm here to say.
I've used my minute.
But fuck drones.
Fuck ICE.
Fuck you guys.
Free Palestine.
I think I also have a minute.
Okay, I'm taking it from the person with the baseball cap.
Sure.
Fully integrated centralized surveillance system.
Does anyone not wearing blue and a badge think that's a good idea? I don't think so.
The way the BPD has presented this, as the PAB pointed out, has been dishonest on a number of fronts.
First of all, leaving out.
Okay, folks, please.
People in line.
Give some space.
Okay, everyone, space.
Okay.
Folks, folks, please back up.
Yes.
Thank you.
Okay.
I'm just asking that everyone give everyone give folks some space.
Everyone gives folks some space so we can hear from the public comment.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Please continue your comment.
Does anyone mind if I get five seconds added? Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
The way the BPD has presented this has been dishonest on multiple fronts.
In particular, leaving out that the flock Nova software, which is investigative, not simple surveillance, is being added as a one-year contract.
I'm not highlighting that.
Also, as one of our council members pointed out, the initial MSA only allowed flock to terminate easily.
It did not allow the city of Berkeley to do the same.
Not only is that asymmetrical, that seems deliberate to me.
I don't understand why that would be in the contract.
Or it's just severe negligence.
This is reflective of a larger national struggle against so many companies that are surveilling us all the time.
Palantir is most notable, their AI system, which is being built to integrate all sorts of data.
But every single big tech company is implicated in this.
I also want to return to the justification of public safety.
First of all, if you are saying that drones are going to be used for firefighting, then propose drones for firefighting.
Do not pretend that drones being used for firefighting and policing are the same.
Second, the boundaries of what are going to be considered a crime are already expanding.
Trump just released a memorandum essentially announcing that he intends to criminalize left-wing organizing and protest under the guise of terrorism and violence.
Whether or not you consider yourself to be someone who is going to commit a crime, I suggest you reevaluate that because your status may change very soon.
I do not accept public safety as a justification for more surveillance, and I do not accept the existence of some cameras or an existing contract as a justification for furthering the contract or for more cameras and more surveillance.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Come up, come up.
Come on, folks.
Got to move.
Where's your..
another minute from someone? Okay, yeah.
Go ahead.
My name is Siak Mikheil, and I'm a resident of Southside.
I want to be clear.
The supplemental from Mayor Ishii is already a compromise.
It increases mass surveillance.
It puts Berkeley residents at risk.
When there is no concrete evidence to show that surveillance technologies help reduce crime.
However, we do have evidence that these technologies have been used to track immigrants, people seeking abortions, and even ex-partners of police officers.
Still, the mayor's supplemental rejects FLOC, which is the bare minimum.
FLOC already violated the contract with the city by working directly with ICE, but nothing was done about it.
How can you have any confidence that they'll follow the contract now? A $150,000 penalty is pennies for a company worth $7.5 billion.
A slap on the wrist is an understatement.
Lastly, our city is in a structural deficit, and every dollar matters.
Using these technologies, and especially working with a vendor as untrustworthy as FLOC, opens up the city to incredible legal liability.
Obviously, the worst impacts of the misuse of these technologies are people being unjustly detained and brutalized.
But the financial risk is very real as well.
We have seen headline after headline about the dangers of this tech.
Our safety needs to be addressed through investing in community, not mass surveilling it with tools created by major Trump donors.
Please reject mass surveillance and reject FLOC.
Also, I want to highlight anybody who's talking, please talk to my friends at Berkeley Copwatch.
They are organizing people to be more aware of this stuff.
And, yeah, I just want to get talking, because I know people are going this way, so go that way.
Thank you so much.
Come up, please.
As soon as the person's finished, can you please come up? Do you have public comment? Hi, my name's Amala, and I'm a student at Berkeley High.
And on a daily basis, I think about ICE coming to my school.
I think about ICE kidnapping my friends and family.
I think about the innocent lives, some younger than me, who have been shot, beaten, and disappeared by ICE.
I open my phone, and I see a woman and her daughter, SFO, in tears being kidnapped.
That was Sunday.
As a student who is terrified by the daily fascism that has become a normal part of my growing up, I'm begging you to use the power that you have to avoid a contract with FLOC, which works with ICE.
FLOC, as a tool of ICE, stands against everything this council and this city promises its constituents.
So please do your job and protect us to your fullest power.
If you choose to support that which supports ICE, this council will go down as standing on the wrong side of history.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm a technologist.
FLOC has a poor record of digital security and responses to security.
The real-time aggregation of the data is extremely difficult to not violate our privacy right.
And the safeguards mentioned about not connecting to third parties is actually difficult in practice.
Just like the best way to protect our data is to have it expire and not keep it, the best way to not have these kind of tools turn into mass surveillance is to not have them in the first place.
I'm an immigrant.
I've come to Berkeley.
I've made it my home.
I want to be proud of this place where I've made home.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Lisa Hoffman.
I'm one of the co-executive directors at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, an immigrant-serving organization based in Berkeley.
And we're turning 44 years old today.
It's our 44th anniversary.
I'm representing here the Berkeley Immigration Collaborative, which is a group of five Berkeley-based organizations who have over 40 years of experience serving immigrants.
I want to share with you that yesterday I spent the day on the phone with countless other organizations trying to find the woman and her U.S.
citizen daughter who were detained at SFO and get them legal help.
This is what we do day in and day out.
This is my colleague Alina, who is one of our attorneys.
We work tirelessly to help people who are being terrorized and sometimes disappeared.
This afternoon, we found out that they were both deported to Guatemala.
The last time we were here, this council unanimously voted to approve the sanctuary ordinance, codifying Berkeley's commitment to protecting immigrants and declaring that cooperating with the federal deportation machine is against our moral obligation as the first sanctuary city.
Continuing to spend Berkeley's taxpayer dollars on a company whose technology is being used across the country to deport our neighbors is the antithesis of sanctuary.
We have met with most of you individually, have participated in community listening sessions, and have shared our community's concerns and questions with you.
We have strived to listen to your perspectives while also not backing down on our core message.
Flock is a company whose investors are deeply tied to Trump's deportation machine and as a result has broken contracts and lied repeatedly.
Thank you.
Is that already two minutes? Yeah, that was two minutes.
Okay, you've got a minute here.
Go ahead.
As a result, has broken contracts and lied repeatedly about sharing data with the federal government.
This is not about creating an airtight contract that will somehow miraculously withstand the pressure of a well-funded federal machine intent on ripping apart immigrant families and sending them into danger.
I want to say to you very clearly, this is a moral decision in a unique political moment of state-sponsored terror and government overreach.
We are grateful to Mayor Ishii, Vice Mayor Lunapara, and Council Member Trago for proposing a supplemental which refuses to contract with Flock.
We urge you all to follow the excellent recommendations that were made by the PAB and we urge all of you to join us in taking a stand to protect our community.
Thank you.
Hi, good evening.
My name is Abigail Lesperance.
I am a Berkeley native and resident and this is my husband and daughter, also District 5.
My father at his 91 years had to leave early, District 6.
I am also an immigration attorney and a legal director at East Bay Community Law Center representing undocumented UC Berkeley students, community college students, and other Alameda County residents.
Recently, I want to share with you a story of my client who recently literally had her movements tracked using ALPR cameras.
After an accident, she was pulled over and exchanged information with the other driver and then she left.
The other driver called in the accident as a hit and run.
The investigating officer had our client's address and he went to her house, but she wasn't home.
So, what did he do? He turned to Flock.
And using Flock's ALPR cameras..
Were they giving you their minutes? Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, okay.
From both of you? One first, and then if I need another, I'll take it.
Okay, got it.
So, you have another minute.
Go ahead.
So, using the cameras and their warrantless and continuous monitoring of every community member's movements, the officer was instantly able to create a detailed record of her location history and pinpoint down to a 20-minute window where she would be driving both to and from work.
Does anybody want that for themselves? No! The next day, he positioned himself where he and when he knew she was going to be and detained her.
And this is just one example of how this type of surveillance impinges on all of our constitutional rights by enabling warrantless, large-scale data collection that violates privacy.
Yours, mine, everybody's.
Moreover, this constant surveillance also has been shown to chill free speech and suppress free association.
Is this the type of Berkeley that we want to live in? Is this representative of who we are and how we treat the most vulnerable among us? And those who are willing to speak truth to power, I don't think so.
Thank you.
Okay, so when you come up, if you can tell me if someone's giving you minutes.
So, this is for everyone.
When you come up, please let me know if someone's giving you minutes so that I can keep track of that.
And then we'll give you the right time and we won't interrupt your comments.
So, okay, go ahead.
Thank you so much.
I have a minute.
Good evening.
My name is Nunez-Cervantes with the Multicultural Institute.
Berkeley's January 2025 resolution reaffirming Berkeley as a sanctuary city, authored by Councilmember Blackabee, says, Sanctuary is fundamentally about public safety, the need for everyone in the community to feel safe.
When all community members, documented or undocumented, are able to attend school and after school programs, hospitals and health centers, and places of worship without the threat of deportation, we are promoting a more educated, healthy, and thriving community.
Sanctuary policies strengthen all of our lives.
This is a Berkeley we are fighting for, one where our families, friends, and neighbors feel safe without fear that our location is being tracked or shared with the federal government by FLOX technology.
We at the Multicultural Institute work directly with day laborers in Berkeley who do not feel safe looking for work while FLOX cameras are watching them.
Safety for some, at the expense of our most vulnerable, is not true safety.
We are also proud to train a dedicated group of allies and community patrollers who take daily shifts to look out for ICE activity.
We are deeply concerned that the current drone use policy will result in surveillance of mass response to an ICE raid, which could put our community patrollers at risk of federal prosecution and prevent them from conducting essential legal observation.
To actually promote public safety, the city can consider investing in violence prevention programs and mental health solutions that actually prevent crime, not just record it.
We understand and agree with the need of safety and firmly believe that contracting with FLOX will not contribute to public safety and instead will leave our communities in fear.
Thank you.
Yeah, you haven't given your minute yet.
Great.
So, two minutes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Hi, council.
Nice to see you all.
I've met most of you, worked with some of you.
My name is Rebecca Gurney.
I work for East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.
Continuing the Berkeley Immigration Collaborative comment that effective policing involves building community trust through transparency and accountability.
In various presentations by BPD, not once has there been an honest discussion of the completely unilateral access that FLOX has had to our ALPR cameras through the contract section 5.3, meaning that we have no idea how many times Berkeley's data has been shared with federal agencies.
Given FLOX investors' financial stake in the deportation machine, it should be expected that FLOX will quickly fold to any pressure from the Trump administration to share its data at great cost to our communities.
This month alone, police departments in Mountain View, Ventura County, and last week Modesto have explicitly accused FLOX of manipulating settings and sharing data with immigration agencies without the consent or knowledge of the department.
In Modesto, this breach was only discovered through a public records request.
If the city of Berkeley believes that FLOX is trustworthy, why are we only discovering these violations through public records requests? FLOX knew about these harms and only provided changes to departments that explicitly accused them of misconduct.
FLOX causes harm first and makes limited changes to preserve their contracts.
They do not care about falling sanctuary laws or the harm that this technology is causing.
Over 50 jurisdictions, a list that is growing every week, have decided that the risks of contracting with FLOX outweigh any purported safety benefits.
What calculus is Berkeley making that is somehow different from all of these other jurisdictions and city attorneys and police departments who are saying that this technology is not worth the risk? If you really care about public safety and effective policing, it starts with accountability.
We urge you to implement the suggestions of the Police Accountability Board, many of which are included in Mayor Ishii's supplemental.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Rachel Caffelli.
I'm from Oasis Legal Services.
We represent queer and trans asylum seekers from our office in Berkeley.
I'm here to give you an example of the type of harm we are talking about.
We have a trans client who applied for asylum over 10 years ago.
She was pulled over while driving.
The officers could not verify her California driver's license, so she was turned over to ICE, who arrested her and put her in detention, despite the fact that she had been waiting over 10 years for a chance to be heard.
She was held in a men's detention center until our attorneys were able to fight for her release.
There are thousands more stories of people in California and around the country who are being detained and arrested by ICE, separated from their families, loved ones, and community, and placed in dangerous and harmful detention centers.
Please take a moment to consider how you would feel if this was your family member or if your actions tonight were responsible for the prolonged detention or deportation of a BUSD family.
That is the harm that FLOC's cameras are aiding and the harm you will be— Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Two minutes.
Good evening, council members.
Abigail Esquivias with Social Justice Collaborative rounding out BIC's comment, and this is Lily, an attorney with SJC who's a resident of District 6.
At this point, we hope it's unmistakably clear that this community does not want FLOC.
As you have seen, Berkeley residents are strongly opposed to this contract, so we have to ask, for those of you voting to move forward with FLOC, who do you represent? Because Berkeley has told you no.
We are not here to negotiate a stronger contract, and we're not asking for better assurances.
We're asking you to stand in solidarity with the community.

Segment 10

We are here to talk about the communities you pledged to protect when you passed the sanctuary ordinance.
That ordinance was a promise, and the thing about promises is that they're tested.
It's easy to say I stand with immigrants.
Your actions must also reflect that.
Our teams work day in and day out to serve communities that are targeted by this administration.
SJC provides removal defense for immigrants who would otherwise not have access to legal aid, and we have fought to protect individuals who have been kidnapped from their homes, from their cars, and from ICE check-ins.
Some days our job feels impossible.
The last time we were here, I asked you to help make the job of the federal administration and the federal immigration enforcement harder.
This contract does not do that.
When, and not if, FLOC betrays your trust, this council will be responsible for violations and harm that follows.
Is a contract with FLOC worth losing the trust your constituents have placed with you? This is a moral question.
We urge you to stand with us in this fight, rather than support a company whose goals and profits are deeply connected to Trump and his administration.
The only way Berkeley can maintain its sanctuary values is by refusing to contract with FLOC.
Thank you.
George, come on up.
Yes, I have one minute from Grace, and if possible, one from Serena.
Okay, thank you.
I think that's all.
Hi, my name is George Lipman.
I'm of the Peace and Justice Commission.
You can sit down if you want to.
Go ahead.
Yeah, thank you.
This is the city's Social Justice Advisory Commission.
I'm speaking for the chair, Pastor Duane Phillips, on behalf of the commission.
On March 9th, the commission voted by 11 to 1 with two abstentions to oppose any contracts with FLOC safety.
We pass this recommendation.
Adopt a policy approving the following action with regard to safeguards for Berkeley's surveillance-derived images and footage.
Cancel Berkeley's FLOC safety contracts for public surveillance images and video footage due to FLOC's repeated sharing of such data with immigration authorities and the inherent exposure of cloud-based storage to access by the Trump administration.
Now, I want to step back a second, and people say, well, where's the smoking gun? Well, how is FLOC involved in any of this? Well, I just want to mention that two years ago, Brandon Upchurch, an African-American civilian, was pulled over by the Toledo, Ohio police due to a mistake by FLOC safety software.
The pullover resulted in the officer setting his dog upon Mr.
Brandon Upchurch, seriously mauling him.
Upchurch was completely innocent, but the officer believed his faulty software over the man's protests.
Now, back to my text.
One of the important messages from the commission to the council is about the precautionary principle, which I hope you're all familiar with.
Council adopted it 20 years ago.
The principle requires that decisions rely upon science, particularly social science, and not solely on politics.
Most important, the burden of proof must be put on those proposing a new program rather than on those who are opposed.
It is time to apply the precautionary principle also to the impact on social justice.
Now, I want to briefly touch on five issues that none of the proposals that support a FLOC relationship speak to.
No contract language will protect our data from judicial warrants or FISA warrants.
FLOC has already broken its word to Berkeley, notably by lying that they do not work with ICE while maintaining a pilot program with that agency.
Former PAB member Kitty Calvita's letter contains shocking information about FLOC, her letter to you.
She demonstrates that FLOC's biggest investor, Mr.
Andreessen, is a MAGA booster, considers DEI and immigration to be two forms of discrimination.
TechCrunch has shown that FLOC corruptly hired a local mayor and city council members in Moreno Valley, California, to promote its business and get contracts signed.
This is the swamp that Berkeley is preparing to dive into.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kit, you've already spoken, so you can't come back again.
Not like that.
You've already spoken.
I'm sorry.
You can speak, certainly.
Yeah, please.
Go ahead.
Yeah, which one? This one.
For far less, well, I want to say what I want to say.
Thank you so much, Mayor and Igor and Cecilia.
And I just think Berkeley and FLOC are absolutely so counter, counter, opposite camps, opposite camps.
Isn't there a California law, AB54, that says data cannot be exchanged in data collection with other jurisdictions outside the state of California? I think so.
I just read something from the new police chief of Richmond who said FLOC has not been honest at all, and we are going to absolutely review and set aside any contracts with FLOC.
Well, I wish I could be more articulate.
I was sort of pulled in.
You did good.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
Kit.
Kit.
It's not written.
You need to write that if that's the rule.
Hi, everyone.
I'm sharing a testimony today from someone who didn't feel safe enough to be here.
My name is Johnny Silva.
I am from Honduras, and I have lived in the U.S.
with my wife and our two children for 27 years.
In 1999, I became the beneficiary of a temporary status called TPS, and I'm a current member of the National TPS Alliance.
I worked for a company as a driver for over 27 years.
My wife and I have contributed to the economy of this country by working and paying our taxes.
For those of us with TPS, it would be devastating to lose the status that allows us to work legally and to renew our driver's license.
Unfortunately, in the current political situation, some people who have TPS, people who have followed all the rules and have given the U.S.
government all of our information, are being racially profiled and deported.
The mass deportation is taking place across the country, and so a lot of fear into our families.
We do not approve this contract.
Vote no on FLOC.
Thank you.
Ben Franklin said, Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
As we give our police more and more control over our lives, we should remember the quote at the end of the movie Nuremberg, and I'll paraphrase.
The only clue to what police can do is what police have done.
So stop and think about that.
Think about the police brutality we've seen over the last decade.
Think about the intrusion the NSA, CIA, and ICE have done.
Do we really want to give them more surveillance control over our lives? And I'll quote Orwell, War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
I guess we can now add surveillance as safety.
As we give our police more and more control over our lives, do we really want that? And I'd like to think about what our counsel is.
Are we going to be the MAGA council? Are we going to be the MAGA? Which council members are going to be the MAGA council members? They're going to vote for more surveillance.
They're going to vote for Peter Thiel.
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks.
Sorry, you're second.
OK, go ahead.
You've got two minutes.
Hey, I'm Stu Ralston, dad from down the street.
I just want to say a quick thanks for the smooth streets and some great public schools.
Really wonderful council member Terry, who I will not address directly.
Thanks for coming to our block party.
Great to see you again.
OK, so the proposal for Flock is, I understand, to keep us safe.
The key question in that is, well, who's us? Right.
And the truth is what we've learned is we keep us safe.
We keep us safe.
I lived here in East Bay for 14 years and I'm proudly from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In January, I went back because I saw my community being torn apart by a ruthless federal onslaught.
What I saw there has direct impact on the legitimate concerns that are being raised here tonight.
We've all seen the footage, the murders, kidnaps, trauma and economy cratering.
And these are troubling times, empowered by surveillance technology and lawless law enforcement.
Even the police, the police chiefs of the 10 metro areas said that the federal enforcement was not making the citizens and the people safer.
It was making even the police less safe.
What we saw less of in the news, but what held the city together, was the community.
The neighbors packing deliveries and groceries for their neighbors.
The moms delivering breast milk because other mothers were detained and kept away from their children.
The dads taking terrified neighbors' kids to schools.
And I share these stories because it was these neighbors, like everyone here, who kept the community safe.
We keep us safe.
These quiet heroes were called domestic terrorists and agitators.
Suddenly, because they supported their neighbors, they were no longer the us that law enforcement was there to protect.
The idea that Berkeley would be able to keep license plate data, video recordings, audio recordings from flock cameras safe from this federal government.
Pretty laughable, sorry, respectfully.
And the Supremacy Clause, of course, gives the federal government rights to anything deemed related to immigration enforcement.
And that's when they follow the Constitution.
Flock won't keep us safe.
We keep us safe.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Hello, I'm Allison.
I live in District 4.
And I just want to say, not only do I oppose Berkeley's partnership with Flock, but any expansion of mass surveillance.
Mass surveillance plays right into the aims of the Trump administration.
It also continues the legacy of COINTELPRO.
It continues the legacy of the PATRIOT Act.
And one thing that hasn't been discussed tonight is that even when it's been cited, some of the victories that Flock has caused around catching and solving crimes.
What about prevention of crime? Surveillance does not keep us safer.
We need housing.
We need funding.
We need food.
And then not only, so when Flock, not if, but when Flock is used by the government to breach our privacy, the amount of money and time and energy going into addressing that, both as far as public trust, will be taken away from investing in the services that actually prevent crime and actually promote safety.
I don't care about one action or another.
But it's like, safety for who? Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm David Allen.
I grew up here and I'm still here.
Let's be very clear.
We're talking tonight about contracting out an unprecedented expansion of mass surveillance to a corporation that has acted in bad faith over and over again.
Many of you seem to think that we can, that that can be okay as long as we try to predict the problems and write contracts and usage policies against them.
That idea is doomed to fail.
Flock Safety as a private corporation is vulnerable to federal subpoenas in a way that we, a local municipality, a sanctuary city, are not.
The very contracts in this proposal have carve-outs, carve-out language to allow them to do that.
Furthermore, as the pub points out, the proposal limits are insufficient.
Flock Safety and BPD will find ways to stretch and break the limits we try to place on them.
This also creates a centralized target for malicious actors from a vendor with many documented security issues.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I have three friends who've ceded me time.
One, two, three.
So I believe four minutes, if I use it.
My name's Leah.
I'm a Berkeley resident of District 3, a parent of three Berkeley students or grads, a pastor of a church called Haven Berkeley Faith Community, and I had the opportunity, like Stuart spoke of, to visit Minneapolis in January.
I was one of about 20 faith leaders from the Bay Area that joined about 700 faith leaders across the country to meet up with the faith community in Minneapolis, learn from their experiences, participate in the large day of action and general strike that took place at the end of January, and I witnessed firsthand the chilling way that the surveillance technology was being weaponized, not only to terrorize immigrants and people of color, which it did, but also whole swaths of the community who were standing up to protect their neighbors, people like Renee Good, people like Alex Preti.
I met people who had to stop delivering groceries to their neighbors who were trapped inside their homes because they knew that law enforcement was using tools like these to follow them and kidnap the people that they were going to try to help.
I saw something else, though, that, besides the terror of an American occupation when I was there, that was truly inspiring, because in Minneapolis, thousands of people have been taken to the streets to push back on this authoritarianism, and one of the ways they've been doing this is through singing.
And the movement..
...and show us your courage.
Leave flock, leave flock behind.
It's okay to change your mind, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay to change your mind.
Show us your courage, leave flock, leave flock behind.
It's okay to change your mind, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay to change your mind.
Show us your courage, leave flock behind.
It's okay to change your mind, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay to change your mind.
Show us your courage, leave flock behind.
It's okay to change your mind, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
One more time, one more time.
It's okay to change your mind.
Show us your courage, leave flock behind.
It's okay to change your mind, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
And you can join, and you can join us, join us here anytime.
Thank you friends, I hope you will.
Thank you.
Thank you for the lovely song.
Okay, thank you.
Good evening, council.
I'm reading testimony on behalf of an immigrant community member.
This is what she wrote.
My name is Claudia, originally from Honduras.
I have lived in the U.S.
for 27 years with temporary protected status.
I have two sons, one 29 and the other 21.
I work as a caregiver for seniors and children with disabilities.
Although my job is hard, I love doing what I do.
We are hardworking people and don't rely on government assistance.
Rather, we contribute economically to this country's economy and are active members of the community.
My family and I are desperately afraid.
We have been active in the TPS campaign for permanent residency.
In this political environment, I'm worried that we could be targeted and that video camera data could be shared with federal immigration enforcement.
We have a mixed status family and are worried that any one of us could be detained at any time for no reason and sent back to a country where we have nothing and would face extortion or persecution.
For this reason, I ask that the Berkeley City Council reject the contract with FROG and stand with immigrant communities.
Thank you.
Applause One minute.
You're giving your minute? I have one minute.
Okay, you're giving your minute.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Sam.
I'm a resident of District 8.
The concept of data fatalism came up a few times at Mayor Ishii's town hall last week in South Berkeley, once by a fellow attendee at our table session and again by Chief Lewis while answering questions.
Data fatalism is the idea that we already have so much of our lives online and digitally accessible.
What's to worry about one more thing? I understand that privacy exists on a spectrum and everyone has different tolerances.
Meta-knowing your political leanings or Amazon understanding your buying habits may be worth it if those services provide enough relative value to you.
But using these services is a personal choice that you can regulate and opt in or out of.
With an artificial intelligence-powered surveillance network, compliance is automatic and there's no choice or opt-out.
Our freedom and liberty to exist as private citizens in a public space, to remain free from searches and seizures, and to freely voice views or protest are greatly compromised when our personal lives and data are saved, indexed, and used to power AI law enforcement for profit and against our will.
Please say no to this FLOC contract.
Resist the slide into fascism.
Invest in addressing the root causes of crime.
Invest in the people and communities of Berkeley and the East Bay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up.
Hi.
My name's Adrian.
I live in District 3.
So I just wanted to read some quotes verbatim from press releases from cities across California.
So from Ventura.
Although BPD settings were set to California-only access, a vendor-enabled nationwide query function allowed out-of-state agencies to query Ventura's data.
These queries were completed without the department's knowledge or authorization.
In Mountain View, federal law enforcement agencies accessed Mountain View's Flock Safety ALPR system by a nationwide search setting that was turned on by Flock Safety.
The setting was enabled without MVPD's permission or knowledge.
In Oxnard, even though OPD's Flock Safety security settings had been set to California-only access, a vendor-enabled nationwide query allowed agencies from outside California, which also included federal agencies, to query OPD's data without OPD's knowledge or approval.
So this has happened in Santa Cruz, Capitola, Richmond, El Cerrito, many other cities across California.
Flock is not trustworthy.
Please cancel this.
Thank you.
Hi, Council.
I'm a community member in District 3.
I do community organizing in my neighborhood, and I just want to say that I have never once heard any person that I've interacted with in the neighborhood in the community garden organizing against surveillance, that they want to feel safer by having cameras in the neighborhood.
I feel the safest when I know who my neighbors are, when we know we're looking out for each other, when we know we can feed each other, we can support each other.
Cameras have never done any of that, and I also resent the victims of crime section from the police board.
As someone who was a victim of a violent crime, a camera didn't intervene.
A community member did.
So I don't feel that these surveillance-like measures will increase anybody's safety.
I really urge the Council to cancel this contract and to go further than that and to just decrease surveillance across the city of Berkeley to increase safety for community members because we look out for each other.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Sorry, a minute from..
I've got two minutes over there.
If you raise your hand.
Yeah.
Where's your second one? Oh, okay.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council.
My name is Solly Alpert.
I am chair of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, speaking in my own individual capacity tonight.
There is disagreement in the community about surveillance, whether the privacy and state oppression risks are worth the security it is purported to bring.
I and many others believe it is not, and I'm happy another time with any of you to have the conversation about why I, as the child of lesbian unionist Jewish mothers, oppose mass surveillance.
But even if we did all agree that surveillance was the solution that these technologies were the way to make us safe, FLOC would not be an acceptable partner for the city of Berkeley.
The Council unanimously passed the Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance and the Sanctuary City Ordinance.
FLOC violated that this summer when it came out that they contracted with ICE.
It is easy to support these values in concept.
It does not demonstrate courage to do so.
The real test of your character comes when it is no longer a theoretical question, but a question of competing priorities.
Council Member Blackaby, you were the author of at least one of those items, and it will be your vote tonight that determines the outcome here.
Thank you to the mayor, to Council Members Lunaparra, Tregub, and Bartlett for your supplementals.
I am extremely confident that the people of Berkeley stand behind you.
And for the rest of this Council and all Council Members, please, please follow the recommendations of the Police Accountability Board.
Do not approve a contract with FLOC.
Now, to the public, this Council has repeatedly failed to uphold the values that Berkeley holds dear of sanctuary, justice, and accountability.
I, along with a number of other leaders, are working on drafting a ballot measure that would undo a number of the changes that this Council has brought.
And I will be in the back of the room with a QR code that you can scan if you're interested in getting involved.
So find me if you'd like to join in our effort to fix the harm that this Council has caused.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Moni.
I'm from District 1.
I did not come prepared for the speech, but I have to say something about this.
It's shocking that in a city with such an educated populace, a progressive populace, a sanctuary city, the home of free speech, and the neighbor of the Black Panthers, that we would even consider a contract with a surveillance company.
It makes me wonder if anyone on the City Council has read 1984.
This proposal has widespread opposition, so I'm finding it a little bit mind-boggling why we're even presented with this and why we're wasting the energy, resources, intelligence, talent that this community has to even consider this proposal.
I hope you all do the right thing, like Mountain View, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara.
Thanks.
I'll just finish that comment.
If Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz can do the right thing, Berkeley can too.
We can still save our soul, so please do that.
You can always change your mind.
Thank you.
Sorry, woman with the choker, who were you pointing to that was giving the minute? Oh, you were giving.
Okay, thank you.
Ready? Good? Yeah.
Hello.
I am Roberto.
I'm a resident of Berkeley.
Berkeley is my home.
I have lately the displeasure of writing software, so I feel very strongly about how time has progressed, all the ample evidence of what technology has done to our lives.
I think a lot of us can agree here.
I have personal anecdotes that your data has been uploaded, replicated, shared many times over, arbitrary information, what you actually like to buy.
You're at a crossroads here where it's no longer going to be arbitrary.
It's going to be video footage.
It's going to be images.
We've seen that buzzwords like SOC 2 compliance, GDPR, end-to-end encryption, TOS.
Has any of that meaning tamped down on tech companies? I don't feel like it.
Thank you.
Okay, that's all I got.
Hi, my name is Kelsey.
I live in District 1.
I just wanted to come up here and remind you all that you're public servants.
You work for us.
The police are public servants also.
They work for us.
And Berkeley has showed up here and all over the city to say, we don't want any part of this.
So it's ridiculous that we all have to stay here until 1 a.m.
begging you not to pass this when we have proven and said it over and over again that we do not want it.
SOC is aggressively incompetent, and they've collaborated with fascists openly and have no accountability.
And there's endless examples and data about this that you've been given.
So pushing this vote through just shows that you don't care about black, brown, or any marginalized community members.
And you should absolutely be ashamed if you push any part of this through.
And it will absolutely come back to haunt you because this whole country is sliding into techno-fascism.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I am receiving one minute from my friend right here.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Micah.
I live in District 6.
And I am a therapist and social worker who works with immigrant communities, with a lot of Latina communities, namely kids.
And as you already know, stress has been at an all-time high.
One kid that I worked with was recently admitted to a hospital because of suicidality.
And largely it was due to immigration stress.
Every time his single mom went to work, he worried that that day would be the last day that he'd ever see his mom.
And that was before the FLOC expansion that y'all are thinking about.
So if you pass the FLOC contract and if the kids learn that y'all, the city, put everyone in danger like that, their mental health will plummet even lower than it is.
Now, FLOC surveillance will make our families stress every time they just need to step outside the door.
The kid I mentioned has just barely been able to pull himself up from the abyss.
And passing this would risk pushing him and many others into the abyss past the point of no return.
So this decision would cause real mental health, mental and physical harm to our communities.
If you really care about serving Berkeley residents, vulnerable Berkeley residents, like y'all say you are, I would love to see y'all cancel this contract.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You're getting a minute from someone.
just one minute.
Just one minute.
go ahead.
Hello.
I'm a resident of district three.
First, I want to applaud the audience for their patience earlier to sit through BPDs and some council members downplaying and straight up dishonesty of the harms FLOC does, has done and continues to do.
Thank you, QPAB.
Your research voices the reality that FLOC is dangerous to our safety.
If the original report and that so many harmful truths of surveillance tech, we have no reason to trust why or how FLOC will be used.
FLOC gives us data to federal agencies to commit violence on immigrants and all of us.
They do not care about contracts, laws or promises.
The people of Berkeley oppose FLOC every time it comes up.
We are here at this late hour unpaid to say it again.
And it is time for you to counsel to represent our opposition to that.
No FLOC, no surveillance, reject Berkeley's contract with FLOC.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Marilyn.
I'm a resident of district three.
I work for the state of California.
That means that.

Segment 11

I serve the citizens of California, and in turn that means that you, our council members, serve us.
Literally, everyone here is your boss.
So that means you have to listen to us, and look at how many people showed up for us tonight.
And if you're not going to be listening to us, then I guess we'll be voting you guys out.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Good evening, and thank you for this opportunity.
I'm Omowali Fowles.
I have a minute from someone back here who told me to announce my minute.
Anyway, sorry, who has your..
Who's your minute from? Oh, thank you.
I'm the former Health Commissioner for the City of Berkeley.
I'm also a member of Berkeley Equity Summit Alliance, and I'm also the Housing Director at Telegraph Community Ministry Center, a roof over their heads emergency to permanent housing.
We house homeless people and feed them also and have a pantry, and if you need a flyer, I'll put the flyers in the back so you guys can use them and hand them out to whomever you need.
But the thing that I'm concerned about today is consent and compelling reasons.
We do not have consent to do the contract with FLOC.
And we should not have done the contract with FLOC, because even as a city upholding California Constitution Article 1, Section 1, guarantees an inevitable right to privacy against both government and private entities.
This protects against unwarranted sharing of personal information with third parties and government enforced through strict laws requiring consent for data disclosure.
You are also, this contract with FLOC is in violation of government code 11015.5, which says you cannot have personal information shared with third-party persons, governments, businesses, etc.
except that there is a legal consent of the user.
We don't have any of that.
I have not signed anything for FLOC to give my information to ICE.
That's ridiculous.
I don't know anybody else in this room who has.
You haven't either.
So apparently you are in violation of the California Constitution, which also shows that you're partially in violation of the federal one.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Okay.
It is 1128, so I want to take two more public comments, and then we're going to take another quick break.
I've got staff, my staff have some numbers.
They're going to pass them out so that you can keep track of where you are in line, and we'll take a 10-minute break after this person and the next person.
Okay, go ahead.
Hi, my name is Jen Phelps Quinn.
I am a NICE agent.
That is not ICE.
I've been throwing a weekly dance party on the overpass that has a protest labor.
Nice, not ICE.
I want to thank BPD.
First of all, we were possibly swatted last week.
BPD showed up and found that there was no man with a rifle on the overpass, and they were very, very helpful and sweet and understanding.
I know that there are major concerns about police brutality across the country.
In my 30-plus years living here in Berkeley, the only experiences I've had with BPD have been positive, including a time when I was attacked in my home.
So I really appreciate the thoughtful and very reasonable and empathic officers of the BPD.
My concerns about this are not that BPD is going to let us down.
It is that Flock is a Trojan horse, and all my neighbors and all the parents at Berkeley.
Thank you.
I'm sorry, your time is up.
Thank you.
I believe I have one minute over here.
One minute.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Adriana Betti, Executive Director of RISE, also the Director of the Native Youth Group in Berkeley, Kweli Mitotiani-Mashika.
I'm speaking to you as a First Nations woman also, and I want to talk about how drones have impacted our Berkeley youth and how they could be impacting our youth.
In the early 80s, I protested apartheid.
In 2016, I was at Standing Rock.
While at Standing Rock, I was photographed, facial recognitions, license plates, all kinds of things like that.
That has impacted me and put me on a number of different supposedly dangerous lists for exercising my constitutional right.
Every year, we travel internationally, the Berkeley Youth Group.
Last year, we were invited to the International Indigenous Leadership Gathering as honored guests, as well as a number of different other gatherings.
Due to security, I had to cancel every single one of those trips.
I'm the only adult that travels with those young people.
If they detain me, they detain every one of those young people.
We've crossed the international border before when it wasn't as heightened as it is right now.
They detain us.
They actually took a kid away from me one time and put him in a separate room.
The rights that we get as Native people, we all know they're not the same.
The injustice is the same.
I know they're talking about deporting us.
A number of elders have been picked up.
Where do you deport us to? I don't know.
Berkeley Youth, for 2025, all their trips were canceled into British Columbia.
For 2026, we have canceled all of our trips into British Columbia.
Actually, we've canceled all our international trips.
We're still doing stuff inside the United States carefully.
The other thing, as a Berkeley grad and going to Berkeley, we see that our kids are still protesting and exercising their constitutional rights.
As they do protest and say these cameras are around, who gets the advantage of having those cameras? Does that mean these young people that are expressing their right now, just like me and Standing Rock, are now ..
That's two minutes? Thank you.
I know two minutes is fast.
Okay.
Just thanks, Ms.
Betty.
One thing, what if we have to start wearing masks? Okay.
Someone else is giving you a minute.
Go ahead.
I just wanted to finish that thought.
Thank you so much.
As these young people are trying to express their rights, does that mean that our students now have to wear masks at protest? Then my question becomes, as we start wearing masks at protest to protect ourselves from these surveillance things, what problem does that cause for our police department? Thank you, Ms.
Betty.
If you did not get a number, make sure you get a number from Julie, who's back there talking to folks.
Otherwise, you'll end up at the back of the line.
Please make sure you get a number from Julie, and then that way you can move around.
We're going to take 10 minutes.
Okay.
Okay.
Recording stopped.
Okay.
Recording in progress.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you all so much for your patience.
Folks, please.
Okay.
If you can please get in line based on your numbered pieces of paper.
Thank you so much to my staff for handing those out.
Thank you all for your patience.
Okay.
Are you okay? Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Okay.
Folks, I need it to be quiet so that we can start a public comment again.
If you're going to have a conversation, please take it outside.
Thank you.
Okay.
Coming up.
I just need one minute.
I'm a resident of District 8, and I am deeply concerned about surveillance and the privatization and monetization of our personal data.
And I question whether license plate readers keep us safe.
Even if the city demands..
Sorry.
Hold on.
Your mic went out.
42 seconds.
Go ahead.
Try again.
Even if the city demands..
Hold on.
Let's pause for a second.
Hello? Okay.
Even if the city demands..
I'll give you more time, but go ahead.
Okay.
I don't need more time.
Even if the city demands a contract with escape clauses and punitive provisions for noncompliance, a private company will hold to the demands of a federal agency such as ICE.
As for public safety, FLOC provides a false sense of security.
Supporters cite anecdotal evidence when FLOC aided a criminal investigation, but an analysis of a large set of license plate reader data from 63 California law enforcement agencies found that only 0.05% of data collected was relevant to a public safety concern.
Berkeley's values in support of civil liberties as well as our city's commitment to the safety of our immigrant neighbors is in direct opposition to FLOC safety's corporate mission.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Emma.
I just wanted to say it's kind of insulting that you're having this meeting in front of a pride flag and a Black Lives Matter flag while you're actively contributing to building an environment that's making myself and all the other trans people of color just completely terrified right now.
I feel like multiple council members here under the pretty frankly childish understanding that if you put the right people in charge of these surveillance tools, FLOC or otherwise, or if you put the right regulations in place for these tools that you can find good uses for them.
But we have a federal government and a police department right now that has shown time and time again that they have no interest in being regulated.
They will do whatever and whatever they want to get access to the people that they want.
So I urge you to please just not do any of this FLOC or say no to all of the surveillance technology.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have an extra minute.
Sorry.
Oh, thank you.
Over here.
Hello, my name is Valerie Sizemore.
I moved to Berkeley back in 2012 to work on the risks from artificial intelligence.
I first want to say about the city that I feel safe enough.
We don't need more safety.
The balance of safety and freedom is already great just as it is.
We do not need to expand surveillance.

Segment 12

Second thing, I have watched my freedoms erode as a millennial.
I was born in 1989.
As I grew up, the children a year or two years ahead of me, they had more freedoms in almost every way, in school, and in driving.
And so I have watched this country walk back our freedoms in the name of safety, in all of these little ways, and I don't like it.
The second thing is that this council, many of these members here seem incredibly naive about how tech companies work.
They are going to try to trap you in this contract.
They'll say they won't, but they are trying.
Right now, they're scheming in whatever Zoom chat they're in about how to trap you in that contract, despite you thinking you've schemed your way out of it.
But once they have you, they will squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze.
And we know that ICE is coming for more people.
They're coming for me next.
They're coming for the immigrants now, but I'm a trans person.
They're coming for me next.
And I see faces on this council that are also in the set of people they are coming for next.
And when Trump's Nazis come here to murder you, Flock will be right there helping them.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, my name is Todd Darling.
I'm in District 3.
Technology is not neutral, and this is not taking place in a vacuum.
Big data has become the politically aligned handmaiden of the Trump regime.
This contract will help them.
Flock, Meta, Google, Palantir, Y Combinator, and Dries and Horowitz et al.
decided that their growth potential resides with defense contracts and surveillance.
They've departed from making useful gadgets to stuff that kills people, surveils the population, or murders them when they get angry about it, as we've seen in Minneapolis and other places.
In 2026, the utility of this technology is far out.
The dangers of this technology far outweighs the marginal use of it.
Drones are cheap enough that if the fire department needs one, they can get one.
Trump's surveillance is almost done.
Thanks for your comment.
Give me 30 seconds, somebody.
Sorry, you're supposed to do this before.
You're going to give your time? Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Trump's surveillance state does not need any more help from us.
The real perpetrators are in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.
As a council, we're asking you to defend Berkeley, not join the perpetrators.
Get rid of Flock.
Do not sign this contract.
We do not need more surveillance.
Thank you.
Learning about the existence of BPD's real-time information center has been nothing but appalling.
Community video streams fed into the alleged real-time information center system, yet there is no mention of any auditing policy that will take place when data breaches take place via third-party platforms.
Despite this, Flock has historically proven integration paths with quote-unquote community streams, like Amazon Ring cameras, further stacking the layers of this data-sharing nightmare.
These are private corporations that have the provision to collaborate without explicit city approval.
Increased reliance on Flock will make it easier for Flock to deploy new technologies and collaborations without council approval.
And frankly, BPD knows this because of their flimsy plea to avoid door-to-door canvassing in order to obtain this footage.
Open data sharing.
This is a slippery slope.
We don't only have eyes to worry about using these drones in surveillance.
In the beginning of the meeting, we had multiple commenters pointing out the issues of BPD, whose excessive brutality resulted in a well-known 2015 civil rights lawsuit and who are currently engaging in well-documented racial profiling.
The chief, without council approval, unilaterally struck out more than two-thirds of the current use of force policy in December, including the requirement to attempt de-escalation before employing force.
The so-called Public Safety Subcommittee wants to authorize BPD to use chemical weapons, including tear gas.
Our PAB is gutted and has no enforcement capability.
The independent policy review commissioned by the PAB from the Berkeley Criminal Justice and Law Center also showed that BPD's claims about the efficacy of this technology are false.
I'll quote, Claims that drones as first responding technologies improve safety, response time, and staffing efficiencies advanced by vendors and captured in the department's policies remain largely unsubstantiated.
Whose safety are you actually considering? Because it is not ours.
This Berkeley exceptionalism of it can't happen here is why this is happening here and why it keeps happening everywhere.
Thank you.
You're giving your, okay, your minute.
Good evening.
My name is Brenda Grisham.
I'm the principal, one of the principal officers of SAFE, the recall of Pamela Price.
I'm here as a mother who has lost her son to gun violence in Oakland.
I'm an advocate for public safety.
I have a daughter and three grandchildren.
I live right here in Berkeley, and I don't have any confidence that any of you care about the lives of my African American family.
All I've heard is what Flock has not done.
I haven't heard any of you tell the positive side of Flock.
The young lady that was trafficked to another city and Flock was there to save her life.
The families of people that have mental illnesses that have been brought back home because of Flock.
The guns that have been taken off the street because of Flock.
And none of you can tell any of us how many people have been deported because of Flock.
You can't tell us that.
All there is are the stories of what Flock has done wrong.
I haven't heard anything that Flock has done right.
And then to top it off, the men and women sitting right here that come to work here every single day, the fire department and the police officers, their lives are being disrespected.
They have families that go home too, just like everybody else.
They know better than we do what they need to be safe.
There needs to be a balance.
There needs to be a coming together to make sure that all residents, not just the immigrants, the immigrants and the residents, you serve all of them.
And you need to do just that.
Don't make a hasty decision because you have a room full of people that don't have anything positive to say.
Because there's a lot positive about Flock, and there's no perfect system.
Every system out there has a flaw.
And if you move to another system, somebody ain't going to agree with that either.
Thank you.
Hey, folks, no booing.
She's entitled to her opinion.
There's a minute for this person from here.
OK, go ahead.
I'm also with Brenda.
We did the recall of Pamela Price, Shang Tao corruption, 95 years in prison.
She's facing and I've been fighting for public safety for years from San Jose.
And yes, last week I was at Richmond when they made the decision to continue the camera after they paused it.
And the reason is because they are in Richmond.
There were two hundred seventy four violent criminals that were being taken off the streets.
And one of them actually was kidnapping a young lady.
They had her in a car.
Her phone was on.
It was pinging.
And they needed a camera to rescue her.
But they had turned it off last November so they could rescue her.
Many cases like this violent criminals were victimizing people.
So they decide to put safety guardrails in place so that because we could be safe and still have sanctuary policies.
No immigrants were deported.
No residents were deported out of Richmond, nor Burke, nor Oakland.
And that's why the city council in Oakland voted 71 to continue to Fox safety cameras.
And let me tell you, Mountain View might have paused their program.
Other cities, Ventura might have paused their program.
Maybe 40, 50 cities have paused their program.
But six thousand plus communities continue to use the Fox camera system.
And for good reason.
So that's not in case you guys fail that.
Ninety nine plus percent of communities choose to use Fox for public safety because it provides a vital service.
It saves lives.
It solves crimes, shootings, homicides, violent crimes.
Thank you.
Don't boo him.
He's entitled to speak to his opinions.
We don't allow booing.
Go ahead.
I have a minute from somebody in the audience.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Hi, council people.
I would like to start with some quick rebuttals to what was just said.
I mean, it's almost not even worth my time to rebut these points because of the extreme paucity of people who actually support.
So I'll possibly meaning lack.
There is a lack of them.
They have brought more signs than there are people.
It has been overwhelming that the community does not support this flawed contract.
Absolutely overwhelming.
I'd also like to take issue with this idea that it's either the community or immigrants.
Immigrants are our community.
I'd also like to respond to something that the police department said.
They said that these cameras pay for themselves because they come out of the existing department budget.
Now, how is that paying for itself? I think that's us paying them.
Is it not? Is that not how tax dollars work? Is this not on our dime? I get that it's within their budget, but the Berkeley Police Department has been and continues to really dominate our city budget.
So the idea that these cameras aren't going to cost us anything because it's coming out of the police budget, the police budget comes out of our pockets.
I would also like to respond to I believe it was the chief who said, oh, crime doesn't respect boundaries.
We need these cameras because crime doesn't respect boundaries.
You know what else doesn't respect the boundary? A FISA warrant.
And if you collect this data, you can't protect it.
There is no way to protect this data from a FISA warrant.
Any data you collect can be used by the federal government.
It just can be.
And this idea that we're speculating wildly that no one has been deported because of flock.
Look at what is going on in this country.
Somebody was just snatched in SFO.
ICE is roaming our streets and Berkeley as a sanctuary city will be a target.
So any data that we are collecting on our community is data that will be accessed by the federal government and we will not have recourse.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I know you opened this meeting with the Holocaust remembrance thing, and it just made me think about how the Nazis would have loved flock.
And I really wonder what kind of commemoration we're going to have in 50 years after you do this.
I want to bring attention to this whistle on my key chain and let you know why I have it, because I know that at any moment armed mass thugs are going to come into our community with impunity and kidnap and terrorize our neighbors.
And they are going to know exactly where to go and when because of flock and because of if you pass it, your support for this tonight.
So please do the right thing.
We are here to say overwhelmingly.
Do not stab us in the back so that ICE can shoot us in the face.
How clear do we have to make it for you? Please do the right thing tonight.
Thank you.
Greetings.
My name is Ian Hart.
I live in District three.
I would also like to shine some light on the moral question that and the moral stand that we're asking you to take tonight.
I want you to use your imagination.
Imagine that it's the year 1935 or 1936 and your constituents have come here to say, we don't want you to enter into a contract with IBM or Kodak.
We know that they make great punch cards.
We know that they make great film.
But they're also propping up the Nazi regime.
They're using those punch cards to enforce the Nuremberg laws.
They're using that film, which is made with forced labor and labor camps to carry out their agenda.
And so I want you to imagine that.
Maybe city councils across the country divested from those companies and we didn't have to commemorate the Holocaust.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Ida.
District three.
I'll quote Ben Franklin again.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Have we learned nothing in the past 25 years since the Patriot Act unleashed the eroding of our civil liberties? Here in Berkeley, as you can see, we should and do know better.
Now is absolutely not the time to expand surveillance powers.
Some of the contractual muscle flexing suggestions laid out in the supplementals might sound reasonable in the world where the rule of law is followed and respected.
But the past 14 months of terror inflicted on us by the federal government have shown us that we absolutely cannot rely on the rule of law to protect us at this time.
I implore you to consider the dire nature of current events.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Good evening.
My name is Jason Martins.
I just want to talk about the idea of a budget as a moral document, and we don't have choices.
We can't make every choice, and we are choosing this instead of something else.
Live Free is a great example of an organization that has proven to reduce violence in our community, and they don't have funding right now.
But in a 30 million budget deficit scenario, we're going to spend money on surveillance cameras.
What kind of morals and what kind of values are we demonstrating? Thank you.
Madam Mayor Council, I'm conflicted.
I stood here as a student today, and I heard many people of opposite color talk about the plight of Black people or Latino people.
Somebody even said Black Lives Matter.
Somebody just said 1935.
I can remember in 1935 or around that time, our people being hung.
I wouldn't know that unless it was documented.
Even in your chambers, when I came to the aid of a Black woman to defuse a situation, I was accused of being threatened or a threat.
Maybe I was.
Maybe I wasn't.
If it was not for documentation for young Black men as well in today's society, we would be doing 25 to life to prove our innocence.
I am a crisis responder.
I respond to scenes when people are dead.
I've saved many different people, three grandkids and a grandmother, out of a fire.
They would not know that.
They would think I'm a threat because I'm a Black man.
So we need some type of documentation to save lives.
Thanks for your comment.
Good evening.
My name is Jeanette, and I'm a lifelong resident, homeowner, and voter in Berkeley District 2.
Are those of you considering voting for these cameras and this contract knowledgeable of history? Do you know about the McCarthy era, COINTELPRO, how the information gathered is used to kill and destroy people and destroy dissent and organizing efforts? Do you have historical amnesia? Did you forget that when the government unlawfully rounded up Japanese Americans and put them in concentration camps, that they used their intel to easily locate them? It's not possible to be a sanctuary city while contracting with FLOC.
That's an oxymoron.
If you vote for this, you are carrying out Trump's agenda.
You say the FLOC cameras and contract are for safety, not safety for immigrants, not safety for women seeking health care, not safety for trans people, not safety for protesters or organizers.
These cameras put us, the community, in danger.
Who wants these cameras? The police, outsiders, they don't live in Berkeley, and they're not going to vote for you.
Thank you.
Hello, Council.
You opened this meeting talking about Holocaust remembrance.
Do you realize that this tool is exactly what supports making a Holocaust happen? A network of cameras tracking people that government wants to find.
This is not hypothetical.
This is happening right now.
And we kid ourselves that we are putting real safeguards in place.
$75,000, $1 million, it does not matter.
FISA warrants.
The government can, through a secret court, get this information at any time.
We will not know.
Those safeguards don't matter at all.
They do nothing.
Consider Marimar Martinez, a school teacher I shot five times.
In her court case, DHS moved to suppress two things.
The agent's text bragging about shooting her and, drumroll, 30 days of FLOC surveillance footage on her.
She was targeted using FLOC.
Data sharing amendments, like the one Berkeley added, would have done nothing to prevent this.
Thank you.
Hello.
My name is Benjamin.
I live in the Elmwood neighborhood of District 8.
I urge you to discontinue Berkeley's relationship with these surveillance technologies and certainly not expand their use.
I do not think that the loss of liberty and privacy required by these systems are worth any potential benefit that they may provide.
There are many ways to improve a community's safety that do not rely on surrendering fundamental freedoms.
I would also like to highlight that the best way to avoid abuse or misuse of data, intentional or not, is to simply not collect it in the first place.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, council members.
I just, you know, so we've established that you're not in control, that we're not going to be in control of the data.
Whether it's due to bad actors within the department, outside the department, hackers, federal agents, we're not going to control this data.
So whatever penalties, you're looking at me funny, but maybe you need to put your head in the articles.
That we, I can't believe you're looking at me like that.
Are you unclear about the concept that, I'm distracted.
Pause your time.
Can you hear that? Keep going.
Keep going.
He's just reading your sign here.
Go ahead.
He's not looking at you.
Andrea, go ahead.
Your time.
So the fact is that you're also willingly entering into a contract with a company that's ethically not credible.
And so when the city council member says we can swiftly exit a contract, how many violations will be enough? How many people will have to suffer before you exit that contract? You're walking in.
It's like, it's like, it's like an abusive relationship.
You got beat up by him.
Why are you going back? I also want to tell you this.
I don't know if you know this, but a public safety, I wish, I wish that the police would actually ask us what is the number one safety threat right now? In a city with declining crime rates, that's not what's burning on our minds.
We're worried about the fascists.
We're worried about the federal government.
And you stand there stone faced like you don't hear us.
Like you don't understand what we're saying.
But what I'm trying to tell you is that whether you like it or not, you are leaders in a city filled with the lunatic left.
Filled with, with domestic terrorists.
People who are willing to give a meal to a hungry person.
Somebody who maybe dresses all in black, you know, and I guess that makes, that qualifies us for Antifa.
I'm joking, but I'm serious.
Can I have one more minute, please? What I'm trying to tell you is that..
You've been given a minute already, so, okay.
That was in the last one.
Yeah, over here.
Go ahead.
There's one over here.
What I'm trying to tell you, I don't know if you guys are even aware of what's happening in this town about people, networks of responders.
People who are providing support to, to undocumented people who are worrying about what's, what's going on for, for day laborers.
For child care workers that we care.
But by doing that, caring is going to get us targeted.
That flock data will be tracking where we go to school, where we go, who we met, who we talk to.
Oh, well, does that number connect with that number? Connects with this number? Oh, well, that must be Antifa.
That's what's happening here.
And we perceive that as a public safety threat.
And you sit there stone-faced like you don't understand.
And that, in my mind, it really sort of disqualifies you for the jobs that you have if you're not able to understand that this whole night and this whole movement is about getting you to shift your understanding of what the greatest threat to the public safety is.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
So, we had, you all voted and were, there were lots of kudos to, I'm forgetting her name now, who's going to be the interim director, Cathy, of the, of the, Cathy Lee, thank you, of the police accountability board.
And now you have an opportunity to show your support for our rockin' police accountability board who did such deep due diligence.
I don't know where the city manager, the city attorneys were, and they were just, like, waving this agreement through when they, in 24 hours, identified 30 issues.
There's likely more because they didn't have time.
So, this is an opportunity for you to get behind your commitment, which all of you said when you fired the director, that you do believe in police accountability and police oversight.
What we know is that poverty is criminogenic.
We need to get at the source of what causes crime, which is poverty.
So, invest in community well-being instead of over $95 million into the police department this year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any contract with FLOC is inconsistent with our status as a sanctuary city.
We can't have it both ways.
If you house an abused woman, but you give her abuser's friend a key to pass on to the abuser, which gives him access, how have you protected her? So, what good does it do to come up with all these amendments with safeguards in them if they are likely to violate them? Would you go into business with someone who had a history of embezzling from their previous partners, business partners? Would you trust them? So, why would we trust FLOC? I mean, the police do need public safety tools.
They need the correct tools.
Are these the correct tools at this point in time? And I have another minute.
Okay.
Are these the correct tools at this point in time? Safety is important.
I don't think anyone disputes that.
But not at the cost of our civil rights, not the cause of potentially doing harm and serious harm.
And as an earlier social worker mentioned, there's also psychological harm from all of this.
There's also terror among people in the community who feel that they are particularly at risk and vulnerable.
And as we know from Alex Pretty and Renee Good, anybody actually is at risk.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think I have two minutes.
Anyone else want to give me a minute if you're not speaking? Okay.
Hold on a second.
Okay.
Do you need just two? I'm going to take three if I can get it.
Okay.
Hold on.
Hold on one second.
Let me keep track of it.
So, this person in the back.
And thank you.
You already gave a minute in the front.
Okay.
So, this person here and that person on the wall.
Okay.
Thank you.
So, you'll have four.
Okay.
Thank you.
Hello, Mayor and Council.
My name is Nathan Mizell.
I am a Remport Commissioner.
I'm speaking in an individual capacity.
I am the former vice chair of the PAB.
I was a member of the Remportership Policing Task Force, and I was the chair of the City's Reimagining Public Safety Task Force.
Today, as Vice Chair Olsen mentioned, this is the most significant expansion of surveillance in our city's history.
And I won't bury the lead here.
I am supporting the Mayor's Supplemental, which, while flawed, I appreciate that it reflects on the inherent problem with flock safety.
Here are the facts as I know them.
We have a department that ignores oversight at every turn, undermines oversight actively.
We have a private company well-known for violating legal and contractual agreements, and the federal government hell-bent on attacking our immigrant community with any surveillance tool it can get its hands on.
Originally, this stuff was supposed to be a pilot, but I guess now it's permanent, advanced surveillance that we must have all the time.
Again, this is the chief who ignores PAB investigatory subpoenas.
This is the chief who unlawfully tried to weaken the use-of-force policy just last week.
This is the chief who, excuse me, wasn't accused, was found to have violated, by an outside law firm, city sexual harassment policy, was accused by four BPD officers of making advances on younger officers.
Surely, there is someone else we could have before we hand over a mass surveillance tool.
Now, returning to flock, flock's own chief legal officer says that they admit the abuse.
They admit that their data has been accessed in ways that cities have written into contracts they shouldn't be able to access.
They just say, well, now our violations will be logged better.
That's the explanation we can have as a city.
Violations will be logged.
The truth of the matter is, if flock was a person, BPD would be sending out a Nixle alert warning the community that a dangerous criminal was on the loose and had committed crimes across the state and that they were doing everything in their power to keep us safe.
But since flock is a mass surveillance company, they're OK with it.
Apparently, the department is fine with criminality when it serves them.
And the truth of the matter is this, as well.
I heard some of the lawyers talking earlier.
I'm a lowly 2L, but I can say this much.
Lawyers should know the limits.

Segment 13

No magical contractual terms are going to prevent FLOC from taking our data and using it as they wish.
They've done it to dozens of cities.
What makes you think you're so special? We have the perfect attorneys, the perfect contract.
We don't.
It will not protect us.
Let's go quickly to the data.
I got one minute.
This department says bringing this technology will fix all the crime.
Actually, based on their own data, it has solved about 0.59% of crime in Berkeley.
0.59%.
We are willing to sell out our immigrant community, sell out our values as a sanctuary city, sell out all the moral compass that we used to have as a city for supposedly, by their own numbers, a 0.59% reduction in crime.
Those are the facts, folks.
And sadly, we seem to be headed in that direction, despite the fact that we were the first city in this nation to pass a sanctuary ordinance.
We were the first city in this nation with a police accountability board with the powers to investigate police misconduct.
We had many good firsts.
We were the first city to get daylighting on our streets done to protect folks as they walk and bike on our streets.
These are positive things.
Let us not be.
Let's remember those first.
Let's remember those first, because ultimately, whether it's now, next week, or November, accountability will return to this city.
And I hope tonight is the night you make the right vote.
It's up to you guys going back to me.
It's up to you.
Come on.
Hi, my name is Gordon Gilmore.
Can you hear me? I'm with the Berkeley Outreach Coalition, and I just, well, most of what I want to say tonight has already been said.
But I want to follow a theme that Verena brought up at the very beginning and Carol just brought up again recently.
Let me start by saying that it's recently seemed like we've been playing a game of dystopian bingo.
First, we got less lethal weapons.
We got drones flying off from the cop shop.
And now we got AI surveillance that's accessible to ice and military equipment added into the equation.
This all equals an assault on the psyche of the city.
Choosing again and again to direct funds from support of our community, to bolstering a perpetual undercurrent of fear, to coerce compliance and dampen free speech.
We, as the public, should not need to feel like we need to be on perpetual defense against decisions of our city council.
Craft resolutions for community care, not the power of coercion.
Hi, folks.
The Israelization of the U.S.
includes what happens inside the Zionist entity, which is a very highly surveilled, many, many cameras everywhere.
Cameras watching cameras.
Yet here in this country, anybody who supports Palestine is under surveillance, is under the gun.
People look at them funny.
There's something wrong with us.
We're terrorist supporters.
We support what we support.
And it's considered wrong.
And the Israelization of America enforces that with the reality of cameras everywhere, watching people everywhere.
And Bloc just contributes to that.
And we don't need that.
We don't need any more Israelization of the U.S.
We don't need any more Bloc.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think I have a few minutes from the crowd.
One.
I see.
One.
Two.
Hold on, wait.
Here's a second.
You already have, you already gave your minute.
You can't give a minute again, sir, in the front.
Okay.
Go ahead.
So, one minute from you.
Hold on, I can't.
You already gave your minute.
This person raised their hand.
You would like to give a minute.
Okay.
You have two minutes extra.
So, that's three.
Time's running.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, thank you, city council members.
Thank you for those who are looking and not texting.
I appreciate your attention to this grave matter.
You know, so, my name's Aiden Hill.
I live in District 7.
If I was a council member for District 7, I would simply say no.
Why waste the people's time? Why not work on something to help the community? I want to say thank you to the people who are taking the time to stay here, even if it is till 1 a.m.
We're all risking something, and you should know what that is.
We're all being recorded right now.
So, we all have privilege.
You understand that.
The people that are here have the ability to be seen on that screen, to be watched by MAGA clones or whoever's watching.
You're putting your community at risk by even debating this topic.
I hope you do sit with that.
I hope you do realize that FOC is already deployed across Berkeley.
In District 7, it's right on Telegraph and Bancroft, a well-known major transportation hub that takes our sanctuary students into campus.
It's also on Duran Avenue, which is a part of our economic corridor.
You know, all of this seems to just be some type of way to justify predictive policing, is what I can think of it.
You don't want to address the systems that place people in a form of crime-bearing behavior.
You don't want to give water fountains to everyone to make sure that they're hydrated.
You don't want to give morning coffees to people so they're not angry.
You don't want to give sleeping bags.
You don't want to give affordable housing.
We only have 20% in each building.
But we can have a 22-story high-rise at Anna Head Hall.
And are the people who are doing this crime going to get the benefits of these resources? You just want to watch them while they suffer, because crime is a symptom of something that's wrong.
And as first responders, as representatives, recognize the duty to your people means the duty for them to feel safe.
And the only way people can feel safe is if their bodies feel safe.
That means making sure that people get enough sleep.
That means making sure that people get enough food to eat.
All of our time, and I want to be clear, all of our time needs to be put towards something positive for this community.
FOC is not the answer.
The Police Accountability Board gave you a wonderful, you know, everyone here is saying the same thing.
Delay this opinion.
If you must continue, delay it until another night.
Let us have ICE leave San Francisco first before you give them FOC security cameras.
At the very least, thank you.
Hello.
He will be giving me his one minute, so I have two minutes.
Sorry, can you stand a little bit so I can..
Okay, thank you.
All right, just start.
Okay.
Hello, my name is Evelyn.
I'm a Berkeley undergrad student, an RA for the Berkeley Student Cooperative, and a resident of District 7.
I believe that we should not pass this order.
FLOC is a company known for handing data to ICE and puts our immigrant community in danger of the draconian policies ICE has been known to do.
While FLOC has claimed that they will not give ICE any info without a valid reason, I find it hard to believe that ICE, an organization that has conducted no-knock raids, arrested people without habeas corpus, and is responsible for shooting three unarmed individuals, this year would follow such a provision.
ICE is not a law enforcement organization, but a brownshirt-like group of thugs that go around arresting people without any care of our Constitution.
By passing this measure, we are not only violating the privacy of everyone in the city, but also putting our immigrant communities in danger of getting brutalized and imprisoned indefinitely.
If you pass this, the blood of innocent people will be shed by the people who are committing crimes in Minneapolis, San Francisco, L.A., and more.
We must make Berkeley a fortress against the Trump administration and not allow this Trojan horse to enter our community and destroy it from within.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have another minute.
Cheryl, didn't you speak already? No, I did not.
Yeah, she did speak already.
I did not on this subject.
Get the hell out of here.
Okay.
Go ahead.
You have a minute.
No, I have two minutes.
And I haven't started yet.
I have another minute.
Over there.
Hold on.
Mark's going to check.
Mark's going to check.
I feel like this.
You don't think I know the goddamn rules? You are so disrespectful in a room.
Cheryl, I'm just going to check.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There is something.
You didn't check anybody else in the fucking room.
God.
Okay.
All right.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm going to check.
I'm not going to apologize for double checking something.
You should.
I'm a pornographic lover who knows the fucking rules.
Fight me.
Fight me.
You have two minutes to speak.
You piss me off.
Start my time over, please.
Your time.
You can use it as you'd like.
I can't wait for you to be gone.
Data storing will not be controlled.
That's a goddamn lie, and you all know it.
Flock should not be in Berkeley.
It shouldn't be anywhere.
You know you can't control the data.
You can't.
The feds can do anything they damn well please.
And I really am really, you really got to me right now.
And I'm just like so sick of all the disrespect in this fucking chambers.
You don't listen to the people ever.
Nobody in this room wants flock.
Black and brown people in the city of Berkeley don't want flock.
It doesn't save lives.
It doesn't do any of the things that they're saying.
And plus they lied to you about some of the things that they said.
People have already pointed out the lies.
Put the money into voices against violence or live free.
Put the money into income for folks so that they can live in Berkeley and get the services that they need.
But, you know, I'm like, I guess that was your point to throw me off and piss me off.
And you've done it.
But let this be the last time because I know the damn rules of the fucking city council.
We don't have to check because I know just because you don't know the damn rules.
And that's a damn shame because you're supposed to be the mayor.
We supposed to know these things.
You know, you're just being racist and disrespectful.
And that is really a shame.
City Palace, don't vote for flock.
We've got some comments online.
If you are online and you'd like to give public comment on item number 26, which is the public safety technology item, surveillance technology ordinance and police equipment ordinance approvals, policy updates and contract authority.
Please raise your hand.
And Mr.
City Clerk, if you could please start us off.
Madam Mayor, should we extend the meeting time? We have 28, there's 28 hands.
That was so fucked up.
So you have, you have, we have until 1.30.
So, okay.
I bet.
Okay.
The first commenter is Mar.
I'm here with my roommate who's ceding their minute to me.
Roommate, can you just verbally let us know? Yeah, they can take my minute.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
So, so Keith, there's going to be two minutes for that person.
Okay, that's fine.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
We cannot expect to be able to exit an agreement with flock at any time because flock has proven that they will lie.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you all for commenting on the Richmond crime statistics reports.
There's also mentions of the benefits of a network effect and a one audit trail from flock.
That doesn't really mean shit in regards to ice.
There's no way for an independent audit to know if and when ice has accessed mass surveillance data.
Because the DHS license plate reader policies for any vendor says quote ice query data is not retained by the vendor except to maintain logs for the use by ice.
Any positive match results are tagged as ice and would not be retained in the vendor database.
Further, ice does not share any query terms, query results, or uploaded images with state or local law enforcement agency or any other entity with access to the vendor's database.
So only ice would be able to self audit.
And are we really going to trust them on that? Like be so real.
Yeah.
And just to get back to reality for a second, as was mentioned multiple times, last Sunday a woman was violently taken against her will, separated from her child at SFO airport.
And ice is being deployed to airports across the U.S.
standing around TSA lines.
And this is said by the public comment.
Your time is up.
Next is Wendy A.
Wendy, you should be able to unmute.
I'm ceding my time to John Lindsey Poland.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Well, why don't we just go to.
Well.
Okay.
Our hand and Wendy our hand.
Okay.
Now we have Wendy Allison.
So John, when your name comes up in the list, I think you're fourth.
Then you'll get an extra minute.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Hello.
This is Marilyn Cleveland.
I think I showed up as Wendy Allison.
And I'm also ceding my time to John Lindsey Poland.
Sorry, we can't.
Okay.
A second person is ceding their time to John Lindsey Poland.
So John, you'll have three minutes.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
Daniel Brownson.
Hi.
So.
Well, I like.
Council member Bartlett's idea of, you know, charging in very large amount for violations of the contract.
Realistically, no, no financial penalty is going to keep flock from choosing to divulge our data to homeland security and ice.
They're in real tight with the Trump administration.
Their founders are huge donors.
And it's not just going to be immigrants.
It's going.
They have gone after protesters to, you know, realistically, we can't have we can't have our cake and eat it to we have to choose our immigrant community.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Beth Rossner.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
This is Beth Rossner, CEO of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.
We recognize and share the community's concerns around privacy and data security, especially in light of recent reports elsewhere.
Berkeley has already put strong safeguards in place through its existing ordinances and through the proposals put forward by some of the council members tonight.
We expect those protections to be rigorously upheld and enforced for our business community, public safety and economic vitality go hand in hand.
Employers, employees and customers all rely on a city where people feel safe to work, shop and invest tools like drone as first responder, LPRs and camera systems can improve response times and make better use of limited public safety resources.
With that balance of safety and privacy, we ask you to move this item forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, Beth.
Next is John Lindsay-Poland.
You have three minutes.
Good evening.
Can you hear me? Yes.
We heard earlier that crime in Berkeley has dropped 20 to 40 percent without expanded surveillance.
So it is not clear what problem this contract is trying to solve, much less why a contract with Flock must be approved tonight.
If you don't have an informed analysis of why crime has dropped so dramatically, you don't know what effects on crime expanded surveillance will have.
Flock has repeatedly lied about security benefits from its data.
This is not a conflict between liberty and security.
It is a conflict between liberty and money.
You are going in too deep with one vendor.
And what a vendor.
Flock's investors are deeply committed to the Trump agenda and can change its softwares and conditions, such as what led to data access and violations in other cities.
You also can't protect against FISA warrants from the Trump government using Berkeley data.
And retention policies are neither clear nor consistent with the law.
The chief says this proposal has had many public meetings over three years.
I was going to say that with four supplementals in front of you, it's clear that you cannot integrate, amend, edit, review, and hear meaningful input to approve the Flock contract tonight.
I was going to say that editing complex, interlocking, and conflicting proposals is not going to solve the problem.
I was going to say that editing complex, interlocking, and conflicting proposals for a lengthy contract and policies on the dais late at night is the worst kind of governance.
But hearing our beautiful community tonight provide diverse, compelling arguments for X-ing the contract, I'm convinced that you should decide tonight to reject the Flock contract.
So please do not show contempt for your people.
Listen.
Thanks.
MODERATOR Thank you, John.
MODERATOR Next is Neil Egbert.
NEIL EGBERT Good evening.
I should have another.
MODERATOR Neil, you have a minute from someone else.
NEIL EGBERT Can you hear me? MODERATOR Oh, yeah.
We can hear you now.
Who is your minute? NEIL EGBERT Sorry, from Timothy Nguyen.
He should be logged in as well.
MODERATOR Timothy.
NEIL EGBERT Or Tim Nguyen.
MODERATOR He doesn't have his hand raised.
MODERATOR I don't see him either.
NEIL EGBERT Okay.
Well, I'll get going then.
MODERATOR Timothy, I'm sorry.
NEIL EGBERT Okay.
Good evening.
I'm Neil Egbert, president of the Berkeley Police Association.
The BPA is urging your support for this item because at its core, this is about Berkeley keeping pace with modern and effective public safety.
Technology is not optional.
It's a core component of smart, accountable policing.
The tools discussed tonight give first responders the information they need to respond faster, safer, and more precisely.
Our staffing is dropping fast.
Three officers have already left for SFPD, another to a different department, and more are scheduled to leave the SFPD as soon as next month.
In a few weeks, we'll be policing the city with just six officers on night shift, the lowest in my 14-year career.
That's barely more than Emeryville, a city just barely our size.
At the same time, we're being asked to do more with fewer people.
The city is facing a budget deficit, and this matters even more than ever.
Public safety isn't just an expense.
It's a foundation for economic stability.
A safe city attracts businesses, keeps storefronts occupied, and drives revenue.
Without that foundation, vacancies increase, investment slows, and the city's financial challenges only grow.
If you look around the city, such as San Pablo and University, where three out of the four corners are vacant, businesses don't just need customers— MODERATOR Neil, I'm sorry.
Your time's up.
Thank you.
MODERATOR Next is Dillon Melowitz.
DILLON MELOWITZ Hi, my name is Dillon Melowitz.
I'm calling on behalf of the BPA, Berkeley Police Association.
I'm currently a robbery detective who's experienced firsthand the impact of FLOC ALPRs.
I'm not calling on behalf of the department.
Berkeley needs to follow San Francisco's lead in terms of public safety.
This isn't—there isn't one documented instance of federal authorities using FLOC systems, specifically in Berkeley, to conduct immigration enforcement.
I have many examples of how the utilization of FLOC technology not only solved serious crimes, but prevented entire region-wide sprees.
I can think of countless victims who cried tears of relief when I was able to tell them that we caught whoever harmed them.
Please do not do what Richmond did.
We saw crime explode the second it was known their cameras were deactivated.
They had an astronomical increase in vehicle thefts in a remarkably short time frame, victimizing countless people unnecessarily, and that doesn't even include crimes committed using those stolen vehicles.
As crime goes up, police work gets more dangerous, and it'll be up to officers to react to incidents rather than cameras deterring and preventing crime in the first place.
Police staffing is suffering more than ever, and utilization— Folks, there is no booing.
That's one of the rules of the procedure.
Next is Ben.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council.
My name is Ben.
I'm a UC Berkeley student from D7, and I'm speaking today on behalf of the Cal Berkeley Democrats.
I urge you to reject the contract with FLOC.
Immigrants make our community safer.
It's ICE that endangers Berkeley.
We know that ICE uses FLOC cameras.
They were found to have accessed San Francisco's 1.6 million homes.
There is no direction you can give or policy you can make that can stop a judge's warrant.
I know you all do not intend to increase duplications, so please know that you can take actions to keep this community safe without endangering our immigrant neighbors.
2026 has already been a year of too much danger and approval.
Please keep Berkeley stable and safe for our immigrant neighbors.
Do not underestimate the nationalization of local politics.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks, Ben.
All right.
Next is Jim.
Okay.
Can you hear me? Yep.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I'm Jim Best from District 3.
I live four doors down from Sylvia Mendez Elementary, a likely target of ICE operations at some point.
Parents, teachers, and neighbors are self-organizing safety protocols and rapid response systems to protect our families and neighbors, and that's happening at Willard Middle School, Bordertown, several toddler parks, and in other nearby districts.
My point is that even if city council members are not yet getting a powerful message from this growing body of recently activated folks, it is coming, and it will persist long after this moment.
The community is responding to the sense of terror at having our own federal forces weaponized in our neighborhoods with no accountability and no real protection from our own Berkeley PD against these armed, masked, unidentified kidnappers.
FLOC is clearly the wrong direction for our long-term safety.
When these Berkeley neighbors look to you now and in the future, they'll remember each council member's critical vote.
Thank you.
All right.
Next is Laura Hill.
Good evening.
My name is Laura, and I'm a vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council.
We represent nearly 400 of the region's largest employers across many sectors, including higher education and research institutions, nonprofit and community organizations, utility and transportation providers, and private sector employers.
In 2023, at the request of a diverse group of 125 employers based in the East Bay, our organization formed a coalition of employers who are committed to building a safer and more vibrant region.
The Bay Area Council and this coalition strongly supports the continued and expanded use of FLOC technology in Berkeley.
Technology is a vital public safety tool, and it is particularly critical for cities like Berkeley that are facing significant law enforcement staffing challenges.
On the ground every day, this technology is a proven effective tool in recovering lost and stolen property, identifying suspects in violent crimes, preventing human trafficking, and much more.
As we have seen in many cities in the East Bay and throughout the region, ALPR and related technology can absolutely be implemented with appropriate safeguards in a way that balances both the needs of the community and community privacy and public safety.
Next is Daniel Marcus.
Thank you.
Can you hear me? Yes.
I'm a Berkeley District 5 resident.
I have an engineering PhD from Cal, and I've worked for three decades in computer technology implementation and governance.
And I'm asking the City Council to terminate its relationship with FLOC, as several other Bay Area cities have done.
FLOC allows ICE access to local data.
FLOC has lied by concealing its relationship with ICE.
FLOC has lied by claiming its technology reduces crime.
FLOC's largest investor is a leading Trump supporter.
How many dots do we need to connect? Reliance on improved contractual guardrails is naive and, frankly, disingenuous, because we know that FLOC lies.
FLOC is in bed with ICE, and ICE is murdering people in the streets.
It is not plausible that FLOC, given their relationship with ICE, will care about breach of contract or nominal fines.
$150,000 is pocket lint to these people.
ICE will come to Berkeley, and if FLOC is deployed, it will be used to support ICE's immoral and inhumane— Thanks so much.
Next is Paola Laverde.
Hi there.
Pina from District 5.
So the Oakland side yesterday reported that a Hayward nurse was hauled from her car after a watch plate alert near City Hall in Hayward.
So this woman got stopped, Anna Mora, a white lady, 62 years old, who works at the nursing home, because there was a license plate reader system which matched her car to a hot list car.
Turns out that her back license plate had been switched, and now the officers were stopping her as if she were some sort of criminal.
We just heard from BPOA saying that they have to do faster work.
Well, these officers with Anna Mora didn't even bother to check that the license plate that was supposedly stolen matched the car that the plate was on, and that's my biggest fear, because Berkeley PD, if they have shortage of staff, that means they're going to be doing things in a hurry, and someone like Brenda Grisham.

Segment 14

Who Might Have Her License Plate Stolen? And thank you.
Thanks, Paula.
Next is Lisa.
Sorry, one second.
Next is Alok.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes.
Yes, I'm from District 1.
As a technical lead for more than 100 engineers at various big tech companies, I am an expert.
Not only that, I'm an expert in online security space.
I have led trust and safety teams responsible for safeguarding the biggest online platforms, including Gmail, Instagram, Pinterest, and Airbnb.
I had a lot of things to say, but after sitting through the frankly amateurish presentation by the BPD, I have to talk about one item in particular.
They mentioned that the flock data is end-to-end encrypted.
Either they don't understand the meaning or they're like using a completely bogus definition of end-to-end encrypted.
If for flock, ICE, and countless other agencies can access the data, access the video footage, ALPR data, and queries on it, I don't understand what that means for the data to be end-to-end encrypted.
It's as if it's open to anyone, and they can see it.
And I have a big problem with that.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is, uh, Lisa.
Chris, many of you have home security cameras, and if not you, your neighbors and businesses do, and they can be used to surveil you.
If you've ever been a crime victim, you know why this matters.
Minutes can mean life or death.
Just ask some survivors.
I know because my dear friend's daughter was abducted, tortured, and died a horrific death.
She ran out of time.
Her justice denied.
Berkeley is not a magical bubble.
Everyone's safety is right.
Please hear my pleas.
Councilmembers Blackabee and Bartlett, and please vote yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Uh, next is Rocky.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Hi.
My name is Rocky with the Berkeley Animal Rights Center.
I oppose contracting with FLOC.
FLOC, um, in other jurisdictions, FLOC makes a lot of false claims, and to illustrate one, uh, in a different city, FLOC referenced a violent crime decrease of 22% in the city of Los Angeles trail neighborhood between January and August 2021, compared to the same period during 2019.
The reality is between 2021 and 2023, when FLOC cameras were operational, crimes of aggravated assault and residential burglary actually rose by 5% across the city.
FLOC does not keep us safe.
Another consideration is FLOC exploits workers.
FLOC, like many other tech companies, is currently using workers as a tool to exploit workers.
FLOC is not currently using workers living in poor global south countries like the Philippines to review video footage being recorded on its cameras, and that's shameful.
Do the right thing.
Do not contract with FLOC.
I'll also end Zionism and free Palestine.
Thank you.
Next is, uh, Deb.
Hi.
We've been told that if there are serious concerns, a contract can be dropped.
Data can't be retrieved once it's been released.
There are serious concerns now.
Drop the contract now.
Voting this down may appear to give less protection, and no one wants that, but there are other ways to increase safety.
You've been requesting that people not laugh, but it should be clear that the privacy requirements in the contracts are so likely to be meaningless that they do become laughable.
It'll be so disappointing if the council fails to follow the recommendations of the PAP.
The supplementals are likely to be inadequate.
The council member appears poised to betray his constituents who preferred freedom, pretending that a large enough penalty will protect them.
And again, there are serious concerns now.
Drop the contract now.
Thank you.
Next is Andy Kelly.
Andy, can you hear us? Andy, you can unmute yourself.
Oh, sorry.
Thanks, Adina.
Um, this is Red Board Commissioner Andy Kelly calling, um, to strongly oppose recontracting with FLOC tonight.
I was in City Hall still when we did the last update of the surveillance ordinance during the Biden administration, and even then we knew it was only worth the paper it was written on if it was upheld by the courts.
There's not a day that goes by that the Trump administration doesn't ignore not only the law, but judicial order after judicial order.
If they want to access this data, they're going to.
And the nuanced policy conversation happening on the dais is great, but that assumes a federal government that's going to follow the law.
They aren't.
FLOC is actively coordinating with ICE.
They are.
We need to stand up and we need to realize that we can be safer without FLOC.
And just because FLOC might have been used in solving a crime does not mean that crime would have not otherwise been solved.
The statistics are misleading.
Next is caller with a phone number ending in 2-1-1.
Hi, good evening.
While I do believe in surveillance, our business has surveillance cameras that did save us and even saved other people in Telegraph Avenue and Burbank Avenue.
I think in the current government situation, I disagree with this company because it is definitely, this government have no, they don't obey the rule of law.
The total rule of law is when it comes to that.
And I also like to say immigrants made this country.
And shame on Donald Trump.
He's a monster.
The way he's done it.
Education is shutting down education, shutting down the whole government.
This is a scandal.
This is not a government, it's a scandal.
Thank you and have a good night.
Thank you.
Next is Kelly Hammergren.
Thank you.
It's been a long evening.
I agree with and thank the many speakers tonight who have tried to convince at least two of you to change their mind, to change your mind out of the six who believe you can write a contract that will control FLOC.
But you already told us that you made up your mind and that you're going to approve a contract tonight when you extended the meeting to 1.30 a.m.
I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
So I'm disappointed and that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
All right.
Brian Hofer.
Good morning.
Brian Hofer with Secure Justice.
We oppose mass surveillance systems and urge a no vote.
That said, if this body is moving forward, we support the mayor's supplemental rejecting FLOC and returning the defective use policies to the PAB.
You're being played.
FLOC's lawyers are running circles around you.
The contract is full of traps and allows FLOC to leverage your data in ways your lawyers don't understand.
Saying we own the data is not a safeguard.
It's a talking point FLOC relies on while drafting around it.
I didn't expect an agenda packet that made your litigation exposure worse.
FLOCnova is very invasive and it is surveillance technology as defined by BMC 299 and thus requires ordinance vetting.
Consider this your right to cure notice.
FLOC has repeatedly concealed, altered and mishandled data practices only changing course when exposed.
We appreciate the intent behind Council Member Bartlett's supplemental but it misses a lot of red flags and like the other two supplementals, it presupposes FLOC is trustworthy.
50 cities have found otherwise and abandoned FLOC.
Thank you for listening.
Next is Della Luna.
I move to extend time an additional half hour.
Second.
You can take the vote on that.
Council Member Kastorwani.
Yes.
Taplin is absent.
Bartlett? No.
Trigub? No.
Oki? Yes.
Blackabay? Yes.
Lunapara? No.
Yes.
Um, okay.
You're voting yes? Yes.
Uh, let's see.
Council Member Humbert? Yes.
Mayor Ishii? No.
Okay, motion fails.
Okay, so I'm sorry.
So we have, so we have seven hands raised still for public comment and then we can talk about what happens next, but go ahead.
Okay, Della Luna is next speaker.
Yes, thank you.
First, I wanted to commend the Police Accountability Board for their work.
It was an impressive presentation, like, up to the par what we would expect from our city officials, even though I know it came from you all.
But hearing that the Police Accountability Board only had 24 hours to review the proposal or the document, this seems like this is dead in the water.
Also, because there's four other supplemental proposals, it also seems that's indicative that this is, that the council is not ready to pass this.
And I wanted to say that reporting is not a sufficient form of oversight, so increasing the reporting from quarterly to monthly does nothing unless the reports are going to be fact-checked and audited.
So if you're going to, the city's not putting the energy into actually reviewing what's in the reports.
You're just giving people creative writing assignments, and that's what's happening quite a bit right now with the current reporting.
Thanks, Stella.
All right.
Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 405.
Hi.
Berkeley was founded in 1878, and those 148 years we have not had police surveillance monitoring our citizens.
Let's hope we don't do it for the next 148 years.
Certainly our police have done a good job, and they can continue to do a good job without a flock.
Say, no one's flock.
I'm Kirk Neihardt, and Berkeley since 1952.
Now I'm on the director.
I'm a director of four local corporations, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the fellow directors or none of the constituents of these corporations are going to be in favor of anybody who votes for a flock.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is JL.
Hello.
I cede my minute to Brian Hoffer if he's still on Zoom and is wanting to speak.
Oh, sorry.
He's already spoken.
Thank you.
Did you want to speak for yourself? Oh, no, thanks.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Next is Michael Solorio.
Michael, you should be able to unmute.
Michael Solorio.
Last call.
Michael Solorio.
All right.
Tyler Hall.
Hi.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Yeah.
Flock is a perversion on our daily lives, regardless of how you behave out in the public.
For a city as small as Berkeley really is in size and square mileage, it is preposterous how much funding goes into this militarized police and enforcement of the law, and what isn't even enforcement of the law, and what isn't even the law sometimes.
Do not continue this contract.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Anna.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Okay.
I am calling in because I am in opposition to extending the flock contract.
I find it incredibly important that we don't perpetuate these legislations and policies that allow us and our communities to be in constant fear and in constant stress about our well-being.
I think that we are not – if we are – we're not representing our community and who we need, both the most vulnerable people to be protected, if we are to support flock.
So please, please do not vote in favor of extending a vote contract, a flock contract, because it is not – Thank you, Anna.
Okay.
Next is Squash A.
Hello.
I would also like to urge you to vote no on this flock contract and end all contracts with flock.
When the argument is made that surveillance technology like this and increased policing is the future and that we need this technology, we're saying that the future that we want is increasingly alienated and a society built on surveillance and suspicion and not trust and love, something that we could be building by investing in our communities more.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
Next is Heron.
Heron, you should be able to unmute.
Hi.
Can you hear me? Yes.
I'm urging the City Council to vote not to renew its flock contract.
There's no way around the fact that the data collected by flock is not safe from federal access.
Even without direct access from the federal government to the flock data, it can still be accessed through side door access where police departments conduct the searches and informally share it with the federal government.
Berkeley's flock data has already been accessed through searches using the keywords ICE and CBP.
There is also still at the moment backdoor access happening to flock's data that is currently being reported.
No matter how many edits are made to a flock contract in order to protect the data or fine flock for violating contract or withdraw from the contract, flock has proven time and again that they are sharing data with ICE and CBP directly and indirectly, legally and the only.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Remmelt.
Hi.
I'm calling from Hong Kong, so I don't really have a say here, but all I want to say is that you know what happened in Hong Kong with the national security law, and I want to suggest looking at what you want your council and your lands to look like in the next few years, and what's actually going to shift that for the better or worse.
Thank you.
All right.
Next is WVC.
Hello.
Yes.
Hi.
Okay.
It's clear some don't understand how insecure and easily accessible and hackable these flock cameras are.
As we speak, one of these cameras is live streaming a children's playground here in the Bay Area to God knows who, likely charging people for access to this live stream.
Please sit with that reality for a moment.
Footage of our children and ourselves for sale on the dark web.
Respectfully, it is very clear that the folks advocating for this tech either do not understand or care how data is stored or secured.
Without proper, very expensive, and continuous investment in cybersecurity, the data will always be vulnerable, and flock has proven it is not taking those measures on its end.
I want everyone to consider how many companies we know of that have had data leaks.
These are companies that are incentivized to keep their customer data secure with massive budgets and dedicated cybersecurity teams, and they can't keep their data secure.
Who is kidding themselves that the City of Berkeley has the capability or the budget to do so? Comments.
Your time's up.
Next is Evan Flores.
Hello.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Yes.
We can hear you.
Oh, hey.
Basically, I am here to talk to disagree with the flock proposal.
I think that it is something that will put a danger to our community, that it will put a danger to our immigrant community, and that basically this deal with flock will basically endanger our entire communities.
Yes.
I think that is it.
Okay.
Thank you.
We still have seven hands raised.
Next speaker is Dee.
Hi.
Can you guys hear me? Yes.
I am calling in against flock, and there has been some discourse in City Council about crime and what to do about crime, specifically about small businesses and about those businesses being POC owned.
I am here to tell you that a lot of these small businesses are also immigrant-owned, and we at CopWatch and we organizing, we have gone door-to-door to these businesses, and I will tell you a lot of them are scared and are too scared to talk about flock even.
They do not want to get deported, and I promise you they will rather have a broken window over getting deported.
Please do not continue this contract.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Misha.
Hi.
I would like to first allow Marissa Oaks English to speak.
Hi.
I am Marissa Oaks English.
I am resident of District 2, and I would like to yield my minute to Misha.
Okay.
I would like to implore the Berkeley City Council to please not renew their contract with flock and to not contract with flock or any surveillance companies in the future, in particular over the fact that flock has repeatedly lied to municipalities about following local regulations, only to then hand over information to DHS, empowering individuals in DHS and individuals who would like to use DHS as their personal weapon against people in vulnerable situations, be it their partners, their friends, their family, or their employees as a form of abuse.
By allowing flock to track civilians, be they citizens or not, you would be empowering more people who wish to use their authority over others in harmful ways to track them.
You would be empowering people to be tracked as they go about their day-to-day lives.
You would be empowering people to be tracked as they simply follow the law.
You would be empowering people to be tracked as they want to be nice and law-abiding citizens, and you would be empowering the Trump administration to stalk us from our homes, to our schools, to our restaurants, to our grocery stores, wherever else.
I implore you to think about the consequences of this vote, to think about the fact that by allowing this surveillance, you will be allowing for the stalking behavior to be perpetuated amongst these officers who we have seen abuse their power over and over.
We have seen municipalities be lied to over and over.
Do you think you are special? Do you think the flock can guarantee you things they have not been able to guarantee any other city? Okay.
Thank you for your comments.
Next is Nikki P.
Okay.
We're going to let this person speak, and then we need to talk about what's happening next.
Thank you.
I'm Nikki P.
I live in District 1.
I'm a retired librarian from the City of Berkeley.
The citizens of Berkeley do not want to be under surveillance, and they've been saying so for decades.
The community has a long tradition of resisting trends and technology that even have the possibility of violating your civil rights.
At the Berkeley Public Library in the City of Berkeley, when RFID, radio frequency identification technology, was introduced in library materials, the people spoke, and the city proved the library director was fired.
This could be you, council members.
Same concern that was shown for wildlife, and I hope that the same concern that was shown for wildlife today and glue traps is shown for the people of Berkeley and the civil rights of the people of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Okay.
So there are three different dates that are being brought forward as dates to finish this conversation.
They are April 30th, which is a Thursday, May 7th, which is a Thursday, and June 2nd, which is a Tuesday.
So yes, those would be special meeting dates to continue to, and so I want to check in with my council colleagues to see if you can check those dates.
So I'm going to read them again.
April 30th, which is a Thursday, May 7th, also a Thursday, and June 2nd, which is a Tuesday.
When does the contract end? I think we need to do April 30th or the May date.
Yes.
Can you speak in the mic so that folks can hear you, please? The current contract only covers the ALPR cameras, I believe, but it ends in July.
I see.
Thank you.
I think those dates were chosen specifically because they were before the ALPR contract expired.
I got them from our city manager, so.
Okay.
So, sorry.
So can you just, it would be great to know what days that you're available.
And I'm just going to go down the line, one, two, three, four, five, because it'll be easier.
So go ahead.
Are we going to do that? Okay, right now.
I'm sorry, can you just repeat the dates, April 30th, May 7th, or June 2nd? Yeah, I'm available any of those days.
I would prefer April 30th.
Okay.
Sorry, I'm running this time.
Okay.
Council Member Taplin.
April 30th.
Is that the only day you're available? Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Council Member Trageb.
June is the only date I'm available.
Okay.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Okay, thank you.
So, Council Member Blackaby.
All three.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, sorry.
Okay, good.
It's hard to write.
I can do the May or June dates, and I have a preference for the June one, but soft preference.
Okay.
Council Member Humbert.
Both.
Okay.
Okay.
I am really only available in the May or June.
So I think that puts us in June, because there's only two that can only do April 30th.
And the rest can do all or June.
So that leaves us with June.
So June 2nd.
It is 1.26 right now, and we have four minutes.
So, okay.
So, so we will continue this conversation.
We have not yet finished all the public comments, so, but we won't be able to do that.
We only have three minutes left.
We also didn't get a chance to do questions or deliberation.
So this item will come back for a special meeting on June 2nd.
Is there a motion? A motion to continue this item to the June 2nd, to a June 2nd special meeting.
Second.
Okay, let's take a vote on that, just so we have it.
Council Member Kisarwani.
Yes.
Taplin.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Trago.
Aye.
O'Keefe.
Yes.
Lackabay.
Yes.
Lunapara.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Mariichi.
Yes.
Okay, so we're almost running out of time, so I.
I'll move to suspend the rules and adjourn the meeting.
Second.
Move on.
Motion to adjourn is always in order.
Sorry, say again.
I said a motion to adjourn is always in order, so you don't have to suspend the rules.
It's just because we didn't do our off-agenda public comment.
Yeah, but you can adjourn.
It's still okay.
Yeah, it's still okay.
Okay, all right, so there is a motion to adjourn on the on the floor, so, and I'm sorry, was there a second? Folks, folks, we're not finished yet.
Hold on.
Seconded by Taplin.
Seconded by Taplin.
Okay, thank you.
Is there any, is there any opposition to adjourning? No.
No.
Okay, meeting is adjourned.
Thank you, everyone.
See y'all in June.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
See you in June.
See you in June.
Recording stopped.