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July 14, 2026 · 5:00 PM
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Segment 1
Hello everyone. Good evening. I'm calling to order a special meeting of the Berkeley City Council. Today is Tuesday, July 14th, 2026, and it is 4.03 p.m. Can we start us off with a roll? Okay, calling the roll. Councilmember Kesarwani is currently absent. Councilmember Taplin? Present. Councilmember Bartlett is currently absent. Councilmember Tregub, present. And Vice Mayor O'Keefe is present. And Councilmember Blackabee? Here. Councilmember Luna-Para? Here. Humbert? Present. And Mayor Ishii? Here. Okay. Mark Tews, present. Okay. I'm here, sorry. Okay. Thank you very much. So today is a work session, and the only item on our agenda is the 2025 Police Accountability Board and Office of the Director of Police Accountability Annual Report. So I will pass it over to our Interim Director of Police Accountability, returning, temporary, as you like to say. So thank you so much for being here with us this evening, both of you. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. I was just introduced to your returning Interim Director of Police Accountability, Kathy Lee. With me is Policy Analyst Jose Murillo. Chair Josh Cayetano of our board was flying back from a court argument in San Diego, so he may or may not be able to be here by the end to help answer questions. But it is our pleasure and privilege to present to you the Police Accountability Board and Office of the Director of Police Accountability Annual Report for 2025. This presentation is mandated by the City Charter, Section 125, Subsection 16C. So just as a refresher, the purpose of the Police Accountability Board is to promote public trust through independent, objective, civilian oversight of the Berkeley Police Department, provide community participation in setting and reviewing police department police policies, practices, and procedures, and to provide a means for prompt, impartial, and fair investigation of complaints brought by the public against sworn employees of the Berkeley Police Department. And the function of the Director of Police Accountability, or the Office of the Director, is to investigate complaints filed against sworn employees of the BPD to reach an independent finding as to the facts and recommend corrective action where warranted. The Director of Police Accountability may also serve as, and does serve as, the Secretary to the Police Accountability Board and assist the board in carrying out its duties. So a very quick overview of our presentation today. I will start with the investigative processes and complaint data. We'll move into the Police Accountability Board's policy work, and then we'll be examining vehicle and pedestrian stops by our police department, as well as other activities, and see if we note trends and patterns. So, on to the complaint process. A member of the public can file a complaint online or fill out a written complaint form. Staff reviews the complaint to determine if prima facie misconduct is alleged. If so, then staff prepares a notice of complaint and allegations and sends it to the officers. The investigation proceeds, and the steps include interviewing the complainant, the subject officer or officers, witnesses, which includes civilian witnesses and witness officers, gathers documents, requests reports and other information from the Berkeley Police Department, request and review body-worn camera footage, and gathers other evidence. At the conclusion of the investigation, the staff will prepare a written findings and recommendations report and presents it to the PAB in closed session. As to each allegation, staff will make a recommended finding of either sustained, not sustained, unfounded, or exonerated, and I'll talk a little bit more about what those findings mean in a bit. The PAB can either agree or disagree with those findings, and then can decide if it wants to conduct a hearing or if it simply wishes to send its recommendations on to the chief without a hearing. The chief of police receives the report and can either agree or disagree as to each allegation. Whenever there's disagreement, it's up to the director of police accountability to decide whether he or she wishes to appeal that decision to the city manager, and the city manager's decision is final in the case of an appeal, but if there's no appeal, then the police chief's decision will be final in that matter. In terms of the numbers, in 2025, the office of the ODPA received 43 complaints, and that was from 27 unique complainants. The third number on your slide is really a little bit distinct from the top two because the first two numbers talk about the intake for 2025. The allegations investigated is really the output. The allegations that were investigated and actually presented and a finding made. The third number represents 69 allegations of nine cases that were investigated and closed. There were an additional 22 cases that were administratively closed in 2025, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that in a moment. In the next slide, this is an overview of the complaint dispositions of those 69 cases, not, sorry, allegations. Sustained finding means that my office or the board found that misconduct occurred. Not sustained means the evidence does not support the allegation, but neither was it proven false. Unfounded means the alleged act did not occur, and exonerated means the alleged act did occur, but it was lawful, justified, and proper. As this table shows you, the unfounded finding constitutes almost half of the total number of findings that the board and this office made. Administrative closures occur for all the reasons that you could see here. Most cases closed in 2025 administratively were done due to staffing issues in the year. There was an investigator who left, and then there was a, was there a gap in investigators? And that was a gap in investigators before another one came on. And there was, we were actually, but the office was actually budgeted for two investigators and lost the second investigator during the hiring freeze. So decisions had to be made about which cases to administratively close simply for lack of capacity. Administrative closure also occurs when there are, there's not a prima facie allegation or it appears that the complaint was made for retaliatory or frivolous reasons. And then there are other reasons such as the complainant couldn't be reached, complainant changes their minds, the complaint is filed too late, result through other means, or in one case there was a policy change that satisfied the complainant. This slide shows agreement rate analysis between the PAB and the police chief. And what stands out here is that of the 13 allegations that were sustained by the PAB, the chief agreed with none of them. And also not sustained is a second notable figure here, which is only one out of 14. So there was more agreement with the unfounded and the exonerated findings. And this slide shows, it could be a little hard to read because the numbers are small, but they're directly from the department. So the Internal Affairs Bureau of the Police Department investigates misconduct allegations, but against all Berkeley department employees. So it's not just the sworn officers, unlike our office. So the numbers are not completely comparable. Also, all complaints that come to us where we find prima facie allegations of misconduct are also referred to internal affairs. So there's a dual system there. And I think the thing that's noticeable about the police department's figures are that they break down their stats, their statistics by internal complaints, that is those that come from within the department, and external complaints from members of the public, and that includes the ones that are filed with our office. And what I think is notable here is that most of the sustained allegations by IA come from their internal complaints. And I'm going to pass it over to Mr. Murillo to talk about policy work. Okay. Thank you, Director Lee. In this section, I'll provide a brief overview of the policy work that the board took on in 2025, not just because this is my role, but it's my favorite part of the presentation every year. 2025 had a lot of interesting topics that the board tackled and that this body considered. Some of the highlights that I think most of us are familiar with, given that there are also priority items this year with surveillance technology, the board did a lot of the review around the different proposals that were coming towards the end of the year, as well as some proactive research, for example, AI-assisted report writing. Although the department was not considering it at that time, during discussions of surveillance technology, that was a topic that has come up repeatedly as some of our vendors currently are starting to offer it. And it was a great opportunity for us not just for the board to research and provide insight before something was potentially considered, but it also served as a great opportunity for us to partner with UC Berkeley's Criminal Law and Justice Center, who helped us with the research on this, as well as drones, strengthening some of our partnerships with both the university and providing opportunities for community involvement, particularly in light of the staff transitions that were happening last year and the board's vacancies that are now being filled thanks to your nominations. So again, various topics. There's also vehicle pursuits policy that the board provided a lot of feedback on, the controlled equipment and the MOUs, which the spottery approved this year. Last year, there was a lot of work that went on between the department and the board. This year, they didn't provide any additional comments because of that extensive collaboration. In terms of the subcommittees, as you may recall, last year, the board ended the year with a lot of subcommittees. One of the priorities of the board last year was to close and combine a lot of committees to really focus its work, and most importantly, optimize their resources with the available staff members, or the available board members. The committees on the screen are the ones that were either closed because the topic had been resolved or the policy had already been discussed, or that were merged with other subcommittees. For example, the budget and metrics and operations and processes.
Segment 2
We can look into that. The temporal analysis, our distribution, although the percentages varied slightly, the distribution was fairly constant during the different points in time during the day. And then, of course, the housing status, individuals perceived to be unhoused, were stopped far more often than expected based on their share of the population. In terms of post-op outcomes, we noticed that the search rates varied across groups. Black and African-American individuals and white individuals were the two groups that were stopped at higher rates, with, of course, our Black and African-American population were stopped, as noted on the slide, were stopped at a higher rate than some of the other groups. And then our search yield is really where we saw that for the larger groups that were stopped. The search yield was relatively close to one another. In terms of use of force trends, this is one of the policies that the board is actively working on with the department, and it was a topic of conversation last year as well, where a lot of work went into it. This year, there was less instances of force. There was 276 incidents, 315 unique subjects, and 1,276 individual force applications. The individual force applications just means that in terms of one specific incident, it might involve multiple officers or multiple subjects, so there might be more than one use of force for each one. Consistent with last year, level one use of force had the highest percentage of incidents, followed by level two, with the most common being level one grabs and control holds. The top reasons as to why force was used, the top was to affect an arrest, followed by 5150 detentions for mental health-related calls, incidents where there is resisting arrest, where the subject was combatant, or there is an assault on an officer. Out of the incidents that involved use of force, 62% were arrested, and in terms of demographics, the group with the highest rate of use of force was Black or African Americans at 152 or 48.3% of instances, followed by our white community members at 83 instances and 26.3%, and then followed by the Hispanic and Latinx population. Now pivoting to training, in terms of training, there's an increase that was comparable to last year's report out. There were 6,872.5 hours of training conducted by the various personnel. The way that we obtained this data is that BPD shares their training orders with us, so we as staff, we collect a database of the number of hours and the types of training categories that our officers are going to. This year, tactical and operational training was the bucket that had the largest amount of hours. Tactical and operation includes everything from our tactical response to our crisis management response, which were two of the highest training hours, followed by firearm training, leadership development, supervision training, defensive tactics, and employee wellness and support, which were some of the most frequent, but not the only training topics. I'll bring it back to Director Lee. So to wrap it up, there were quite a few accomplishments made by the PAB and the ODPA in expanding their oversight of various, of a multitude of policies and technologies and equipment, especially in the area of surveillance technology. The negotiations of the permanent regulations continued, was not completed, but progress was made. There was increased community outreach and engagement, and there were new academic and community partnerships to help advance the goals of the PAB and the ODPA. Challenges, of course, as was mentioned, was staffing shortage and vacancies on our board. I know we're into 2026, but I do thank all the council members for making their nominations when you had a vacancy. I believe we have two coming this evening and the last one at your next meeting, and we will have a full board, so that's very exciting for us. Other challenges experienced by our organization were delays in investigations and policy reviews, which was really a direct result of staffing shortage, and because of that, it was often hard to react quickly enough under deadline for some certain public safety initiatives, and the board and this office really feel that there is a need for greater awareness on the part of the public about our work. So priorities for 2026 will be to finalize and implement our permanent regulations, to strengthen policy oversight and review, and I do think that will happen now that we have a full, are about to have a full complement of board members, and you're about to have a permanent director. I think that will go a long way into being able to advance policy work, and that will provide the opportunity to expand community outreach and engagement, and I think a new permanent director can work on improving organizational capacity and performance, and so I think the key takeaway is that despite the constraints of resources and staffing, the PAB did continue its important work in many ways of advancing oversight. It continued partnerships with academic and community groups and expanded community engagement and look forward to 2026. That's the end of our formal presentation, and of course we are happy to answer questions you may have. Thank you so much. Really thank you both so much for your presentation and also for the report itself. I know it's a lot of work each year, and I want to start with any questions from my council member colleagues. Council member Humbert? I think council member.. Oh, yes. He's been having trouble with the parliamentarian. I know we've been, so.. The 20s, they both say one. They both say one. Oh, and I didn't.. But I can go after if you'd like. Yeah, sorry. It's a very dim red light over here, so go ahead. Okay. Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. I really appreciate the presentation, but I also apologize in advance. My questions will not be in any particular order, but I wanted to start with.. You provided.. First of all, I really appreciate your explanation of the different complaint dispositions. That was something that I asked about in the previous report and previous year's report, and I'm glad that was added. I was wondering if you could provide any kind of context around just staffing levels right now and how that may support disposition of complaints. Do you find that at any given point in the year, you may be getting more or fewer complaints that you have to work through? Thinking about the bathtub representation, is there more flowing in than out or are you closing them at a higher rate? I think they come in at a fairly regular rate. There's occasionally ebbs and flows. From what I can see, the investigator is keeping up pretty well with processing the cases. That said, I will say there are a few cases where we have had to extend our investigatory deadline. Our regulations provide that we have 120 days to complete the investigation of a complaint and that could be extended to 195 after consulting with the police chief and the city manager. I've had to do that probably in maybe five cases in the three months, three, four months that I've been here. Thank you. Just for my own edification, can you speak to, I know step four in the complaint process is TPA presents findings and recommendations to the board. Is that every single time you get a complaint or is there some kind of administrative decision making and then only a subset of those that you feel would need board resolution would come to the board? I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that. What percentage of the complaints received have to be adjudicated by the board or is it all of them? Oh, no, not all of them. There are a fair number that do get administratively closed because they haven't alleged misconduct against an officer. Maybe they're unhappy with the way something turned out with their case, but they haven't alleged any violation of policy and so that would be closed. Another way that allegations are dropped is a member of the public might make six allegations of misconduct and we may find there's really only four that constitute a violation of policy. So that's another way that we would weed those out. Am I answering your question? Yeah, that makes sense. I think, yeah, the clock is ticking so I'm going to keep going with this. I was curious about the policy requests just around what is the timeline for those once you decide to take them up? Do those need to be reported out within a certain period of time? You also mentioned that they're on the website once there's a report. Is that something that ever gets shared with the council or could? Just kind of how are they communicated once the reports are complete? There's no deadline for handling policy complaints so it's pretty much and those are that's an example of something that might be put on the back burner when there aren't enough board members, for instance, or say staff to support board members' work. I'll let Mr. Murillo talk about what's posted on the website. So yes, for some of our reports well, every report gets uploaded to our reports page once it's been presented to the board. For some of them we do transmit them directly to the board, others are sent to the chief first in case there's some form of response that wants to be provided or additional context before it gets sent up to the city council. I think for the previous part of your question and just adding to the director's response in terms of the timeline last year under the standing regulations there's a new policy manual or a new process that the board implemented but our reviews, once we receive it, we have 30 days to give preliminary recommendations to the board as to whether or not something should be taken up and if so, what specific policies they would be reviewing. So that's the process, but in terms of an end product there's an exact timeline and the board helps us guide those priorities in regards to the director's comments about needing to put something to the side. Like for example, if we're doing surveillance technology that does have a deadline, board might ask staff to prioritize supporting them with that over the policy reviews. Thank you. Thank you very much. Alright, moving on to Council Member Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you.
Segment 3
the unhoused, welfare checks, complaint-driven policing, behavioral health-related calls, service-related interactions, and quality-of-life-related enforcement activities. So my question is, are there any data that have led the PAB to believe that these previously established factors themselves don't adequately explain higher interactions between this population and the police in Berkeley? In other words, it seems to me to be sort of self-evident that there would be more interactions because these folks are out in public and these factors are present. I think from the board's discussion when we were reviewing this exact point, actually, is that it doesn't necessarily provide a conclusion in terms of, like, yes, the expectation is if you're out in public more and you have higher contacts, or if you have higher exposure, you're likely to have higher contacts. I think what this leads us to is not so much of, again, making a conclusion, more of making us ask questions of what we could do to potentially reduce those contacts and what resources we could provide as a city to make sure that those interactions are handled with the best resources that we can. So in terms of the board's recommendation, that's the way that they're perhaps not conveyed in the way that it was written, but that's what they want us to convey, just because some factors aren't necessarily controlled purely by policing action, but may be influenced by other resources that we, as a city, as a team, can provide. Council Member, actually, Chair Cayetano is online. Perhaps it might make sense to have him address your question. Sure, although I think that was Mr. Murillo addressed it perfectly well. But if Mr. Cayetano has additional comments, I'm happy to hear them. Chair, are you, I think, raising your hand online? Yes. I think that iPhone might be.. Thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes. Thank you, Council Member. Yes, I think that Analyst Murillo's answer was accurate. I just wanted to add that we didn't do a control study for those variables. I think we were pointing to them as likely factors, but we were encouraging the Council to refer out a study that would allow us to actually control for those variables and identify the root causes, because that is not what we were doing when we were just noting the disparity based on population. That would be my only clarification. Thank you. I appreciate that. They may explain just on their face the disparity, but it'll be interesting to find out whether that's correct. And perhaps I missed this in the main report, but is there anywhere in that main body of the report that lists what type of allegations were among PAB's sustained findings, and how many cases the complaints are spread across? Now, I think that information is in the appendices, but it's not present in the main body of the report. Is that correct? Can you tell me? Let me catch up with you. Here. This case? Sorry. Yeah, in terms of sustained allegations, that number is accurate. So 13 of them, but within four complaints. That's correct. Okay. Were any of the sustained allegations for improper use of force, false arrest, threats, or dishonesty? Yes. In those serious categories, how many of the 13 involved use of force, false arrest, threats, or dishonesty? Which are probably among the most serious issues. I don't have that number immediately available, but we could get that for you. Okay. What we seem to conclude was that none of them involved those categories, but I could be wrong. But in general, the report itself doesn't highlight that most of the sustained allegations were for lesser issues. Is that correct? And I'm wondering why that is. You're wondering why the report does not highlight that sustaineds are for lesser? Yes. Okay. It seems to me to be significant. Well, I think that's a fair observation, and I really couldn't speak to the thinking on that. I do note, I am noticing that we do not have a section that breaks out, that sort of synthesizes the information that's in the appendix. And perhaps a note for next year. Yeah, I think that would be helpful, because I'm not saying that any complaints are, you know, immaterial, but there's some are more material than others. And it looks to me like the sustained issues were less significant, and none of these really serious categories. Council Member, I do recall off the top of my head a serious complaint, where there was a serious violation that was not sustained with the chief. And I'm happy to talk, you know, I can't speak publicly about it, but we don't differentiate based on serious versus unserious, and we can take those categories and apply them for the future, but that's not typically how we think about them. Well, I think it would be important to do so, because that shows us, I think, an important set of information. If all of the complaints that are sustained are, again, not minimal, but not at the highest level, we want to know that. Council wants to know that. May I have some more time, Madam Mayor? Yeah, you could have some. How much time do you need? Another couple minutes, maybe. Okay. Two minutes from Council Member O'Keefe. Oh, I probably don't even need three minutes, but don't start the clock yet. This is not so significant. Let me ask this final one. I'm also confused by the report's statement that the city manager's office issued decisions on only five allegations. Looking at the appendix, it appears that the city manager's office issued at least nine decisions, and depending on how you count them, potentially as many as 13. Can you explain this discrepancy? Maybe it's because the case from 2024 that appears to have been reviewed in 2025 doesn't count in those numbers. It was just really confusion on my part. If you can't answer it, I'd understand that. No, I'm sorry. And again, because I was not here last year, I just don't have enough depth of knowledge to be able to answer that off the top of my head. Yeah. Really, I guess I didn't need the two minutes, so I'm done right now. No. I'm sorry. You can reclaim your time. I'm just kidding. He's like, reclaiming my time. All right. Council Member Blackaby. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank Interim Director Lee, Mr. Murillo, and Chair Cayetano for being here for their hard work and dedication to what's been a challenging year and for putting together this thorough report. So thank you. I did read, I think like Council Member Humbert did read the whole report, and clearly Council Member Trager, but I think most of us have spent a lot of time with this. I did have some follow-up questions. One of the concerns that sort of bubbled up through the report was this question about operational challenges on the ability to advise counsel on the deadlines. One thing I wanted to dig into was on items that come from counsel, like for example, the items that are coming later tonight. Best I understand, kind of from the clerk's office all the way through the process, there's usually like about a 19-day window, plus or minus, when something shows up on the agenda for the agenda committee, goes to agenda committee, and then it gets advised for a counsel meeting. I think there's about a 19-day window, and I was having a conversation with Chair Cayetano about this too. Is that sufficient time for you to, if you see it on an agenda, for you to be able to respond to it, agendize it for your own meeting, respond to it, and then come back to us? Is that time frame work? I guess it depends on the issue, if it's very complicated. I mean, 19 days generally allows one PAB meeting, possibly two, but I think complexity matters. If it is something that requires quite a bit of thought or maybe some research, then one meeting may not be adequate. Okay. And in some ways, that's the minimum, because I think usually what happens, for example, these items from Council Member Kaswani, they came up sort of 19 days in advance, but then actually were referred to a policy committee, then there went to a policy committee track, and then they came back, so there was actually substantial time. I think in that case, probably enough time to engage. Right. Well, just timeline-wise, yeah, I was just going to say that also, though, things sometimes can change in policy committees, and so something to take into account is, you know, if something changes, having an additional time to review it. Yeah. So I just encourage, like, let's figure this out, because the cleanest way is to sort of pick it up as it's coming through the agenda process and then bring it into your own process. I know stuff that comes from the police department, then it's a separate track. It's on a different timing, and hopefully there's more collaboration and coordination on especially policy matters that are happening, because it's not on the same kind of fixed timeline as stuff that's coming to Council is once it gets on an agenda. So anyway, for a separate conversation, but I do want to make sure that this operational piece is ironed out, because it feels like we keep hearing, oh, we haven't had enough, and I think that's true in some cases, but I just want to make sure if there's something that's always a hurdle, what is it so that we can get at it? Because I don't want the timing piece to be the part that always becomes the, well, so therefore, we need more time. Like, let's figure out how to get you the right time at the right time to do what you need to do. Right. I would say in the time that I've been here the past few months, it's more of the items that are coming from the police department. Okay. Okay. Yeah, which we may see on.
Segment 4
Anyway, we can again, I'll leave that for a separate time, but that's just my observation on it. I see your point. Yeah, because that would make that look a lot better. Actually, my guess is combined, that's probably 80 or 90% agreement across all of it. A couple last things on the stop data. I really appreciate the deeper and broader analysis here because I think looking at this with all the slices helps give us a lot more flavor. I'll just observe that across the temporal data, because really what you'd expect to see on the temporal data is if there was bias, you'd expect in the daylight to see it show up, I think. I'm not an expert, but if in the daylight you would expect to see, that's when if you were biased against a particular group, you would expect to see stops because you can see folks in the daylight as opposed to at nighttime. I think we should feel good that there's actually very little variation, and there's nothing really that's moving in that direction. That's one observation. The other piece is on the search data. Again, you talked about Mr. Murillo, but the fact is, yes, there are different search rates for different groups, but the yield rate is remarkably stable. Sorry, Wendy. Can you give him just another minute? Thank you. I'm almost done. Thank you. My sense is that on the issues around bias, to me the temporal data and the search data are the ones that go most directly to bias, and there wasn't anything that was shouting out at me in those numbers that said, here's evidence of at least systematic bias. I just want your reaction to that. I think, yes, that's a fair approach to the data in terms of the test. One thing as I was drafting this report was that as we went to each test, that test brought out other questions as well about the factors that aren't reflected in the data, which is why we tried not to be conclusive with our analysis apart from just being descriptive in what was provided and then for this discussion to happen essentially. But that was something that we observed in the data. Because I take your point in the summary. You suggest that, again, ongoing monitoring is necessary, and there are real disparities. We see the disparities. I think the question is, what are the drivers of the disparities? I think what we're seeing is, yes, there are some groups that are being policed more than others. Those might be because of their location or their use of cars or walking or whatever, whether they're unhoused or not. These are all factors. Absolutely socioeconomic pressures, inequality, availability of housing, all these things are big drivers of what's happening here. I'm not saying they're unimportant, but at least the piece that the police department itself can control, which is how they're using their resources and how they're training their officers systematically, at least I'm hopeful that some of those other factors absolutely exist. I just feel like they might be beyond what the police department has direct control over. Council Member, do you have additional questions? One last question. Okay, go ahead, but maybe you can keep your comments brief and save them for the comment period if you could just focus on the questions. I'll do a comment period. That would help us. Yeah, I'll do a comment period. Last thing on public outreach is how do we broaden to a broader cross-section of residents? You talked about, I thought the LinkedIn pilot program was interesting. What are you guys doing on LinkedIn? LinkedIn was really, it's the pilot program because it's really the first social media where we tried to be more active with it. In recent months, I will say that it fell off just because of bandwidth. For example, I'm one of the administrators, but I'm keeping the lights on in terms of our administrative operations. But we're in the age of social media. That's one of the areas that in our discussions in our program with Social Sector Solutions was an area that we could broaden. We have areas where we talk about just partnerships with schools in general and reaching out to their parents using as an educational and potential partnership of not just about learning about oversight, but learning about the different public safety components of our community. I'm a strong believer that the more the community knows, the easier our job gets because things get narrowed down. Those are just some of the first initial steps in terms of broadening just general community education and being more present in different areas of the city and not just what's generally closer to us. Great. Yeah, I think anything that continues to make it as representative so that as much of our residential base is participating in some way, shape, or form as possible so you're getting the most representative cross-section of the public involved is fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for letting me take some extra time. Thank you. Council Member O'Keefe, you have two and a half minutes. Okay, that was my first question. How much of my time did I give away? It's okay. I just have two, maybe three questions. My first question is when your office is conducting its investigations, do you find that you have or your investigators have access to the information that they need or have there been any barriers or can that process be improved? If you're talking about the access to records from the police department, well, I would say they're actually very recently, maybe not very recently, but since the time I've been there at least, because of staffing issues in the police department, we are not getting records as quickly as we would like to. And I will say that that accounts for at least a couple of the time extensions that I've consulted with the mayor and the chief on for our investigations. I, you know, it's not a question of bad faith or incompetence. It's simply a capacity issue at the department in getting records to us. And have the time extensions that have been granted, were they able to accommodate, or is it still a barrier to ultimately doing the investigation? The charter is kind of funny, or the regulations are kind of odd in the way they're worded because it says that the director of police accountability may extend the time in consultation with. So it doesn't really ask the director to ask the chief or the city manager to grant, but it just says that the director shall. So basically, I send an email to Mr. Budenhagen and Chief Lewis and say, in this case, here's what's going on, and here's why we're not going to make the 120. And in every case, they say, thank you very much. That sounds fine to us. So it's worked in that sense. And I think at least since I've been here, we've hit the 195. That's the extended timeline. Great. So it sounds like it's working, but maybe that particular issue could use a little clarity as to who has to authorize the time extension. That's not really important, but I'm just noting it. I don't think it's that important. If I may, Council? Yeah. May I? So I think I would be remiss if I did not raise the fact that the former director in 2025 sued the city in order to get records that we had requested, and the city decided to oppose that request. And so the board decided that those records were necessary for it to resolve the questions that were presented before it. And so because we didn't have those records, and we ultimately did not get those records, we had to punt on some of the decisions and some of the findings. And so there are certain times where even if the department does – we do get an extension from the department, and we're given time extensions, we're not still given complete records from the departments and the records that we asked for. And later, we find out that there were responsive records that were not given to us, and that impairs our ability to make findings. So it's not just about the timing, but about the completeness of the records that we're requesting. Interesting. So that answer – thank you very much for that. That answer seems to maybe not contradict, but doesn't – can you comment on what he said? Because you didn't mention the – Well, I was talking about timing, and the chair was talking about actually what is produced. Well, okay. So yeah, I guess that was actually my question. Yeah, that was more – all of it. I'm just curious if you're getting what you need in any – interpret that question any way you need to. It's hard to answer because sometimes we don't know what we're not getting if we don't know that something exists. But I would say that so far, I have been getting – we have been getting what we've been requesting. There might be an exception or two I can think of. Okay. Thank you. And then – okay, good. My other question is also about data, but it's about – I'm curious about – you know, I want to say, first of all, thank you. Thank you for everything. This is a lot of work. I appreciate it. And I looked with great interest at the stop data analysis that you did. And by the way, I checked your math, and it's correct. And I was able to do that because anyone, including me, can download the data set and just do this kind of analysis yourself. And so my question is, do you have any feedback or a wish list for what should be on the Transparency Hub? What type of data that – I think it's already in a few of the answers to the questions tonight. You've mentioned like, well, we don't really have that data. We don't really keep track of that. Do you have like a wish list for things you wish that were kept track of so you could do a better analysis? There's comments that I'm linking out right now. But I guess I'll bring it back to the dilemma. Sometimes there's data that we wish was included, but it might create a lot of noise with the data that we actually need to report on. What I would say is that generally speaking, like, for example, I think of the.
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I was hardly even informed about it. So I think there's a lot that really needs to be dug into here. I appreciate where you've gone, but I think there's a long way to go. And I hope, council members, that you can ask some of these questions for those of us who can't. So thank you. Thank you, Andrea. Any other public comment on this item? No more hands raised. Okay. Do we have any comments from council members? And again, I'm sorry, I think our parliamentarian isn't really working, so maybe just raise your hand. Yes, Council Member Treko. Thank you so much. Again, I want to just extend my deepest gratitude to you, Director Lee, to Mr. Murillo, to Chair Cayetano, and to everyone on the PAB and the OPDA side who has been hard at work and doing very important work despite of all the churn that you have been undergoing. Just a few broad strokes. A comment from me. I am interested in digging in more around these policy complaint resolution reports that are authored or produced as a result of policy complaints. While they're on the website, and I appreciate that they are, I would be interested in the possibility of communicating them to council in a more externally forward way, whether it's via an informational report or a work session subject to council resourcing and time availability. I would also be interested in better understanding the clearance rates of complaints year to year relative to the complaints that go into the system. I want to make sure that the number of complaints and resolutions are relatively balanced, accounting for the fact that there would be some churn probably at different times in the year. As some of my colleagues have already mentioned, I too would appreciate the additional data you provided around police stops and agree that it appears on the face to pass the veil of darkness test around accounting for bias. And I'd like to dig in to what's behind the data around police stops relative to unhoused individuals, including how a stop is being characterized in this case, and better understand other methodologies vis-a-vis accounting for stops. For instance, there was a biracial identification, and I wasn't sure if that is something, like who reports that? Is it the complainant? Or, I mean, this is police stops, so yeah, basically how is that data generated? I'd like to better understand in whatever venue may be most appropriate what may be behind the disagreements between the PAB and PD in the sustained allegation category. I would also be interested in continuing to remain informed on the length of time it takes to receive record requests and ensuring that ODPA and PAB receive the documents they request to the extent that they're fair game for receipt. From my own experience in previous career where I was involved in federal oversight, accessibility of data is foundational to sound oversight. Lastly, I would be interested in additional data as it pertains to the nexus between situations that may involve mental health challenges and use of force, and would echo Council Member O'Keefe's point about what other information would be useful to you within the data you might receive for you to be able to continue to do your best work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Blackaby. Thanks, Madam Mayor. Since I had a lot of questions, my comments will be briefer. So I want to thank you all for being here, and thanks for the report. A couple of just observations and comments for future. I thought the data was really great, but the ability to put it in some context, trends over time, comparisons with relevant jurisdictions, all that would be really useful to the extent it's possible. Because then I think we actually have some comparables that we could say, you know, you could highlight the red flags where things are moving in the wrong direction or we're out of sync, or highlight the green flags where things look like they're moving in the right direction or that we're performing particularly well. So that would be really helpful for me, because sometimes I find in reading through it, I can't tell is that good or bad. It just is what it is. But with some of that context, I think it would help give us that flavor. So it would be a request. It would be really even make this even more valuable, I think, next time. Appreciate kind of the conversation on the operational time limits. I would love to, again, at a separate time, figure that out on the two tracks of the items that are coming from the council, the items that are coming from the department, and making sure that it's fitting in the timelines that you have to participate in those discussions, and just make sure that lines up. And if there's anything structurally that needs to be done without further lengthening timelines, I would love to figure that out. I'm hoping that just the current agenda process, getting you that advance notice will help, but please let us know if that's not working. On the regulations, super excited and hopeful, knock on wood, that those will be done this year. I know that will be a huge time savings for you all, and just, again, an ability to focus your resources on the things that make a difference. So, again, we're interested in helping get that over the finish line as well. On the stop data, again, thank you for the conversation. Again, my takeaway is we know there are disparities. There are racial disparities in the stop data. None of that is – none of us feel good about the disparities that we see, but a lot of those are driven. My sense is by things that are outside of the control of the department specifically. Again, if there are things that show bias or things that show problems, we need to know about those. But at least based on my reading of the data, I'm heartened to see that we're not seeing clear signs of bias. If that's not the case and you have other data that shows that, let us know. There are other things we need to work on as a community in terms of housing, in terms of economic development, in terms of greater access to resources that will help, I think, some of these other numbers that we're seeing in the policing data. But that's separate than the conversation about, I think, how the department is doing its policing. And then lastly, I'm super encouraged by your goal of doing more outreach. Like I said, I think to the extent that we can broaden the conversation, have an even more representative group of people who are participating in this process, representing the voices of everyone in the community, I think we'll all be better served by that. And you play an important function in providing a place where that conversation can happen. So thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Council Member Luna Parra. Thank you. I really want to acknowledge the amount of work that went into this, especially with the staffing concerns and the issues with staffing the PAB. I am very thankful and impressed and really appreciate all of the work that I know went into this. The disagreement between the PAB and the chief is pretty concerning to me. I want to figure out how we can get to the bottom of that. I hope that the regulations will help. But I would really like to see more alignment on that in the future. And this is kind of just a general statement. I really am excited about something really small included in the report around collaborating with the UC Berkeley Social Sector Solutions Program. I think that's very exciting, and there's a lot of really amazing work coming out of the university, and I'm excited to see whenever I see our city partners work with the university. So thank you for that. Oh, I did actually want to ask about one of the allegations around the not wearing the body-worn camera, where the chief agreed with the PAB but was not the off – it says in the report there was no formal discipline. Can you talk a little more about that or how that – if you're able to describe? I don't know how far we can go into these kind of conversations, but I'm curious if there's more information there. And this can also be sent to the chief if that's a better place for the question. Sorry, I don't know enough about that to be able to answer. Okay, that's okay. Is it possible for the chief to answer? If not, I can come back to it. I'm just curious about this piece. And I guess it's more of also how discipline works once an allegation is sustained. The chief could speak to that more broadly, not with specifics about certain cases. Oh, and the chief is there. So, chief, I can turn it over to you to give more of a sort of a broad overview of how you look at these things. Yeah, thank you. It's absolutely correct that we can't dive too deeply into the specific facts of a personnel complaint as that's a confidential personnel record. But I can share that for particular serious cases, there is space written within the charter that allows the PAB and DPA as part of their findings to make recommendations to the office of the chief on what the level of discipline or appropriate level of discipline may be. For other offenses, discipline can be – there can be aggravating or mitigating factors, and really it's a case-by-case basis as to what discipline an officer might receive. Stemming from a letter of advice or a letter of a recommend to more formally days off or up to and including termination, depending on the severity of the case. I'm not sure exactly what case you're referencing as far as we agreed on findings. It would be unusual for us to even say publicly what discipline was provided for a case that didn't fall within those charter-named cases. So I could do a little research and see what maybe that reference is, and maybe it just wasn't written clearly, or we can provide some more information on it. Happy to do that. Okay, thank you. Sorry I didn't ask that earlier. It got lost. Those are my comments, and I'm appreciative of your work. Thanks. Thank you very much. Going to Council Member Humbert.
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make that point. To Councilmember Blackaby's point about giving PAB sufficient time to review policy, I do want to thank you for making that point, Councilmember. I do think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, these PAB members are not salaried employees and that they receive a small stipend per meeting, which is really limited per month as well. And so, you know, the amount of work that we're having them do in terms of reviewing policies and getting back to us, and then there are changes and they have to review those. I mean, it is a ton of work. And with these meetings between the policy changes and different, you know, of course, the investigations, the actual, you know, huge part of their role, it is quite a lot. And so I did just want to comment on that. And, oh, Councilmember Blackaby, you made another point, which I agreed with about getting trends and comparisons to other cities. I think that would be very helpful for us to understand, you know, how things have changed over time, if there are any trends we should be paying attention to, what it looks like in other cities, although I recognize that's a little challenging given that different cities have different police accountability boards and structures different from ours. I want to highlight a few other things. Was really happy to, of course, read about the progress in our, with our meet and confer process and the permanent regulations for PAB. This is one of our big priorities that we've all stated for the Police Accountability Board and the Director of Police Accountability. And so I am really glad that we've, I know we've just got one more issue to kind of work through. And so I want to thank you all for your work there and to PAB and to our city staff for being very diligent and moving us forward. Also to our labor negotiator. And really glad to see that community engagement was part of the report, want to see that continue. Definitely with this new Director of Police Accountability, I want to make sure that that's something that, that they're very focused on. I think it's so important that people understand the work that you all do and, and ways that they can continue to interact with, you know, police accountability in the city. And also want to give a plus one to Councilmember Luna Parra's comments on UC Berkeley's Social Sector Solutions Program. That's so amazing that they did that work. And I'm really looking forward to reviewing their presentation. I know it's, it's being sent over to us. And just generally want to highlight just the importance of community engagement when it comes to police accountability. It's just, it's so important that people are aware of the work that you all are doing. And I also want to thank the chief for being on today and, you know, for her support of this work. It is so important. It's a, it's a huge part of our public safety work in the city is police accountability and us working together is, is essential. So I want to thank you all. Thank you everyone. And to my Councilmember colleagues. So I think that that's it for the evening for this special meeting, at least. Thank you all for being here and for the presentation again. Okay. That was our final item. So I will see if there's a motion to adjourn. Second. Can we take a roll on that, please? Okay. To adjourn, Councilmember Taplin. Yes. Dragup. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackabee. Yes. Luna Parra. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Mayor Ishii. Yes. Okay. Sorry. We are adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Recordings.