Addendum to the Police Review Board's report on November 9

The text that follows is an addendum to the report issued by the Police Review Board (PRB), and released today, regarding the police violence which took place at UC Berkeley on November 9, 2011. It was written by Eve Weissman, the graduate student representative who sat on the board. In the response, Weissman identifies a number of critical weaknesses with the report specifically and the PRB's investigation more generally.

Next to the important critiques laid out by Weissman, we want to make a general observation about the report: namely, that it is written from what is essentially an administrative perspective. Consider the discussion of "hair pulling" by the police: "Some members of the committee do not think that pulling protestors by their hair is consistent with campus norms; others believe it is effective and creates little risk of permanent injury" (p. 21). It's worth noting that the two sides of this supposed divide are not actually equivalent; the efficacy of yanking protesters' hair as a pain-compliance technique is not the question. Or rather, it is significant only to the extent that the question is how best to guarantee compliance, through pain or otherwise. The bottom line is that the PRB report, like the Bundy and Brazil reports that preceded it and the more recent reports (Reynoso/Kroll, Robinson-Edley) pertaining to the "Occupy" cycle, is primarily dedicated not to making the police more accountable or reducing the possibility of physical injury to protesters but to making the administrative apparatus more effective at shutting down protests, eliminating disturbances, and removing blockages. In other words, it is about facilitating the implementation of austerity measures and the privatization of public education.

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This Report regarding November 9, 2011 is the result of extensive deliberations and significant compromise of five members of the UC Berkeley Police Review Board. With respect and appreciation for the work of my colleagues on the PRB, I sign on to the final Report, but write separately to further articulate my views and note information that is not conveyed in the Report. This is necessary because the Report does not clearly communicate my judgment regarding the response of UC Berkeley campus leadership and law enforcement on November 9.

Given past and recent political activity on UC Berkeley’s campus, the detailed suggestions in prior PRB reports, and advance notice concerning large-scale protest activity on November 9, campus leadership’s preparation for and response to the day’s action was unjustified, inadequate and irresponsible.

First, in preparing for November 9, campus leadership was heavily influenced by their unfounded belief that “non-affiliates” – presumably more prone to disruptive behavior than members of the UC Berkeley community – had a central role in planning and carrying out the day’s actions. Similar beliefs were held by campus leadership during the 2009 Wheeler occupation. Then, as now, such fears proved to be unfounded. It is distressing that campus leadership continues to assume that “outside elements” pose an imminent threat, despite evidence to the contrary. Campus leadership should not prepare for protests based on the faulty assumption that individuals from outside the UC Berkeley community will be present – not without concrete evidence that this is the case and that such individuals will ferment disruption.

Second, and as another threshold matter, the Report does not address whether the campus leadership and police had a legal basis to remove the tents. This is a significant omission. The investigation into the much publicized pepper spray incident at our sister campus UC Davis concluded that “it was not clear what legal authority existed for the campus police to remove the tents and arrest those who opposed them,” and that “if there was no legal basis for deploying the police to take down the tents, the operation should never have taken place.” See Reynoso Task Force Report (March 2012) at 15. Students at UC Davis had camped out for one night when the police used pepper spray to remove protesters. At UC Berkeley, by contrast, students had not camped out a single evening on November 9. If the legal authority to remove tents was lacking or unclear at UC Davis, it was all the more so at UC Berkeley. Just as campus leadership should not respond to protests based on faulty factual assumptions, they should not respond on the basis of unclear or erroneous legal premises.

Third, simply articulating a “no encampment” policy without discussing how that policy would be enforced (beyond instructing law enforcement not to use chemical agents) was insufficient, at best. Given past protests at UC Berkeley and then-recent police confrontations with the Occupy movement across the country, campus leadership could and should have recognized that sending police squads clad in riot gear and armed with batons and bean-bag guns into Sproul plaza to remove tents would escalate tension and likely lead to violence against unarmed and generally peaceful protestors.

Undoubtedly, the seven Protest Response Team principles articulated by campus leadership after November 9 and repeatedly cited in the PRB Report represent an improved approach to campus protests, which emphasizes de-escalation and thoughtful planning. The PRB members generally agree that promulgation of the PRT principles demonstrates that campus leadership believes the response on November 9 did not comport with campus norms. However, even without the PRT principles, it is clear, based on both legal standards and the campus’s own written policies (detailed in the PRB Report), that the responses of campus leadership and law enforcement on November 9 were inconsistent with campus norms existing at that time.

Campus leadership and law enforcement should have known that removing tents from Sproul Plaza in the middle of the day at the height of the protest would require use of force and likely the use of batons. Despite the no-encampment policy, it is unclear why they chose to take such action. Not only did this strategy increase the likelihood that protesters would suffer physical harm, it stifled protected speech. Dispersal orders sometimes declared the entire assembly unlawful, while on other occasions the orders were limited to the actual encampment and interference with police. Additionally, this strategy contained no plan to prevent the further erection of tents after the first encampment was dismantled. Surely, clearing the tents in the middle of the night, rather than in the middle of the day, would have reduced the risk of confrontation, as demonstrated by the prior experiences of other Occupy encampments. It is troubling given the Wheeler occupation in 2009 and attempts to dismantle Occupy encampments across the country that the campus leadership did not anticipate and work more diligently to prevent the use of force.

Fourth, apart from the lack of foresight and planning around the first use of batons on Sproul Plaza earlier in the day, campus leadership’s failure to take steps following the afternoon confrontation to prevent or mitigate a similar occurrence in the evening is inexplicable. Crisis Management Team (CMT) members, informed the PRB that they did not attempt to intervene and/or modify police tactics during the six-hour period between the afternoon and evening confrontations because they had not yet seen the video footage that depicted the use of force by police. In light of the facts uncovered by the PRB during its investigation, that claim seems highly implausible. Internal emails confirm campus leadership was closely tracking social media on November 9. Videos depicting the use of batons were posted online within minutes of the afternoon confrontation. In addition, the Daily Cal’s live blog, which campus leadership also tracked, first reported the use of batons at 3:55 p.m. At 4:04 p.m., the Daily Cal blog quoted UC spokesperson Janet Gilmore as confirming five arrests from the “clash near the Sproul steps.” Also, Vice Chancellor George Breslauer sent Chancellor Robert Birgeneau an email regarding the use of batons at 4:30 p.m. Further, student government leaders met with members of the CMT in Anthony Hall following the afternoon confrontation and described the events that had transpired.

The CMT, as a group, was charged with managing the campus’s response to student protest. This was their primary, if not their only duty, on November 9. It appears the CMT met only once as a group on November 9. During this meeting, at around 3:30 p.m., Chief Celaya informed CMT members that tents had been removed from Sproul plaza and that some “confrontation” had ensued. According to the CMT, they did not request additional information and shortly after disbanded so that some CMT members could meet student leaders in Anthony Hall. It is disconcerting that members of the CMT did not actively seek out more information about the events that transpired on Sproul Plaza.

CMT members acknowledged that had they been fully aware of the afternoon encounter, they would have tried to prevent a similar evening occurrence. But the responsibility for obtaining this information was squarely within their purview and their collective failure to do so was inexcusable. In any case, CMT members knew or should have known about the now-infamous use of batons on Sproul Plaza around 3:30 p.m. Their failure to intervene and prevent a second occurrence is highly problematic.

Remarkably, nearly all members of the CMT went home for the evening by 9:00 p.m. with instructions to Chief Celaya (the only remaining CMT member) to remove the tents without the use of chemical agents. According to the CMT no further discussion regarding tactics or strategy for removing the tents took place. This too seems improbable, given their internal emails and communication. For example, a 7:41 p.m. email from Associate Vice Chancellor Clair Holmes, to Birgeneau and Breslauer states: “Our message is widely distributed, and it is very clear that we will not tolerate any encampments. All media outlets and the protestors know this. Now, for the execution of that strategy which will happen when the sun goes down of course...” Unanswered is the “strategy” Holmes is referring to in this email. Needless to say, the level of planning and the information gathered by CMT members during the day and into the evening on November 9 appear to have been inconsistent with the gravity of the situation confronting them and the breadth of their responsibilities.

Fifth, the PRB Report focuses exclusively on the afternoon and evening confrontations between police and protestors. In my view, at least two other events that transpired on November 9 should also have been investigated and reported by the PRB. First, in the afternoon police detained two Latino students outside of Berkeley Law School, near the intersection of Bancroft and College Avenues. Both students allege that they were improperly stopped pursuant to the UCPD’s campus monitoring policy. In one incident, officers put a law student carrying protest signs into a “stronghold” and asked him for identification. Eventually, the student was allowed to leave. As the student walked away, one of the officers allegedly asked whether he was sure that he spoke English.

The second incident involved another student also returning to the law school from Sproul Plaza. She had a bullhorn borrowed from the law school tucked beneath one arm. An officer approached, stood very close to her, and requested identification. Stepping back from the officer she said that she was a law student but did not have identification on her. When asked to give her name she was at first hesitant and inquired why she was being stopped. The officer stated that she could not have a bullhorn on campus. The student explained it belonged to the law school. Ultimately three more officers arrived on the scene. The student was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car while bystanders contacted law school administrators, who persuaded police to release her.

Additionally, lingering questions about the processing of arrestees and the use of student medical records remain unanswered. For example, a group of individuals who were arrested around 3:45 p.m. and booked by the Berkeley Police Department allegedly were not released after receiving citations. In addition, they were initially informed that they would be required to post bail, even though Penal Code § 853.6 requires misdemeanor arrestees be cited and released on their own recognizance unless unusual circumstances apply. According to the Berkeley Police Department, the decision not to cite and release was made by UCPD. It seems that this decision was ultimately reversed, after numerous complaints and prolonged detention of misdemeanor arrestees. Students have also voiced concern that their medical records have been misused to identify protestors and even assist the Alameda County District Attorney in filing criminal charges months after November 9. Pursuant to state law, the Tang Health Center must turn over medical records involving incidents of assault to law enforcement. The UCPD (and campus leadership) deny using these records in any untoward manner, including assisting the District Attorney. However, the timing and nature of arrests and subsequent charges raise questions that warrant further investigation.

Sixth, the PRB’s investigation was hampered by several factors, including the possibility of criminal charges being filed against participants in the protest. The very individuals most likely to have information relevant to our investigation were also potentially imperiling themselves by assisting our investigation. Students and faculty expressed concern about participating in public hearings given the prospect of criminal charges. While the PRB tried to allow people to anonymously submit evidence and testimony, many members of the campus community did not feel that they had a full and adequate opportunity to participate in the investigation given these concerns. Further, the fact that criminal charges were actually issued against some individuals after they publically testified at PRB hearings, reinforced the belief that there was a connection between the filing of criminal charges and the extent of one’s involvement in (legal) protest activity and the PRB investigation. Regardless of whether there was an actual connection, the criminal prosecutions have fostered distrust and possibly chilled participation by members of the community in future investigations.

Seventh, it is important to recognize that the PRB does not have a clear protocol for conducting effective, timely, and transparent investigations regarding the response of police and campus leadership to protest activity. When the Chancellor requested that the PRB investigate the November 9 incident, the Board Chair, with assistance from Board members, began to design the investigation procedure. Considerable time and energy was spent by PRB members negotiating over the contours of the investigatory process. This prolonged the investigation and ultimately the publication of a final Report. The failure to have an investigatory procedure in place resulted in confusion and miscommunication with faculty members and others asked to participate in the investigation. Additionally, certain hearings and testimony were not recorded or transcribed even though some Board members believed recordings and transcriptions would enhance the investigation. Accordingly, written guidelines for PRB procedures should be developed before the next investigation. Such guidelines should be established through a transparent process that encourages student, faculty, Administration, and police input. The guidelines should specify the role of individual PRB members including the Board Chair.

The lack of protocols was also reflected in the way campus leadership communicated with the Board. On a number of occasions, campus leadership refused to answer questions or speak directly with Board members, other than the Chair. The Board Chair had conversations with UC Berkeley Counsel Chris Patti and perhaps with other members of the Administration, to which members of the Board were not privy, compromising the transparency and reliability of the investigation. Also of concern is the fact that campus leadership paid private outside counsel to prepare testimony on behalf of UCPD, while comparable resources were not available for students or faculty participating in the investigation process. The PRB process was intended as a search for the truth, but the campus leadership assisted only one set of stakeholders in presenting its story to us.

In conclusion, the University’s use of force on November 9 was unjustified because it rested on faulty factual assumptions and questionable legal premises. Establishing a blanket “no encampment” policy days before November 9, while making no attempt to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with students and faculty about the substantive issues underlying the protest, was a thoroughly ineffective approach to the announced protest action. Going forward UC Berkeley campus leaders should carefully consider how to promote and encourage an atmosphere in which free speech and expression is valued and supported. Campus leadership should recognize that they share many of the same goals as the protestors – sustaining and growing a premier public university. Accordingly, the response of the Administration to protests should be crafted with an eye toward collaborating with students and faculty to achieve common ends and not simply to squelch peaceful assembly and speech because it may violate a “no encampment” policy. Further, if campus leadership is serious about curtailing the use of force by law enforcement, an independent, transparent, and sufficiently staffed PRB must be in place, guided by clear written protocols. Most importantly, never again can there be a recurrence of the type of uncalled-for violence by campus police that we witnessed on November 9, 2011.

Reflections from UC Davis: On Academic Freedom and Campus Militarization

 

The following article by Joshua Clover was just published in College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies. A PDF of the article is available here. We recommend reading it next to the latest piece from Nathan Brown, "Administrative Totalitarianism at the UC and the Necessity of Direct Action by Faculty."

The autumn of 2011 offered extraordinary images of police brutality against students (and not students alone) on University of California campuses. Two stand out, both seemingly following on from the national Occupy movement. On November 9, students attempting to ‘occupy’ a grassy area at the edge of Berkeley’s famed Sproul Plaza, next to the Mario Savio Steps, were batoned by riot police summoned to campus by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, first during the day, and then again that night when Occupy Cal returned. In no small part because a couple of professors were among the beaten, the event became a national news story. This would pale in comparison to events on the Davis campus nine days later, when a low-key tent occupation on the quad — Occupy UC Davis — was broken up by riot police summoned by Chancellor Linda Katehi from three jurisdictions. The images of one corpulent and distressingly nonchalant officer disbursing military-grade pepper spray to the faces of a couple dozen seated students would swiftly become one of the iconic images of the year, not just for the campus or the university but globally.

In train, there has been considerable discussion of removing the Chancellors who either authorized such actions or were too incapable to command the situation adequately. There has also been a perhaps more consequential debate around the presence of police on college campuses, regarding either their presence per se (for those familiar with the internationally and historically common situation of police-free universities), or in terms of their increasingly militarized form. And these changes in campus dynamics — toward the heavy hand bearing advanced weaponry — have prompted concerns about the implications for the intellectual and academic pursuits of the university, and what we might expect to develop from here.

I want to argue as directly as possible that grasping this new security regime as primarily pertinent to campus intellectual climate is misguided. While this line of inquiry is no trivial matter, it confuses and obscures core issues.

The confusion comes from two entangled commonplaces regarding these dramatic events (and others like them in kind, if not in media saturation). The first is the assumption that we can identify in each case a two-part sequence of cause and effect, in which students protest and police overreact disastrously. The second (with evident implications for the question of academic freedom tout court), is that this to-and-fro is to be conceived exclusively as a freedom of speech issue.

These assumptions form a unity. In this understanding, students first protest, as students are wont to do. The question arises as to the limits of protest, and to what extent certain actions — in this case, politicized camping — count as protected speech. ‘Time, place, and manner’ provisions are invoked; the police are summoned, heavy with tools. Orders to disperse are given, no dispersal is forthcoming, and then the intolerable thing happens, and everyone scrambles to understand and manage the aftermath.

There can be no doubt that these ‘overreactions’ are judiciously calculated to produce a chilling effect on student struggle. As with the endless nuisance charges levied against student (and other) organizers, they are designed to exhaust resources, both inner and material. And further there can be no doubt that this chilling effect spills over to the entire campus. In this sense it is certainly reasonable to consider the implications of these actions for free thought and intellectual exploration.

But there are also good reasons — better reasons, I believe — not to shift the debate onto the terrain of thought, ideas, expression, and so forth. It has suited all sides to allow that this drama revolves around First Amendment issues. Under considerable internal and external pressure, both Chancellors conceded that in these cases, the riot police may indeed have curtailed what really should be protected rights of speech and assembly. Katehi insisted (twice; she is in the habit of using the same formulaic language in multiple press releases) that: “Our campus is committed to providing a safe environment for all to learn freely and practice their civil rights of freedom of speech and expression” (2011a, 2011b); her counterpart at Berkeley, Chancellor Birgeneau, extolled the same virtues. Meanwhile, students did not hesitate to pillory both administrations for having failed the Bill of Rights, while dismayed if still-timorous faculty demanded that Birgeneau “respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus” (UC Berkeley Academic Senate 2011).

The fantasy at play here is that what has gone wrong somehow concerns the excessive assertion of First Amendment rights by students, or conversely, the excessive limiting of same by the administration. The logical remedy is inevitably discovered to be a rebalancing of these matters, extending adequate protections to ‘protest’ and ‘expression’ as abstract ends in and of themselves.

The underlying reality is radically different. What must first be recognized is that in neither case did we see the abstract two-part motion, protest/repression. The unity of each event is considerably more concrete: administrations must deploy force to implement austerity policies. The initiating acts were not student protests but university policies designed to assure that the costs of running an educational system increasingly devolve to students, who are at once ever more compelled to pursue higher education for competitive advantage in a forbidding employment landscape, and concomitantly less able to afford the same without increased debt and workloads.

This misrecognition of the sequence of substantive events is compounded by another, whereby the campus protests are presented as arising from the charisma of Occupy Wall Street and the ensuing national movement over the course of the preceding months. As the Occupy movement has not made a significant issue of education, and as students (especially at purportedly elite or top-tier universities) are often thought to be cushioned at least temporarily from the buffets of the economy (especially the employment market), the inference is frequently drawn that the campus variants of Occupy are lacking real content of their own, and are thus reducible to protest for the sake of protest.

What is forgotten is that the Occupy movement, doubtless inspired by 2010’s ‘Arab Spring’ and Europe’s ‘Movement of the Squares,’ has its local roots in recent US campus organizing, specifically the anti-privatization campaigns of 2009-2010 on UC campuses. They have been ongoing if uneven, and characterized throughout by police violence. The shock over recent events at Berkeley and Davis this November must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, only two Novembers before, both Chancellors called riot police from multiple jurisdictions onto the same campuses to break up anti-privatization occupations. Both times, the police attacked non-violent protestors, and lawsuits are still pending. In short, we are looking at a clearly defined confrontation that has been in progress for some time, on the concrete terrain of economic crisis — not a timeless confrontation between academic freedom and policing, on the abstract terrain of rights.

So we might say that a mistaken assessment of the sequence of events, both this November and over the last few years, allows for a misrecognition of the fundamental issue.This seems perhaps a neutral slippage; aren’t rights good for everyone? However, this reflexive motion — in which future political organizing and action turns on itself to address the formal conditions of previous actions rather than the preceding causes — in actuality serves the university administration admirably by displacing the debate into the arena of form rather than content. The administration can offer a remedy, with tonalities of magnanimous self-correction: they can promise to be more thoughtful and diligent about respecting the right to protest, and thus seem to slip out of their position in the struggle, that is, as enthusiastic co-authors of the privatization process. They themselves turn to become a context, not a class antagonist.

This is indeed precisely what has happened. One suspects there will be some payouts to injured students, and that a cop or two will be pastured. And the matter will be tentatively resolved, despite the economic content remaining entirely unaddressed; thus, the administration wins by ‘losing.’

One can see that this movement has become a substantial quagmire for the professoriat within this political cycle: what is sometimes called ‘the articulation trap.’ It is a double truism of the faculty member’s position, especially the professor’s, that she is not identified clearly with either side of the current struggle between the economic interests of students and administrators; at the same time, her job’s basic supposition (especially in the humanities) is that position-taking is itself an action. These two factors supply a powerful if implicit determination toward intervening not by entering into the content of this struggle, but by offering, at a remove, often-eloquent assessments that tend toward seemingly neutral ethical (or pseudo-ethical) categories like rights and freedoms. I fear we professors are quite often guilty of looking for our car-keys under the streetlight — that is, participating in this particular antagonism in the ways we are best equipped for, rather than in the ways that the conditions and goals demand.

In thinking about campus militarization, UCSC professor Bob Meister provides an extraordinarily useful account of the relation between campus securitization and securitization of university economies, as they have recently developed. In his talk on “Debt, Democracy, and the Public University,” he sets forth the cruel historical developments through which William Bratton was retained to lead the investigation into the pepper spray incident, and what it reveals about “the link between the privatization of public universities, the financial services industry and the national security industry” (Meister 2011). Meister observes that:

Since 9/11 the US defense industry of the Cold War has morphed from being mainly in the military hardware business into a new role as global provider of security services that enables government and corporations throughout the world to outsource intelligence, policing, background checks, construction of secure sites and various operations that may need to be deniable — as well as the public relations efforts necessary to support such deniability.

Most Americans do not know that there is a huge domestic market for services provided by the defense industry....The fastest growing market for the defense and security services industry is in the area of local government and public agencies that feel threatened by political protests, such as the Occupy movement, and that have reporting and other obligations under the Patriot Act. Former LA Police Chief William Bratton was hired to build this market for Kroll Security by its parent company, Altegrity, a defense contractor that is itself now owned by a private equity firm that also invests in both for-profit higher education and financial services (Meister 2011).

While the specifics of such connections inevitably vary from place to place and situation to situation, the systemic logic is plain enough. Heightened campus security is inextricably linked to heightened campus securitization in its two main forms: the decision of universities to pursue a certain line of investment strategies which move money away from educational services and into capital projects; and the corresponding decision to cover those educational costs by shifting burdens to students at a rate which can only be financed though student loans, concomitantly providing profitable investment for banks laden with otherwise fallow capital. The rise in tuition and indebtedness within the context of economic crisis simply is the militarization of campus; they are one and the same.

It is impossible to conclude other than this: even if one does adhere to the belief that the matters of intellectual freedom, free speech, and free assembly are fundamental to this unfolding political economic sequence, the place where such things will be arbitrated is not on their own terrain — the terrain of formal rights — but elsewhere. The necessary arena in which such rights might be protected presently and for the longer durée is the arena of direct antagonism between, on the one side, those fighting against backdoor privatization and austerity programs on campus, and on the other, those who implement and enforce them. This is not a rhetorical struggle, and moreover, the retreat into the sphere of articulation risks affirming the misrecognition of the struggle’s character. Such formal rights are far less an enabling condition for this struggle than an outcome of its material content.

Professors: stand with your students, literally. It is the best thing to be done for academic freedom; it is the least you can do for them.

Against Legal Repression: Picket California Hall Next Week

Update from a comrade on the recent revelation that UCB students and faculty are facing criminal charges for the protests of November 9. Not surprisingly, the police officers who beat these students and faculty with batons and arrested those they could pull to the ground by their hair are not facing charges or repercussions of any kind.

As many of you no doubt know, our colleague Celeste Langan and 10 students have been formally charged by Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley in connection with the protests on November 9th. Crucially, those charged are not limited to those who were arrested that day, and there is reason to believe that those singled out within this category were chosen for their prominent roles in the movement to restore public education. This is to me nearly as disturbing as the events of November 9th themselves, and potentially far more chilling of free speech than any specific instance of police brutality. In effect we are being told that:

-- Any protester on campus is at risk of prosecution, regardless of her level of involvement in an event and/or arrest.

-- The UCPD, ostensibly designed to protect and serve campus values, of which free speech must be one, will routinely invoke mutual aid, invite riot cops onto our campus, and then hand over evidence to public bodies with no commitment to campus values whatsoever.

-- Chancellor Birgeneau's declaration of amnesty under the Student Code of Conduct is rendered at once moot and cosmetic because it does not apply to those who were not arrested but face public charges and because it doesn't protect any protester from those charges.

-- Processes like the Police Review Board must be seen in a new light as strategic sites of data collection, since those who have testified there may have their testimony and that of others used against them.

At the very least, it seems to me we should put pressure on Birgeneau to take a public stand on the issue of these charges. Ideally he'd publicly request of O'Malley that the charges be dropped, but at the very least the administration should not be allowed to separate itself from this development merely because it is technically beyond a UCB purview.

To that end, several concerned people (undergrads, grads, and faculty) met informally last night to discuss possible responses. In addition to identifying the need for a swift editorial campaign (I believe the first arraignments, including Celeste's, are scheduled for 3/16), we decided on a picket of California Hall starting Monday at noon. It's not being called for by any particular group, nor should it have to be; it's a spontaneous response to this latest outrage by those in the community who are at risk (namely, all of us) and who stand in solidarity with those charged. I urge you all to come on Monday at 12pm so that our numbers are meaningful and our voices loud enough to reach those inside.

Police and Administrative "Accountability" and the UCB Police Review Board

For more information on the workings of the Police Review Board.
http://administration.berkeley.edu/prb/PoliceReviewProcedures.htm

After years of UCPD violence, secrecy, and sexual harassment, we at Reclaim UC thought UCB students might be interested in the process of filing a police misconduct complaint with the UCB Police Review Board. You might also have a few questions and concerns about how members of the Board are actually selected.

Here are some highlights:

1. All complaints are forwarded to the Chief of UCPD.

2. Complaints against the Chief of Police (Chief), Assistant Chiefs of Police (Assistant Chiefs), or Captains are excepted from the Board's jurisdiction (except in rare exceptional circumstances).

3. The Chair is "an individual of judicial temperament and background," often a currently serving law professor. In most misconduct complaints since 2009, the Chair has historically sided with UCPD and with the administration. The Vice Chancellor shall consult with the members of the Police Review Board before making a final selection of the Chair.

4. The Board has one sworn police officer who has retired or resigned in good standing from active service as a police officer. This member of the Board may be a member of UCPD 5 years after retirement.

5. All members of the Board are appointed for a year by the Vice Chancellor.

6. The two student appointees are part of the ASUC, an organization which has historically sided with UCPD and with the administration.

The entire complaints system must be submitted to the Chief of UCPD before the complainant is even able to meet with the Review Board. This includes an interview with the Chief or a designated representative of the Chief. Of course this structure severely discourages complaints because complainants must first be vetted by the very system they are lodging a complaint against.

The outcome of the entire process is dependent upon the personal judgment of the Vice Chancellor, based on a reading of the report provided by the Review Board.

Though UCPD conducts police operations, it does not have to meet the minimal standards of legal accountability applied to actual police departments.