Recommendations also include eliminating school resource officer program By Dan Schere |
February 5, 2021
Screenshot via Zoom
A Montgomery County task force on police is calling for crisis training for recruits and an emphasis on Taser use among the 87 recommendations it shared on Thursday. The group also wants to eliminate the use of school-based police officers.
County Executive Marc Elrich formed the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force last summer to audit policies, procedures and data from the police department “in response to the nationwide and local furor over racial justice,” according to a summary in the report.
The 41-member task force is made up of area law enforcement agency representatives, county employees, union representatives and others in the community. It has been meeting since September, with Bernice Mireku-North and Marc Mauer as co-chairs.
Applications for the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, created in an effort to review the city’s current approach to community safety, are open and will be due Feb. 8.
The task force will consist of 17 members, with nine representatives appointed by the mayor and each member of Berkeley City Council. The Mental Health Commission, Police Review Commission and Youth Commission will each appoint one member, as will the ASUC and Berkeley Community Safety Coalition. The last three members will be selected through the application process.
“Low-income residents and communities of color, particularly queer and trans people of color, are the most impacted by traditional law enforcement practices, and historically have been excluded from policymaking and accountability processes,” said city councilmember Terry Taplin in an email.
Saturday January 16, 2021 - 02:27:00 PM If all the newspapers I subscribe to arrived as paper editions, my house might look like the one I entered as a nurse years ago with newspapers in a mound filling the living room to the ceiling and the bedroom where I found my patient so full of papers and magazines that I couldn’t see the size of the bed or the rest of the room. I miss daily newspapers in hand, but limit myself to just the Sunday paper to read and set aside for my parrot Zorro. It is interesting how older articles take on a different meaning and that is what happened when I pulled out Joe Matthews’ editorial on why City Councils should be bigger.
Defund the police? Oakland’s budget shortfall could force cuts [San Francisco Chronicle]
Dec. 20 For months, Oakland leaders have considered cutting the city’s $290 million police budget in half, a goal set to meet the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement and turn a department haunted by past misconduct into a national model.
Now, as city officials struggle to fill a widening budget hole, a memo by the interim police chief provides the first glimpse of what a more modest cut might look like.
It could mean that activists get some of their demands met, such as relieving police of their duty to provide security when city workers clear homeless encampments. But it could also mean freezing youth mentorships, ending foot patrols of the bustling Uptown district, and paring back a celebrated program to curb gun violence.
Defund the police? Oakland s budget shortfall could force cuts
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Officers Bryant Ocampo and Daniel Cornejo-Valdivia patrol downtown Oakland. As the city struggles to fill a widening budget gap, a memo by the interim police chief offers a glimpse of what cuts might look like.Photos by Paul Kuroda / Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Oakland Officers Bryant Ocampo (right) and Daniel Cornejo-Valdivia visit with an officer on horseback patrolling downtown. The Police Department has eliminated details that put extra officers in areas with high rates of violent crime.Paul Kuroda / Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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