How These Cities Are Breaking Up the Work of Police Departments As the country reassesses its relationship with law enforcement, Ithaca, New York; Berkeley and Oakland, California; and Austin, Texas, are defunding, replacing, or reducing the scope of their police departments. Eoin Higgins
Failure To Disclose Despite a 2019 California law mandating the release of certain records related to police misconduct, law enforcement agencies in the state are still fighting records requests. Darwin BondGraham, Ali Winston
Oakland Takes First Steps Toward Directing Some 911 Calls To Community Responders It will be months before the pilot program is implemented in part of East Oakland, but activists say it’s a move in the right direction. Eliyahu Kamisher
Berkeley City Council Passes Sweeping Reforms to Limit Police Traffic Stops In an effort to end systemic racism, the California city will aim to reduce the number of police-involved traffic stops for expired registrations and other small violations. Joshua Vaughn
Carroll Fife’s Fight For Unhoused Mothers Sparked A Movement Across The Country. Now She’s On The Oakland City Council Ready To Transform The City. Fife has pledged to reinvest in the local community, aggressively combat the housing crisis, address income inequality, education, healthcare and more. Eoin Higgins
Carroll Fife Is Fighting To Make Oakland Safer And More Equitable For Everyone In her run for City Council, Fife pushes back on the institutional barriers to Black people that come from a history of oppression. Eoin Higgins
Tenants in Oakland Are Going on a Rent Strike Tomorrow Residents have been told to stay in their homes to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus—but little has been done to ensure they can afford to stay there, activists say. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
To Stop the Spread of Coronavirus, California Officials and Attorneys Call for Eviction Bans Experts say evictions cause a ‘downward spiral’ of health problems for renters, and that housing security is necessary to slow the spread of the pandemic. Darwin BondGraham
California Court Destroys Files In Historic Police Corruption Case Criminal case files from Oakland’s seminal Riders scandal were among documents shredded by the Alameda County Superior Court in 2015. Ali Winston, Darwin BondGraham
Five Oakland Police Officers Involved In Fatal Shooting Of Homeless Man Seek Reinstatement The officers who killed Joshua Pawlik in 2018 are asking a state judge to block a federally appointed monitor’s decision that they violated policies on use of force. Darwin BondGraham
Oakland Police Have Been Systematically Underreporting Use Of Force A new internal audit shows that officers disproportionately strike, tussle with, and draw guns on Black people but then fail to disclose the incidents in their reports. Darwin BondGraham
Oakland Police Conducted An Illegal Search And Then Lied About It. But They May Be Spared From Discipline. A California Superior Court ruling gives officers accused of misconduct access to investigator notes and files while cases are in progress. Darwin BondGraham
Police In California Are Killing Sleeping People The fatal shooting by Oakland police of an unconscious man as he woke is putting pressure on the California department to rethink its deployment of force. Darwin BondGraham
ICE-friendly Policies. A String of Jail Deaths. Why Does This Sheriff Keep Getting Elected? Advocates say Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern is an odd fit for the Bay Area, but mounting a challenge has proved daunting. Kyle C. Barry
