Six years of protest, public comment and politicking have finally created a light at the end of the Stop Urban Shield tunnel. On January 14th, 2019, after five months of hearings, leg work and votes, the Alameda County Urban Shield…
Category: Police Militarization
Urban Shield Task Force Votes To Exclude SWAT Teams
The second iteration of Alameda County’s Urban Shield task force is formulating their final recommendations to implement a resolution by the County Board of Supervisors to re-constitute the Homeland Security-funded annual disaster preparedness drill. In a seven hour meeting, the…
Rebooting Alameda County Emergency Preparedness
On March 27, 2018, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution ending Urban Shield, as currently constituted, after the September 2018 expo and drills. A new Ad-Hoc task force was assembled to recommend how the County should…
Urban Shield Exercise Tramples Alameda Point Nature Reserve
Urban Shield, a SWAT exercise and weapons convention held annually with Department of Homeland Security funding and coordinated by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, was held for the last time in its current form from September 6-10, 2018. The event…
Here There And Everywhere
Except in Berkeley, apparently. The once locus of progressivism with a young Our Revolution-endorsed mayor has to watch that mayor cave to police union pressure and continue tacit support of Alameda County’s Trump-loving sheriff and his Homeland Security-funded war games by a one vote margin. Yet another completely full Council hearing room for naught.
Urban Shield As We Know It Ends After 2018
At today’s Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting, 5+ hours of discussion ended with a decision that Urban Shield as currently constituted would end after the 2018 war games and exposition. The 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Scott Haggerty more or…
ICE At Urban Shield 2017 – (Photo Gallery)
These photos were produced by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in response to a public records request for photos of the 2017 war games exercise. These are culled from over 300 photos showing officers from the Homeland Security Investigations division…
ICE At Urban Shield
A public records request by Oakland Privacy member Mike Katz Lacabe for pictures from the Urban Shield 2017 counterterrorism drill revealed Homeland Security Investigations/ICE participated in Urban Shield, despite there being no listing for HSI or ICE in the participant…
Alameda County Urban Shield Task Force Report
On February 27, The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will discuss and vote on whether to accept the enclosed report and recommendations from the large task force they convened in January of 2017 to discuss the Homeland Security-funded anti terrorism…
2018 UASI Requests From Bay Area Law Enforcement
Every year, Bay Area law enforcement agencies apply for a cornucopia of federal grants to buy stuff to fight the war on terror. This year’s application cycle just ended and the approved grants (not all will be approved) will…