The Central California city of Santa Cruz became the first city in the nation to ban the use of predictive policing software by their police department. The City Council voted 7-0 to end the use of the software by ordinance due to its reinforcement of racial bias in policing.
The ordinance, which was introduced by Mayor Justin Cummings, the first Black mayor in Santa Cruz history, went into effect in a city that was one of the first adopters of the technology.
Getting a surveillance transparency ordinance or a facial recognition ban passed in your town can seem like an overwhelming task. It’s not. You can do it!
Oakland Privacy and ACLU of Northern California sat down to write a step by step guide based on the dozen ordinances in place across the country, including 8 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This free guide includes loads of advice on coalition-building, public education, strategy, research, messaging and advocacy and samples of useful documents.
Oakland Privacy gets asked for these kinds of things all the time. Ask no more. Download!
(You can still call or email us, but now … instant gratification).
by Mike Katz-Lacabe
Update 6/1/2020 Oakland Privacy and resident-plaintiffs Solange Echeverria and Daniel Rubins sued the City of Vallejo over their recent stingray purchase. In the complaint, Oakland Privacy states that the purchase violated state law by voting to acquire the cell phone interceptor without a city council review of the use policy and by not allowing public input into the stingray use policy from city residents.
The complaint also states the police-department-produced policy is inadequate. It does not specify which departmental job titles may use the stingray and access its data and it allows use of the device without a judicial warrant whenever there is a threat of bodily injury of any kind.
Police aircraft are frequently spotted circling around peaceful protests around the country. These aircraft are typically equipped with high-powered cameras with equipment capable of recording and transmitting the video captured by the equipment. This article focuses on law enforcement aircraft used in the San Francisco Bay Area.
by J.P. Massar
Passing legislation is only half the battle. Without oversight by watchdogs, be they legislators or public-interest organizations or both, executives can easily ignore inconvenient laws that increase their workload or their budget. Without pushback, the interpretation of laws can be twisted to belay legislation’s intent.
All of this was in play in May of 2020 as the Berkeley City Council considered whether to sign on to a contract with CycloMedia to take snapshot, panoramic views of Berkeley’s streets. The City Manager had decided that this process did not fall under Berkeley’s Surveillance Ordinance, issuing two memos to that effect. Some City Councilors and Oakland Privacy advocates thought otherwise based on the plain English meaning of the ordinance.
When the San Leandro Police Department tried to convince the San Leandro City Council to approve its $441,306.84 purchase of body-worn cameras in May 2014, it argued that the cameras would lead to a reduction in the use of force by its police officers. However, that didn’t happen. Six years of use of force data provided by the San Leandro Police Department in response to public records requests shows that use of force increased in the years following the purchase.