Oakland Privacy

Oakland Formalizes No Cooperation With ICE

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 22, 2019 • 0 Comments

On January 22, 2019, the Oakland City Council passed on second reading an ordinance that ends any and all municipal cooperation with ICE, including traffic assistance.

The ordinance, which makes permanent the policy of total non-cooperation, stems from the citywide protest after a West Oakland ICE raid in August of 2017 followed the end of the formal OPD-ICE Memorandum of Agreement.

After a lengthy investigation by Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission revealed that the raid on a Guatemalan family had nothing to do with human trafficking, the City Council embraced the new total non-cooperation policy and moved to formalize it as a municipal ordinance.

Police Militarization, UASI

Urban Shield Reconstitution Plan Goes to Board of Supervisors.

by JP Massar • January 17, 2019 • 0 Comments

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 Task Force finished its assigned task. The Task Force was voted into being by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors back in March of 2018 when the Board voted to “end Urban Shield as it is currently constituted.” It began work in September, 2018 and at its last meeting approved a set of recommendations to be presented to the Supervisors that would radically transform Urban Shield from a militarized SWAT Team and weapons extravaganza into a true emergency preparedness conclave and suite of field exercises relevant to the Bay Area.

Tell the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to fully support the recommendations of the Ad-Hoc Committee.

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Facial Recognition

Civil Rights Groups Pressure Tech Companies Not To Sell Face Surveillance To Cops

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 15, 2019 • 0 Comments

A coalition of more than 80 racial justice, faith, and civil, human, and immigrants’ rights groups, including Oakland Privacy, today sent letters to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google demanding the companies commit not to sell face surveillance technology to the government.

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Uncategorized

RIP East Bay Express

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 13, 2019 • 0 Comments

January 11 brought the sad news that East Bay alternative weekly the East Bay Express, which had been under financial duress for a while, would be laying off its entire editorial staff and greatly reducing operations. The newspaper’s demise as a staffed publication was immediately caused by a lawsuit by the paper’s former sales manager which awarded back overtime pay and legal fees totaling $750,000 or more.

The loss of the local investigative reporting done by the East Bay Express, which almost always led and spurred later coverage by the region’s dailies, is incalculable. In Oakland itself, where the paper’s reporting was the accountability agent for Oakland municipal government for the past decade, and throughout the East Bay.

Oakland Privacy benefitted enormously from the Express’ tough reporting and as a colleague of mine put it; “It’s safe to say that without the Express, Oakland would have a Domain Awareness Center”. And it wouldn’t have a privacy commission, OPD would still be cooperating with ICE, and BART would not have a transparency ordinance. Among many other things.

We can’t thank you enough, Express, specifically former reporters Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham. It’s a sad day for Oakland and for journalism.

Police Militarization, UASI

Urban Shield Task Force Votes To Exclude SWAT Teams

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 10, 2019 • 0 Comments

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 five member task force voted for several recommendations, a bunch via an uncontested consent motion and a few more substantive ones on a 3-2 vote.

Among the more substantive recommendations were to:

Eliminate the event’s vendor show – an expo of law enforcement products
Ending the public ranking and scoring of the competing teams so evaluation changes from a “contest” to a standards-based evaluation system.
Excluding SWAT teams from the UASI-funded training drills

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Other areas of discussion included data collected from volunteers, observers and some journalists who attend the exposition and training drill, which includes social security numbers, drivers license numbers and telephone numbers, as well as criminal background checks, and which is kept in a database for a year after collection.

The task force will also be discussing the Alameda County evaluation process after it was learned that the 2018 evaluation team from Louisiana State University included former Miami-Dade officer Manuel Malgor who participated in a notorious botched sting operation called the Redland Killings. During the Redland Killings, 4 men were shot at a marijuana buy while attempting to run away including the department’s own informant, who was shot 20 times. The Florida AG’s office called the case “disturbing” and officers were investigated for possible suppression of evidence. Miami-Dade paid out $1.3 million dollars in civil penalties. [/read]

Public Records

Police Transparency Bill Sets Off Legal Battle

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 1, 2019 • 0 Comments

Update: On January 2, the California Supreme Court rejected the San Bernardino police officers union request for a ruling on the effective date of SB 1421 and stay. By denying, SB 1421 goes into effect this morning and no further appeal is possible. See ruling below

When Governor Jerry Brown, somewhat to the surprise of many, signed Senate Bill 1421 in his last year as the governor of California, it was the dawn of a potential new era in transparency about the use of force, and sexual assault and evidence planting by California’s police officers.

But before the new bill even went into effect, a pitched legal battle began in the courts – and in city councils with shredders – throughout the state.

First off, on December 19, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Employees’ Benefit Association asked a court to determine if Senate Bill 1421 applied retroactively i.e. to incidents that had occurred prior to January 1, 2019 – and to pause the bill’s enactment until the court decided. You can read the complaint below.
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Then, on December 22, word hit the newspapers that the City of Inglewood had decided to shred investigative and disciplinary police records for use of force incidents that were older than five years. The City had formerly kept them for up to 25 years. The City Council changed the storage policy and authorized the shredding quietly at an unrecorded City Council meeting on December 11th. Inglewood insists the change was unrelated to the passage of Senate Bill 1421 and the possibility that some of the records might now be subject to public records requests. It is unclear if the shredding ordered by the City Council has occurred yet. The City of Long Beach did the same on December 18th, also claiming the decision was unrelated to the new law.

On December 28, a coalition of transparency and journalism organizations that included the LA Times, KQED-FM, the California Newspaper Publishers Assn and the First Amendment Center attempted to intervene in the San Bernardino lawsuit to preserve the law.

SB1421-Petition

California-Courts-Appellate-Court-Case-Information

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