City councilmembers in Berkeley voted to expand the use of enforcement using police dogs and helicopters at its regular meeting Tuesday but delayed a decision on rescinding a ban on the Police Department’s use of chemical weapons.
Councilmembers voted 5-4 to approve a pair of resolutions by Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani that retracted a City Council resolution from 1982 that prohibited the Police Department from using dogs or helicopters for most enforcement.
But the 1982 resolution also gave police the ability to summon either, or both, through mutual assistance agreements with other law enforcement agencies and established a procedure for doing so that involved the police chief first getting clearance from the city manager and outlined restrictions of their uses.
The resolution approved Tuesday removed the requirement to get clearance from the city manager. It instead allows a watch commander or other superior on duty to make the evaluation under the city’s guidelines and authorize the use themselves. An after-action report will still be required to be submitted to the city manager, and annual reports to the City Council will also be mandatory.
Kesarwani said the new replacement resolution would simply improve response times, saying during the meeting that the policy would not change and that the city manager had never denied a request for a police dog or helicopter.
But Councilmember Ben Bartlett disagreed, saying that the new resolution would expand the use of both and was unnecessary.
Like some of the dozens of public commenters that spoke out against the move, Bartlett said the process had been inadequate and deserved more time to analyze.
He said there had been no data presented on why the Police Department needed the change in policy or how the current policy had negatively impacted the roughly eight to 10 requests for police dogs that regularly occur every year.
“We’re being asked to expand the circumstances in which outside police dogs can be deployed in Berkeley, at the same time reducing civilian oversight, or replacing city manager approval, with approval inside the police chain of command,” Bartlett told his colleagues during the meeting. “And that is substantial policy shift.”
What the new policy allows
The new resolution includes several additional authorized uses for both dogs and helicopters than the 1982 resolution, according to the text of each.
The dog use policy added instances where a residential burglary was in progress or had just occurred and uses to serve warrants to certain individuals with previous convictions for certain crimes.
Helicopter requests, which currently range between about four to five a year, would expand to include vehicle pursuits; instances when law enforcement safety was at risk; locating missing persons deemed a danger to the community; and to catch a “suspected fleeing felon,” according to the resolution.
The previous helicopter policy restricted all law enforcement uses and was designed only for emergencies such as search and rescue missions, finding missing people, and aiding the Police Department during a disaster.
Councilmember Igor Tregub sought to have the helicopter use and police dog use discussions separately. They had been presented as a single agenda item and included in a single resolution, which made for a zigzagging conversation with Police Chief Jennifer Louis, who appeared at the meeting to answer questions from councilmembers.
Louis said partner agencies included the Oakland Police Department, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, Emeryville Police Department and East Bay Regional Park District. She said different dogs could accomplish different tasks and that their use had changed over the years to mostly be restricted to leashes.
But she also said they could be used to “effectuate an arrest” off a leash, which could include the “canine asset” advancing to a “biting phase” after clear warnings were given.
Tregub abstained on the helicopter use policy change, which was broken into a separate vote, and he voted against the new resolution that incorporated both elements, along with Bartlett, Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra and Mayor Adena Ishii.
Ishii asked for a delay on the reauthorization of chemical weapons vote until after the City Council considered a review and update to the Police Department’s use of force policy in late September.
Kesarwani said she had waited a year for the vote and did not want to delay further, but agreed to move the hearing to Sept. 15.
Ishii pointed out that would still likely be before the use of force review, but the City Council voted to have the vote on that date anyway.
Several dozen upset public commenters told the City Council that they had lost their trust and did not see the reason for the change in policy.
The Peace and Justice Commission, a citizens’ advisory board to the City Council on social justice issues, recommended against the changes in dog and helicopter use, as well as chemical weapon use, which was banned by the city in 2020.