BERKELEY, Calif. (KRON) - Ending pretext stops and reducing racial disparities in police outcomes -- That is the goal of a major set of police reforms unanimously approved by the Berkeley City Council.
However, the president of the Berkeley Police Association says the new reforms are a danger to the community and police.
“It is super important that we come to realize that Berkeley being home of modern policing, must be home of the next level of modern policing which is de-bias and actually fair,” Ben Bartlett said.
The Berkeley City Council unanimously approved their next level of modern policing, passing a set of police reforms aimed at ending racial disparities in outcomes during police stops.
"We do know that if you're Black or Latino you're more likely to be stopped by police instead of whites,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin said.
According to data collected by the Center on Policing Equity, when behind the wheel Blacks are 6.5 times more likely than whites to be pulled over and 4.5 times more likely to be stopped while on foot.
"We adopted groundbreaking police reforms to do several things. One, to eliminate unnecessary police stops,” Arreguin said.
The new police policy, among other things, will end police stops for low-level offenses that do not impact public safety, ends police stops for things like not wearing seatbelts or having expired license tags, requires written consent for consent searches and officers will no longer request parole or probation status.
The president of the Berkeley Police Association says the new police reform measures endanger public safety, releasing a statement reading in part:
"At stake is the safety of Berkeley citizens and its police officers as the proposed reforms will turn officers into filing clerks, gutting their much-needed time on the streets within our community.”
The mayor views it differently.
"These racial disparities have created distrust between police and communities of color and that does erode public safety because people feel less comfortable going to the police to report crimes,” Arreguin said.
The mayor says the chief of police is not wasting any time and will implement some of these reforms right away with hopes of having them fully in place by the end of the year.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3dQb40p
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