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Mirroring prior findings based on data through 2016, Black individuals were stopped at significantly higher rates than their representation in the population (34 percent compared to 8 percent) and Black and Hispanic individuals were searched at higher rates than Whites and Asians.
- At a time when Council is considering a new department of transportation, we found that of time spent responding to events, 24 percent of personnel time responding to events is spent responding to traffic related events.
- Events with priority levels requiring a dispatch within 20 minutes constituted 56 percent of all events while calls requiring a response in 60 minutes or longer accounted for 44 percent of events.
- It is not possible to determine how much police officer time is spent addressing events involving homeless or mentally ill individuals due to insufficient data.
The report was fast tracked in order to provide the City Council and the community with data and analysis in order to inform ongoing policy discussions. We prioritized the data analysis and did not analyze possible policy responses beyond calling for greater transparency. In this regard, we recommend the Berkeley Police Department better identify events with an apparent mental health or homelessness component as well as expand the data on calls for service to include all call types available on the City’s Open Data Portal. City Management agreed with our recommendations.
The police data analysis was initially requested by Council Member Bartlett and incorporated into an omnibus policing measure from Mayor Arreguín, which was passed unanimously by Council last June. Our office continues to look at the police budget, which includes police overtime. Analysis on the police budget will be released at a later date.
This report will be presented to the Public Safety Reimagining Task Force on April 29 and to the City Council on May 11.
