The Police Accountability Board (PAB) held their regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday the 13th of November. This meeting focused on a report about Automated License Plate Readers, a public comment made by Sheri Prud-Homme, and an approved vote for a changed meeting place next month.

To start the meeting, the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) gave a report on the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs). This is a pilot program that BPD has been slowly rolling out since October and recently 52 Automated License Plate Readers have been approved. The readers photograph each passing vehicle, picking up body type, make, color, and other parts like roof racks, as well as the license plate. The photos of the cars are in color during the day and in black and white when taken at night. The information from the photos is then run through a database. The hot list in the database includes hits for felony vehicles, stolen vehicles, amber alerts, missing child alerts, and stolen plate alerts.The database is for “Official Use Only” and the data can’t be shared with federal immigration enforcement. The photos of the cars are retained for 30 days and then deleted. The ALPRs can show errors, such as the example given of an “E” on a plate that had the baseline stroke blocked to look like an “F.” Before an officer stops a car, the officer must verify that the license plate number matches the car.  There also must be reasonable suspicion or probable cause.  Additionally, ALPRs can’t be used for routine patrol or to support criminal investigations. Further, the officer must be trained to use this surveillance equipment.

In their report, they stated that they find about 90 stolen license plates a day. Since the soft roll out starting on October 24th, 2024, BPD has returned four stolen vehicles. The system is not fully implemented; this report covered a trial period. In the future, they plan on evaluating the ALPRs effectiveness by measuring the number of cases closed as well as qualitative data in the end of year report. A board member asked if BPD currently has a policy on sharing the ALPRs data with other states for legal purposes, such as abortion cases. Currently, BPD doesn’t have a policy on that but they sounded open to making one.

Next the PAB opened the meeting up for public comments and Sheri Prud-Homme spoke about being a witness to a police arrest. She said that she saw her neighbor in an argument during which she seemed to be having a mental breakdown. A few minutes later, four police cars showed up and handcuffed her and drove her away. After about a block, Prud-Homme said she saw her neighbor fall out of the police car and into the road. She said she was shocked by the number of police cars that had arrived, and it seemed as if they were more focused on taking the woman to jail rather than getting the right help for the situation. Prud-Homme wanted to know why a therapist or someone from the Special Crisis Unit hadn’t come to help handle the situation.

She said she then did some research and called the Specialized Care Unit and the person who responded had said he was free the day of the incident. She also said that the police who showed up did their job respectfully but seemed like the wrong people for the situation. There was then discussion about if the complaint made should be a policy complaint or a personnel complaint. Handel Aguilar, the Director of Police Accountability said that he thinks they can oversee the complaint in the next six months. Then a Board member recommended that the Office of the Department of Police Accountability (ODPA) be assigned the complaint so it can be handled sooner.

At the end of the meeting, there was a vote about holding the next meeting in a new location. The vote passed unanimously and the location of the next PAB meeting on December 11th will be at 1900 Addison Street, Berkeley on the third floor. The alternative location will be the North Berkeley Senior Center.

The meeting ended with an opportunity for additional public comments, but with no questions or concerns raised, the meeting was adjourned.

–Rhetta Lavinder-Hill and Christine Wenrich