Entries Tagged 'UC Police' ↓

From the Tribune:

“A UC Berkeley police officer and a Berkeley police officer will each team up in two squad cars to patrol the streets from 10 p.m.-2 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. More teams will be out before and after home football games.

Violence, sexual assault, and homicides have taken place on the south side of campus in recent years. Between fall of 2008 and February 2009, a man, who was never caught, sexually assaulted 19 women when he approached them from behind and lifted their skirts. Last month, 21-year-old Nicholas Bailey was found dead in a parking lot across the street from People’s Park. Police are still investigating whether his death was an accident or a slaying.”
*****

From the Chronicle:

“A judge has ruled that the University of California police illegally searched the camera of a photojournalist covering a protest outside the chancellor’s campus home, attorneys said Monday.

Alameda County Superior Judge Yolanda Northridge on Friday invalidated the search warrant used by UC Berkeley police to review photographs taken by David Morse at the Dec. 11 demonstration, according to the Oakland-based First Amendment Project, which represented him.”
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This is great news! Copwatchers were present for much of that night, but we bailed for fear of just this kind of repressive police response. May have been the wrong thing to do…? Anyway, it’s good to see that they won’t be able to use the photos for any further investigation — although who knows what kind of info they’ve already gleaned from them.

Terrible reporting from the Daily Californian:

“UCPD Chief Mitch Celaya said that the department is preparing to be able to deal with a variety of potential scenarios.

“We’re bringing in additional staffing,” he said. “We’ll have some strategies in place to allow us to respond to picketing or marching or rallies or even possible sit-ins or building takeovers.”

Berkeley police Lt. Andrew Greenwood said the Berkeley Police Department is aware of the scope and potential of the upcoming demonstrations and that “there’s significant planning under way.”"
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Can we imagine a scenario where the state spent more time and money figuring out how to respond to inter-personal violence with justice, love, and victims services than suppressing popular revolt? Can we imagine a scenario in which the resources of the state were transformed into instruments of personal and communal creativity and self-fulfillment rather than repressive repressive instruments of violence and control? Can we imagine a scenario in which the systems of state and capitalist violence and oppression became the targets of cops – when the batons cracked the skulls of AIG corporate bosses?

Here’s to the new possibilities that will be opened up on March 4!

We’re a bit late on this, but here’s the text of a leaked letter from the Student Advocate’s Office at UCB:

“The Student Advocate’s Office (SAO), a non-partisan and executive office of the ASUC, is deeply concerned with the circumstances surrounding the university arrests of 66 individuals, including approximately 40 students, from Wheeler Hall on December 11, 2009.

While we do not condone conduct that threatens the safety of the campus community and recognize that the planned unauthorized concert lacked the necessary safety precautions, we believe the administration did not adhere to procedures that were in the best interest of students. The following is a statement that addresses our concerns:

Following the arrests of students involved in the week-long “Open University” protests, UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof stated in a university press release that “there had been an understanding of access to certain areas and [the protestors] began to violate those understandings.” He continued by stating that the arrests were made “once the group refused to reconsider plans to hold an unauthorized all-night concert in an academic building.” However, when members of the SAO met with Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard out of concern for the arrested students, he provided reasons for the arrest that were not in line with the university’s public statements. Dean Poullard acknowledged that the university’s call for police intervention was not initially linked to the concert, but rather had been discussed earlier that week before the concert had even been planned. His statements indicated that the arrests were intended for the last day of the “Open University” protest to prevent students from mobilizing and moving their activities to a different building on campus, which would further increase costs to the university. Considering that the arrests were premeditated and not solely for the purpose of preventing a disruptive and illegal concert as the university has alleged, the SAO firmly believes that the method and mode of police intervention were misleading and misguided.

The premeditation of police intervention calls into question the validity of the administration’s attempts to communicate with student organizers.

Throughout the duration of the “Open University” protests, spokespeople from the administration met with student organizers. At the same time, university officials were engaged in dialogue to plan the arrests of the protestors. Dean Poullard stated that the arrests in Wheeler would have taken place the first night of the protests had police action been strategically and economically feasible. The intentions of the administration must be called into question. The efforts to negotiate with the protestors were conducted in bad faith, leading students to believe that there was room for collaboration and two-way communication when the administration had intended to move forward with pre-planned unilateral actions from the beginning.

The lack of an immediate dispersal warning was unfair and could have seriously jeopardized particularly vulnerable groups of students.

The university had warned individuals in Wheeler Hall of legal and student code of conduct violations for four nights without taking any measures to enforce those warnings until the arrests that Friday. The routine nature of those warnings gave many students the false impression that their actions were an acceptable form of protest that was tolerated by the administration. This tacit agreement led many students to participate in the events who would otherwise have avoided Wheeler Hall had they anticipated the risk of severe punishment. The routine warning was administered at roughly 10 p.m. Thursday with a 6-7 hour gap before the arrests were made at 4:30 A.M. the following morning.

This large span of time between the last warning and the arrests ignores the possibility that some of the students present at 4:30 a.m. had not heard the warning. While the university states that its primary concern was preventing any disruption that could have been caused by the concert, it is unreasonable to insist that students present in Wheeler Hall at 4:30 A.M. would be the same attendees at the concert that was scheduled for 8 P.M. or involved in its planning.

A significant number of students came to Wheeler Hall primarily to study and most were asleep at the time of the arrests. The drastic shift from treating students as peaceful protestors for four days to hostile occupiers on the fifth was unnecessary and showed callous disregard for student well-being. Beyond creating a criminal record for these students, the university’s actions will also result in the creation of conduct records that will have negative implications on the students’ academic careers.

Further, by not giving an immediate dispersal warning, the university failed to assess the extreme safety hazard that their actions posed to any AB540 or international students on site. Legal charges against any student under either category could have put the students at serious risk of deportation. Administrators did not take into account these potentially dire consequences.

The response to the “Open University” protests demonstrates the administration’s adversarial attitude towards student protestors.

The jarring discrepancy between university press releases and actual administrative plans to end the protest shows great irresponsibility on the administration’s part. This failure to correct inaccurate information released to the public has misrepresented the indicted students’ behavior. It avoids any formal recognition that there was a distinct level of premeditation and an egregious lack of sincere communication between student protestors and the administration leading up to the arrests. The SAO believes that the administration must uphold responsible procedure to address student conduct and take clear steps towards creating safe and respectful spaces for dialogue with the student body.”

This is the text of an email now posted on IndyBay.  It is written by a professor who heard and saw much of what happened at the Chancellor’s house from his office.

“While I genuinely appreciate David’s message, I feel, somewhat guiltily, a need to respond to it. Where I second David’s message is in the belief that beyond any wider implications, acts of violence necessarily diminish the university, discouraging the free exchange of ideas, which ought to be  our defining characteristic. Nevertheless questions of proportion and degree matter. While all acts of violence diminish the university, differences in how and how much they do so ought to influence our responses. And these differences were obscured in David’s message.

With many people having little more than news reports of events at the chancellor’s residence on which to base their impressions, I realize that my comments might seem to indicate a lack of common decency or at least an incredibly bad sense of timing, but as I will try to explain, I believe that the university administration not only set the stage for a violent turn in protests by acts which have repeatedly raised tensions and undermined belief in its good will, but actually engaged in most of the violence that has occurred.

I write as someone who has been consistently critical of the Berkeley administration, but also as someone who has worked for decades against violence, and finally as perhaps the only person on this list who witnessed any of Friday night’s events. (I was writing letters of recommendation in my Tolman Hall office, which faces the chancellor’s residence.)

In brief, at about 11 PM a group of protesters –lit by perhaps 10 torches- marched past Tolman and up to the chancellor’s residence. They sounded quite angry. I heard someone call out, “That’s the chancellor’s house,” and I remember at that time having the impression that it was said as if people who did not recognize the chancellor’s house and were not focused on going there. The protesters did not, as the Chronicle reports that police claimed, surround the residence, nor would it have been possible for so few to do so. I heard, but did not see what must have been the planters and window(s?) breaking and almost immediately saw the protesters fleeing. There may have been police chasing them; I did not see any. I could not tell if the protesters were fleeing because they did not wish to be caught or because they did not want to participate in what they now realized was an escalated form of violence. None of the protesters I saw fleeing (and I believe I saw most of them) were carrying lit torches. I did not see anyone arrested, but trees block my view of the front of the chancellor’s house, so I do not know if the arrests occurred at the time or later, and whether because of their individual actions or because of the actions of the group as a whole.

What I do know is that I witnessed enough at variance with university officials’ accounts as reported in the press to make me suspicious of the rest of those accounts, even if I had not already been made suspicious by distortions and inaccuracies in previous administration statements about recent protests, which have been amply documented elsewhere.

I believe that acts were committed at the chancellor’s house that were not only counter-productive but also, more important, wrong. And yet those events were remarkably brief and perhaps spontaneous. Again, I do not write this to be evasive but rather because even among what we condemn we need to make judgments, and I believe that sustained, planned violence demands a different response from that which did not and does not strike me as sustained and possibly not even as planned. Moreover, it seems to me that violence by those whose power confers legitimacy on its exercise requires a stronger response than that by those who lack such power. There should be a higher standard by which to judge the actions of police and campus officials than of protesters, many of them –whether students or not—youthful. (I would also characterize the actions by individual police  outside of Wheeler as brief and perhaps spontaneous. I do not by this mean to excuse acts of police violence. It seems to me that police have a professional responsibility to de-escalate a situation, and moreover spontaneity does not excuse violence.)

The one group so far whose actions –both those that have fostered violence  and those that have constituted in themselves violence– have been neither brief nor spontaneous is the university administration. Against all kinds of advice from a range of campus figures, the university administration has consistently escalated rather than tried to reach out. The decision to leave it to police to deal with the Wheeler occupation on Nov. 20, to close the building, to not meet with protesters, to block faculty from trying to mediate an end to the protest, and to charge the first arrested protesters with felonies (with felonies (!) for staging a sit-in in two Wheeler classrooms), the decision to surround Wheeler Hall with riot police, all reflected decisions made by administrators who had amply time to do otherwise. The distorted, unsympathetic statements released by campus leaders days after the protest again followed deliberation and caused real trauma to many students, including GSE students who described a seemingly unbridgeable gap coming to separate them from a university they had loved. And then Friday morning, directly leading up to the incident at the chancellor’s residence, the arrest and detention of the students in Wheeler despite what appears to be police permission to be there and the failure to give a dispersal order, the decision to detain students at Santa Rita jail (an act the ACLU is investigating as a possible violation of student’s constitutional rights), was, by its own admission, a choice the administration made not in the heat of the moment but after careful planning. (The Friday morning arrests in Wheeler Hall ended a week-long protest during which academic activities continued largely uninterrupted. During the week, students had been told by police that they would be given the opportunity to disperse before police began making arrests. Students came and went. Early Friday morning police entered Wheeler and without warning began arresting sleeping students. The administration has explained that faculty could not be called in as mediators because it might have undermined the secrecy of the arrest operation. Because students had their computers and other study materials confiscated and then were detained for many hours far from campus, they were put at risk of academic failure. And so, the campus’s senior academic leaders now appear to many students dishonest enemies of their education. This premeditated action by campus leaders that did students real harm does not excuse any violence at the president’s house, but it does suggest a need to place violence that might have occurred there in its context.

If the university curriculum is to include contentious public matters, peaceful protest is not antithetical to their exchange but a crucial component of it. And on no campus has the history of protest done more to extend the range of ideas exchanged in classrooms than Berkeley. It is thus all the more discouraging that campus officials have so consistently escalated tensions and repressed protest rather than seeking a dialogue with protesters. Repudiating the role of campus leaders in violence does not absolve protesters of responsibility for their actions, but to avoid challenging the central role of campus leaders precludes any meaningful dialogue.

Finally, I started this note because I thought that David’s appeal to invocations of shared campus values rings increasingly hollow. But David, to his credit, has at least spoken out. It is discouraging how few faculty have done so. If shared governance is to mean anything beyond its formal mechanisms, faculty have an obligation to speak up about administrative violence that inevitably bears our imprimateur.”

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Also, the IndyBay is reporting that the DA has decided not to press charges against any of the 8 people who were arrested.  This only points to how ridiculous and heinous it is that these people were saddled with such outrageous charges and such astronomical bail.

Eight people were arrested last night after protesters marched from a party/concert to the home of Chancellor Birgeneau.  There are a lot of reports about what happened there.  According to police, protesters carried “torches” and attempted to throw one into a police car.  Other reports say that protesters attempted to smash the windows of the home or to catch it on fire.  The SF Chronicle coverage is here.  IndyBay lists those arrested here.  The attack comes as a response to the police ambush of protesters early Friday morning – which was no doubt ordered by Birgeneau.

CWers were on scene at the party/concert, but we decided to leave because we (at least I) felt that we were ourselves in danger of arrest-by-association.  The UCPD followed marchers from the steps of Wheeler Hall to a student cooperative where the party/concert was held.  Berkeley PD showed up shortly thereafter.  Sergeant Hong and Lieutenant Roller showed up on behalf of BPD and took over from Sergeant Tucker and others of UCPD.  The cops tried from the very beginning to force themselves onto the private property – even after being asked to leave – and they made ridiculous threats to the young woman in charge about “civil liability” for damage done to surrounding property.  Ultimately, they left.

Protesters left the cooperative at around 11 PM for a march.  Apparently, the march ended at Birgeneau’s home.

Aside from just the reportback, this might be an interesting time/place for CW folks to discuss our role in situations with high potential of arrest, including riot situations.  Food for thought…

Here’s the story and some footage from KPIX.

I wasn’t there last night because I had to work until 10 PM last night and again at 9 AM this morning.  From eyewitness reports, cops handcuffed the doors shut and drove people to Santa Rita in their underwear!

Apparently, there will be a march, etc. tonight at 7:30 PM.  People are supposed to meet up at the steps of Wheeler.

This is a brief reportback from Monday’s activites on the campus at UC Berkeley.

For the most part, the day was pretty uneventful.  There was limited cop activity until around 7 PM when there was half-hearted attempt to remover students from the Wheeler Auditorium.  At the time, there were likely more than 100 students and only 3 cops.

Students and protesters held the auditorium and things were again very smoother until around 10:15 PM when police locked the front doors and attempted again to remove the students.  They brought in a video camera and there were up to 10 police present at this time.  I have video of my own attempt to enter the front door during this period, and it shows most all of the cops who were present including the person videotaping.  Everyone involved would probably agree, as well, that there has been tight collusion between cops and low-mid-level administrators in the building.

Although we initially decided to spend the night, my partner and I decided to leave at around 11:15 PM when things were most heated – neither of us wished to be arrested.  Outside, there were 20 or so people gathered watching the police on the inside.  I hung out for a few minutes, but it didn’t seem that things were going to go much further.  There were no police cars or paddy-wagons in the immediate vicinity at the time I left.

Students were ultimately able to remain in the space for the whole night.  You can find footage and other information here.

Over and Out.

According to the Chronicle:

“The activist group Long Haul Inc. can try to prove that the search of its Berkeley offices exceeded legal boundaries, that agents misled the judge who issued a search warrant and that it was targeted because of its left-wing views, said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White.”

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Copwatch was there!  Let’s hope Long Haul is able to fund themselves for many years to come on the basis of this violation of civil rights.

All:

We just got word that the folks at BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) are working to bring victims of the police violence and brutality of the Wheeler Occupation of 11/20 together for potential legal action.  They are asking that you 1) document any injuries that occurred (photos, medical records, etc), 2) write down the details of what happened to you on 11/20 including any identifying evidence you might have, and 3) track down any witnesses to what happened to you.

They have a lawyer who has agreed to work the case.  His name is Ronald Cruz and he can be reached at ronaldsf@gmail.com or by phone at (510)501-2435.  Let’s make their actions on 11/20 COSTLY!