Thread by @tasha_mente

Police Commission #oakmtg. OPD will present budget then conduct public hearing. Jump on now if you want to join in. #defundOPD

Apparently for every tow in Oakland by a civilian, OPD provides an armed police officer. That sounds extremely expensive and unnecessary... #oakmtg

Turns out it is upon request, that makes way more sense... still, commissioner is asking "what is a tense situation" that would qualify an officer accompanying a tow? Chief is saying it has to do with removing from someone's property vs. abandonment

Missed who this commissioner is but he's great. He's saying if there's a car in the wrong place and the owner is there, don't tow the car. The policy disproportionately affects low income/POC so that needs to be changed.

It was Commissioner Prather. Wish they used zoom in a normal way so we could see who is talking. We can only see the name of the person screen sharing. #oakmtg

We are almost an hour in, we are focusing nearly exclusively on towing. I expect this meeting to run very long.

Commissioner Harris brings up the valid point that we shouldnt spend money on towing, we should find places for people to live. She wants to know how many tow officers there are. 10 civs, 1 sworn officer needed to testify by law if there is a subpoena.

They are arguing over a single officer position. There are citizens waiting to comment that we need to halve the department. We are on very different pages.

40-50% of calls to police have a mental health component. That is huge and not surprising. #oakmtg

Commissioner (?) Is saying this isn't good enough to address the systemic change the community is calling for. Saying she can't get enough updated info from OPD site. Needs to resort to using SF data to help drive decision-making. She is great, I am rooting for her.

Tara Anderson is the commissioner who is asking the right line of questioning here. She is angry and channeling how upset the community is. She is saying not to wait for a safety net to be funded. "There is work we can do with current resources."

Comm. Jordan: you suggest we have to keep the status quo because if we stop doing it, things will fall apart. We need to make ...long term, forward thinking solutions... we've been defunding all these other services for decades.

Comm Harris says 73% of calls are from East Oakland. She did a ride along with a cop for 6 hours and hit 4 calls. At one, 4 cop cars were called for a woman stealing a capri sun from a grocery store. This is WILD. #oakmtg #defundOPD

Interim chief manheimer is talking about updating the website. She's trying to delay giving the commission a list of priorities because of the emergency situation they are in. No one has brought up that the budget is due on June 30, so any surprise side projects won't be revealed

Fighting about the efficacy of the tech they are using to collect data on officers. The tech is about looking at police behavior. They've never had the capability before, previously they spent $5-7M on Prime but it was ineffective, now replaced with Vision. Vision is $2.1M/yr.

Harris says she saw reports that Vision is no good. Chief of Police agrees it's no good. Harris asks what authority the city has to waste millions of $$ when they can't get any data. Peterson defends Vision.

Christ this is going to be a long night.

Manheimer is spitting the same story about tear gas being required for mutual aid. We don't need more soldiers in the streets. Mutual aid shouldn't happen. #oakmtg

Jordan wants to have another in depth convo about crowd control... now asking about external agencies coming in through mutual aid/task force. They adhere only to their own policies. Most CA agencies have the same policies. We ask them to comply with ours but they dont have to.

Jordan also brings up the CHP issue with Erik Salgado and how they did not adhere to Oakland policies. Good point. Harris is concerned that she sees external agencies come in, terrorize, and leave. #oakmtg

Harris explicitly says she does not support mutual aid. Manheimer counters with the recent agitators and looters. She says without mutual aid there would be more widespread damage to the city. She seems to firmly believe this. #oakmtg

Anderson: I find it extremely disconcerting that the sheriff will withhold aid because we are enacting policies within our values as a municipality.

OPD gives mutual aid to Berkeley and North Bay fires, but we tend to request mutual aid more than our neighbors do. For the fires we send officers for a week or two, e.g. Sonoma county fires.

140 commenters in the queue. Yep, long night. #oakmtg

How can we petition to get a list of who is in the queue? #oakmtg

Made it, was able to split my time with @astropuffin 🤘🥳

Voted to extend the meeting til midnight. The comments are excellent, you can see a lot of the highlights in #oakmtg

Several commissioners absent, commenter spent his time saying they aren't listening, so he thanked all of us for listening in and speaking out. #oakmtg

Response to Commissioner Jordan's comment saying the public has been repetitive: "how can you be tired of hearing a message you haven't really heard?" #oakmtg

People cursing have been immediately muted and passed over, so last commenter ended with, "Gosh darn you to heck!" #oakmtg

I'm falling asleep on the couch with my husband, snuggling and listening to the sounds of the people demanding change. #oakmtg #defundOPD

Powerful speeches from Comms Anderson and Prather. Comm Harris is really pragmatic and makes good points--"the cops won't stop killing us unless we take away the Police Bill of Rights." #oakmtg

Comm Dorado shames the speakers for not knowing what the commission does or giving very specific suggestions of line items to cut from the OPD budget in our 60 second speeches. Not listening to us at all. #oakmtg

Harris votes no, everyone else passes Prather's recommendation to city council. Joe and I are concerned that the latest version didn't include "nonviolent crimes." Not sure why Harris dissented.

Prather just got notice that court says OPD can't use tear gas, rubber bullets, etc unless absolutely necessary.

Demands OPD comes to next mtg with a dept general order saying they will not use military weapons on unarmed citizens. Unanimous vote. #oakmtg

Adjourned. We are tired. 😴 good job, Oakland. #oakmtg