Fired Berkeley police watchdog sues city, mayor

Berkeley’s recently fired director of police accountability has sued the city and Mayor Adena Ishii, claiming she and other officials deliberately made his job impossible and retaliated against him for trying to do it.

In a civil complaint filed in state superior court on May 15, Hansel Aguilar accused the city of wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination, interference, retaliation and violation of whistleblower protections. Aguilar’s complaint alleges police and other Berkeley officials were trying to “undermine” his investigations.

“These issues we’re seeing, they’re unfortunately not specific to one specific jurisdiction, but are part of a broader story of resistance toward oversight,” Aguilar told Berkeleyside in a phone interview, echoing sentiments he expressed in an East Bay Times op-ed in September.

As of Friday, the city had not officially received service of the lawsuit, according to City Attorney Farimah Brown, and as such has not made a formal response to the allegations. Ishii declined to comment.

Aguilar argued that his firing on Feb. 9 came suddenly and without any periodic evaluation of his work, even though he made frequent requests for them over his more than three years working for the city.

Hansel Aguilar, formerly Berkeley’s director of police accountability, has sued the city and Mayor Adena Ishii. Credit: Hansel Aguilar

The firing followed months of escalating tension between Aguilar’s office and the Police Accountability Board on the one side, and the City Council, Berkeley Police Department leadership and other city administrative agencies on the other. In December, Aguilar sued BPD Chief Jen Louis in an attempt to get records related to a complaint against the police. A judge denied Aguilar’s petition in February, saying Aguilar had not had the authority to file it in the first place.

The City Council was supposed to “establish objective, verifiable measures of Mr. Aguilar’s performance,” and give him an evaluation every year, according to his contract. They never did, Aguilar alleged in his complaint, despite him writing up an evaluation proposal with annual goals, performance criteria and other metrics.

Ishii and the council “repeatedly” told Aguilar they would hire a consultant to review his performance but never did, according to his complaint, which he alleged violated his contract.

The same contract also stated that Aguilar “is an at-will employee of the city” who “shall serve at the pleasure of the City Council, which may remove Mr. Aguilar from office with or without cause.”

Suit accuses police chief, mayor of retaliation

In April 2023, early in Aguilar and the PAB’s investigation into racist and anti-homeless messages between BPD bike team officers, then-Councilmember Kate Harrison asked Aguilar for, as she put it at the time, “information about areas where they think they hadn’t gotten information in a timely manner” from BPD, the City Attorney’s Office and other agencies. Aguilar sent Harrison a memo listing records and information BPD had delayed or denied access to; in response, Louis issued a letter accusing Aguilar of “repeated fabrications and stretching of facts,” Harrison said at the time.

Louis’s remarks were a swing at Aguilar’s reputation, his complaint alleges, done “in an effort to retaliate against him for making claims that the Berkeley Police Department was violating the city charter by delaying investigations into law enforcement actions.”

And the delays from BPD were a pattern, according to Aguilar’s attorney, Richard Richardson of Berkeley-based Siegal and Richardson.

“He’s getting pushback from the chief of police who doesn’t give him the information that he’s requesting,” Richardson said in a phone interview with Berkeleyside. “They delay it, or they give him half the information.”

When Aguilar sought accommodation to work remotely last summer while caring for a family member with a medical condition, the complaint alleges that Ishii held up his request, a violation of the California Family Rights Act.

Aguilar also claimed that when Berkeley instituted a city-wide hiring freeze last year, it did so “in such a manner as to limit the authority of the Office of Police Accountability and deter investigations.”

At the time, Aguilar was recruiting for additional staff. When City Manager Paul Buddenhagen announced the freeze, Aguilar wrote that if his office could not hire more people, it would be impossible to meet legal deadlines for completing some investigations. He announced last June that he had cut short 10 misconduct investigations and suspended 10 policy reviews on account of being short-staffed.

Aguilar also sued another former employer, Washington, D.C., in a case that hinged on performance reviews, requests for leave and the manner of his dismissal. Aguilar and the D.C. government settled out of court in March 2024, according to court records. The terms of the settlement were not immediately available.

That job, too, involved civilian oversight of law enforcement. From 2016 to 2019, Aguilar had worked as an investigator for the Office of Police Complaints, an independent agency tasked with investigating complaints against city and housing authority police in D.C.

Aguilar’s lawsuit against Berkeley was previously reported by Courthouse News Service.

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