sweep<\/a>,\u00a0 about 40 people were asked to leave the encampment within 20 minutes, residents said. At the time, Berkeley Homeless Union cofounder Yesica Prado alleged that Berkeley Police Department officers detained a resident and used nonlethal weapons. Prado also alleged that officers threatened individuals with arrest should they return to the encampment.<\/p>\nThe complaint does not detail the specific instances of potential misconduct being investigated. However, it cites a written complaint Aguilar received that alleged violations of BPD policy regarding the public recording of law enforcement activity and claimed officers \u201cviolated the constitutional rights of a member of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
On July 14, Aguilar requested records from Louis but only received a portion of what he had asked for, the complaint said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The initial request asked for the release of all police and investigative records, body camera footage and police and investigative reports regarding the actions of specific officers at the June 4 sweep.<\/p>\n
Aguilar then issued an administrative subpoena Aug. 13, reiterating his previous request and seeking further records, including written communication, radio communication and operational plans pertaining to the sweep.<\/p>\n
Louis said in a Sept. 12 response to the subpoena that BPD had provided computer-aided dispatch reports and body camera footage from multiple officers. She added that many records he requested did not exist. After sharing the Operations Plan for the encampment closure as \u201ca gesture of good faith,\u201d she said further records that could be relevant to his subpoena would not be released.<\/p>\n
In her response, Louis alleged that documents requested in the subpoena were outside of the scope of Aguilar\u2019s authority as director of police accountability, claiming that he was asking for materials broader than those needed to investigate the potential instances of misconduct.<\/p>\n
Louis also said the requested material could compromise \u201cinvestigative integrity\u201d in an active criminal case. She added that disclosure of further information could compromise victim, community member and officer safety and privacy.<\/p>\n
The complaint alleged that Louis\u2019 cited reasons were \u201cfactually and legally without merit\u201d given that the city\u2019s charter does not give discretion to the police chief to determine what requests are within the director\u2019s scope of authority and that any records received would be kept confidential, also per the charter.<\/p>\n
Should the police chief have the ability to limit the director\u2019s authority, the complaint said, the director\u2019s independence from other city offices \u201cwould be completely eviscerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint asked that the court order Louis to comply with the Office of the Director of Police Accountability\u2019s requests to share the records. It also asked for a judicial declaration that Louis had failed to comply with her duties outlined in the city charter, and that she is obligated to assist the Director by providing records when asked.<\/p>\n
The city of Berkeley and the Office of the Director of Police Accountability both declined to comment given the ongoing nature of the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Berkeley\u2019s director of police accountability filed a legal complaint against Berkeley\u2019s chief of police for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[24841,32093,7872,156,56848,47908,56847,15246,56849,12504,143,145,144,56850,32094],"class_list":["post-104907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-8th-street","tag-berkeley-homeless-union","tag-berkeley-police-department","tag-bpd","tag-california-superior-court-for-alameda-county","tag-chief-of-police","tag-director-of-police-accountability","tag-hansel-aguilar","tag-harrison-street","tag-jennifer-louis","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-peremptory-writ-of-mandate","tag-yesica-prado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}