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The last two original Police Accountability Board members resigned in protest, saying the board\u2019 work has been ignored. Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\nThe last two original Police Accountability Board members resigned in protest, saying the board\u2019 work has been ignored. Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
The two most senior members of Berkeley\u2019s Police Accountability Board have resigned in protest of what they described as an obstructionist city administration and a police department bent on undoing hard-won reforms by the civilian oversight agency\u2019s predecessor.<\/p>\n
The departures of Kitty Calavita and Julie Leftwich, which they announced Friday in a joint letter, leaves the PAB with just four members and follows months of growing tension<\/a> between the city\u2019s oversight apparatus and its police department and administration.<\/p>\n The PAB is meant to have nine regular members, one appointed by each City Council member and the mayor, as well as an alternate.<\/p>\n Berkeley residents voted by a wide margin<\/a> in 2020 to create the PAB and an administrative counterpart, the Office of the Director of Police Accountability, intending to strengthen civilian oversight of the police department. But Calavita and Leftwich, who were the last two original members of the board, wrote that they \u201chave seen firsthand that the PAB has not been permitted to exercise its expanded oversight authority and is even less empowered than its predecessor,\u201d the Police Review Commission, on which they also sat.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than half a century, Berkeley was a model for other cities seeking meaningful police oversight. No more,\u201d they wrote. \u201cOver 84% of Berkeley voters established and empowered the Police Accountability Board, but their will has been ignored and the advances they envisioned have often been subverted.\u201d<\/p>\n Spokespeople for the City Manager\u2019s Office and BPD did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n Calavita and Leftwich specifically called out BPD\u2019s recent decision to rewrite its use-of-force policy, the months-long stonewalling before the PAB could access records related to racist texts between members of a BPD bike unit<\/a> and reversals of PAB findings of misconduct. The board has had to resort to subpoenas several times in the last year to compel BPD to turn over records.<\/p>\n