The Berkeley City Council voted in closed session to dismiss the director of police accountability, Hansel Aguilar, on Monday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The director\u2019s dismissal follows<\/a> the Jan. 30 resignation of two other Berkeley Police Accountability Board members, Kitty Calavita and Juliet Leftwich, the longest-serving members on the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n All eight councilmembers in attendance voted to dismiss Aguilar, while one councilmember was absent, District 1 Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani, according to mayor\u2019s office spokesperson Melissa Male.<\/p>\n The dismissal will take effect a month after written notice to Aguilar of the decision to dismiss him. The board currently has five vacant seats.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Berkeley City Council is firmly committed to police accountability, and we recognize how deeply these issues matter to our community,\u201d said Mayor Adena Ishii in a press release.<\/p>\n The council intends to hire a replacement \u201cthat has the expertise and commitment to accountability work,\u201d according to Ishii\u2019s statement. It also plans on restoring \u201ccredibility, trust, and respect for both the accountability process and the people involved in this work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The council is actively recruiting new members to the Police Accountability Board, or the PAB.<\/p>\n Aguilar has not responded to phone calls or emails as of press time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aguilar was appointed<\/a> in 2022 by the City Council and the mayor. Aguilar was formerly the executive director of the Charlottesville\u2019s Police Civilian Oversight Board. The role of Director of Police Accountability was created when Berkeley voters passed Measure II in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aguilar has an ongoing lawsuit<\/a> against Berkeley Police Chief Jen Louis for allegedly withholding recordings from a June 2024 sweep<\/a>\u00a0of the Eighth and Harrison encampment, which the PAB intended to investigate as an incident of potential police misconduct.<\/p>\n The director alleged he only received a portion of the investigative materials he requested from Louis. However, Louis said the Berkeley Police Department had already provided dispatch reports and body camera footage, and that further records either did not exist or were outside the scope of Aguilar\u2019s authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n He eventually filed a lawsuit in December 2025 alleging that Louis prevented him from carrying out his duties as director of police accountability.<\/p>\n This is a developing story. Check back for more updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berkeley City Council voted in closed session to dismiss the director of police accountability, Hansel Aguilar, on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7983,7981,15246,82167,76879,76878,143,145,144,7985],"class_list":["post-171499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-adena-ishii","tag-berkeley-city-council","tag-hansel-aguilar","tag-jen-louis","tag-juliet-leftwich","tag-kitty-calavita","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-police-accountability-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171499","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=171499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}