The number of Berkeley community members filing police misconduct complaints increased in 2025 even as overall complaints declined, according to a Police Accountability Board annual report scheduled for review July 8. The report also found that the PAB agreed with Berkeley Police Department Chief Jennifer Louis on just 27.5% of misconduct allegations.<\/p>\n
The drafted report from the PAB and Office of the Director of Police Accountability found that 27 unique complainants filed 43 complaints in 2025, while 19 complainants filed 53 complaints the previous year. This marks an 18.9% decrease in total complaints and a 42.1% increase in unique complainants, indicating that police conduct concerns in 2025 came from a broader pool of Berkeley residents compared to the prior year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of complaints actually went down, but the number of unique complainants went up,\u201d said Interim Director of Police Accountability Katherine Lee. \u201cOne person contributed to a very large volume in 2024 \u2026 If you backed out his 10 or 12 complaints, you\u2019d end up with roughly the same number in 2024 and 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Lee, it is difficult to draw specific conclusions from these relatively small numbers. However, she noted that the increase in unique complainants could suggest greater awareness of the PAB and its complaint process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be broader awareness of our existence, of the existence of the Police Accountability Board or our office, knowing this is a place they can come to file a complaint if they believe there was misconduct on the part of police,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Beyond complaint trends, the report also analyzed agreement rates between the BPD and PAB. It found that the PAB reviewed 69 allegations across nine complaints in 2025. The PAB and Louis agreed on the conclusions on 19 allegations, amounting to a 27.5% agreement rate. Sixteen of those allegations were deemed unfounded by both the BPD and PAB. However, Chief Louis did not concur with any of the PAB\u2019s \u201csustained\u201d findings, which indicate the alleged misconduct occurred and was not justified.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the PAB\u2019s comprehensive review process, the absence of agreement on any sustained findings is notable,\u201d the draft of the annual report stated. \u201cThese differing outcomes underscore the importance of continued examination of how allegations are evaluated across oversight and internal accountability processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee said the chief\u2019s disagreement with all sustained findings was \u201ca little troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, she added that allegations most often involve improper investigations and discourtesy, rather than use-of-force cases, which account for fewer than 6% of complaints reviewed by the PAB.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap comes from a perception on the part of the chief that the things we perceive as misconduct simply aren\u2019t,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThere\u2019s simply a difference in perception between what we feel rises to the level of misconduct and what the chief does not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BPD declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of Berkeley community members filing police misconduct complaints increased in 2025 even as overall complaints declined,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7872,157267,139228,143,145,144,102613,7985,157268],"class_list":["post-390517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-police-department","tag-chief-jennifer-louis","tag-kathy-lee","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-office-of-the-director-of-police-accountability","tag-police-accountability-board","tag-police-accountability-board-annual-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390517","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=390517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}