Category Archives: Police
Drug arrest leads to tense moments at Berkeley High
Update, 11.01.11: The BPD has released a photograph of the replica gun officers recovered Monday in this case (left). It was a realistic looking Desert Eagle gun, the BPD reported. In an email release, the BDP writes: “The young man and woman are being booked at the BPD Juvenile booking facility, the 17 male who does not currently attend school for 148(PC) – Resisting or Obstructing an officer and the 15 year old (a 10th grade BHS student) for 11357(b) PC – Possession of less than 28.5 g of marijuana and an outstanding warrant.”
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Berkeley High officials briefly secured the school perimeter this afternoon after a 17-year old who had been stopped for selling drugs in MLK Park ran toward the area.
A Berkeley police officer witnessed a hand-to-hand drug transaction around 3:19 pm between the 17-year old and a 15-year old sophomore from Berkeley High, according to Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. The police officer rode his bike over to the teens and told them to sit down. He called for back up, but the 17-year old ran away and tossed a gun he was carrying under a car, said Sgt. Kusmiss. The officer caught up with the 17-year old and detained him. An investigation revealed the gun was a very-real looking fake Desert Eagle, said Sgt. Kusmiss.
As a safety precaution, Principal Pasquale Scuderi briefly closed the perimeter of the school, said Superintendent Bill Huyett. … Continue reading »
Man shot in Berkeley home robbery, suspect at large
A man was shot and sustained non-life-threatening injuries in a home invasion robbery in the 1600 block of Derby Street in Berkeley at 3:00 am on Saturday October 22. The suspect fled and is still at large.
The home invasion was not random, according to Lieutenant Kevin Schofield of the Berkeley Police Department. “We believe the suspect targeted these people specifically,” he said.
A short time after the suspect left the scene of the crime, a BPD officer spotted the … Continue reading »
Berkeley introduces parking boots for repeat offenders
Parking ticket repeat offenders could be in for a rude surprise after October 18, the date the Berkeley Police Department is introducing the “smart boot”, a wheel-clamping device they say will enable a cheaper, more efficient parking enforcement system, and, ultimately, be more customer friendly for the city’s scofflaws.
The immobilizing boots will replace the current habit of impounding cars whose owners have failed to pay five or more parking tickets which are 30 days old, or older. The City decided to adopt the system in February. Berkeley is only the second city in California to introduce smart boots. Oakland introduced them in November 2009, and they are in use in dozens of cities nationally.
The “smart” part comes in because the boot can be removed by the car’s owner, once they have paid a $140 fine, plus the outstanding money due on the tickets. A call to a 24-hour phone hotline, operated by Paylock, and a credit card payment can, said BPD Lt. Diane Delaney at the smart boot media launch, have a motorist on his or her way in five minutes. … Continue reading »
Police blotter: Recent crimes in Berkeley
This is a partial list of recent crimes in Berkeley based on information from the Berkeley Police Department and the UC Berkeley Police Department. For other sources of information on crime in Berkeley see Community CrimeView and Crimemapping.com.
Friday, September 16
Special project yields nine arrests
On Friday morning, members of the BPD as well as Parole Agents from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDC) assigned to the Berkeley Office conducted a joint operation to verify that local parolees … Continue reading »
Students see security changes at Berkeley High School
As Berkeley High students returned to school this week, they weren’t permitted to enter by the Allston Street door leading into the main office. Instead they were directed to a nearby gate.
“Visitors Entrance Only,” read the lettering on two new signs posted by the office. “Students Please Use the ‘A’ Gate.”
Five and a half months after two students discharged a gun in a portable bathroom, spooking students, parents, and administrators, change has come to Berkeley High. Access to … Continue reading »
Easy rider: Berkeley PD wins motorcycle competition
Last week, the UC Police Department staged its first annual Competitive Police Motorcycle Training Day. Officers from nine regional police forces, including UCPD and the Berkeley Police Department, competed on a course marked on the Lower Hearst Parking Garage in both in two categories: Harley Davison and non-Harley.
Berkeley PD dominated the Harley contest, which was won by Officer Brian Kishiyama ahead of officers from East Palo Alto and Emeryville. Berkeley officers Dinkins and Jackson took fifth and seventh … Continue reading »
School safety committee issues weapons report
Three months after two students accidentally discharged a gun in a Berkeley High School bathroom, a task force empaneled to study the issue of weapons has concluded that the school should not install metal detectors or close the campus during lunch, but should require students to carry – but not necessarily display — identification cards.
In addition, the school could improve safety by more closely controlling who comes in and out of the campus. To do that, the high school should reduce the number of entrances to campus to four and hire monitors to stand by the gates. The school should more strictly enforce its visitors’ policy to make sure everyone on campus has a legitimate reason to be there, according to the report.
The school should also retain the 12 safety officers currently on staff – up from 10 in previous years — and hire a second full-time police officer for the campus, if financially feasible. All security personnel should be required to wear uniforms that plainly identify them to students, staff and the police, concludes the report, which will be presented to the school board on June 29.
The eleven-page set of recommendations is the culmination of three months of work by the Ad Hoc Safety Committee, which was appointed by Superintendent Bill Huyett in April to review policies and procedures in the city’s high schools after a spate of six gun incidents in a two-and-a-half month period from January to March 2011. The large number of weapons found on campus deeply distressed the community and the school board and led to emotional community meetings, student focus groups, police training, a flurry of online comment, and a sense of urgency that the district had to quickly address a growing problem.
Right after the sixth gun incident on March 25th, the school district took a number of immediate steps to try and improve the situation and asked the 15-member task force to examine some long-term policy questions on how to eliminate – or at least minimize – the presence of weapons at school.
The district bumped up its security detail by hiring two more school safety officers and increasing the presence of a uniformed police officer on campus from four to five days a week. Berkeley High closed some entrances to the massive campus, positioned security guards at the gates in the morning and after lunch, and stepped up patrols in out of way portions of the campus. It installed an anonymous hotline to report weapons. There have been no other guns discovered on the Berkeley High or B-Tech campuses since the security upgrades.
The report, and discussion among committee members, provide some new details on the six gun incidents, which included six Berkeley students and one non-Berkeley student.
- All of the on-campus incidents happened in the morning while the off-campus incident happened after school was dismissed.
- A total of seven Berkeley students and one non-Berkeley students were involved in the six gun incidents.
- Six of the seven students were not on probation prior to the incident
- One student was a senior, three were juniors, one was a sophomore, and one was a freshman.
- Three students had not had prior discipline incidents this year before they brought weapons to school.
- All the students were male.
- One student was homeless.
- All resided in Berkeley
- All have been expelled from the district
Summer weather = more home burglaries in Berkeley
Summer has officially begun, bringing warmer weather and increased crime.
At a town hall meeting last week hosted by Councilman Darryl Moore, an officer from the Berkeley Police Department gave San Pablo Park neighbors tips on how to protect themselves against crime and report suspicious activity. In turn, the neighbors challenged police and city officials to do their part addressing area burglaries and youth nuisance.
Officer Karen Buckheit, Area 4 Coordinator, credited the neighbors for police success in catching repeat youth offenders. She encouraged the neighbors to continue calling in suspicious activity. … Continue reading »
School committee finalizes report in wake of guns
In a small conference room on the second floor of old City Hall, a group of school administrators, parents, students, police and safety officers have met regularly over the past nine weeks to debate how to tackle the issue of guns at Berkeley High.
They have talked about the colors gang members wear – and whether gangs pose an issue at the school. They have argued about whether to close the campus, and how a cafeteria equipped to hold 500 would serve 3,200 students a day. They have talked about making school security officers more identifiable, how to encourage students to wear ID badges, and how teaching students about the dangers of guns might be critical to stopping the presence of weapons on campus. They have agreed that metal detectors just won’t work. … Continue reading »
Saving the history of the Berkeley Police Department
When Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan heard that the late vintner Jess Jackson might have once been a Berkeley police officer in the 1950s, he was intrigued. Wouldn’t that be an interesting detour in a life that took Jackson from a poor childhood in San Francisco to the top of Kendall-Jackson, of one of the country’s largest and most successful wine companies?
Meehan was similarly interested when he heard that Evelyn Einstein, the granddaughter of Albert Einstein who died in Albany on April 13, was affiliated with the Berkeley police department.
Meehan knew exactly what to do to verify the information.
He called Sgt. Michael J. Holland.
For the past 14 years, Holland, who first became a Berkeley cadet in 1968, has been the keeper of the Berkeley police department history. He’s the person who made sure files weren’t thrown out when the police department moved from the old Hall of Justice into its new public safety building in 2001. He’s the one who made sure that old case reports were filmed and put on microfiche. He’s the man who people call when they want to find out whether a relative ever worked for BPD. He’s even figured out all sorts of interesting trivia, like the date of the first automobile fatality in Berkeley. (November 8, 1910) … Continue reading »
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