When the City Council approved an expansion of the program in 2017, members were assured they would only be used for traffic-related purposes. A new measure allows police to use them in criminal investigations.
In a closed session Thursday, the City Council decided that a new police transparency law should apply to records pre-dating Jan. 1, 2019, when the law came into effect.
City Council voted in closed session Thursday that SB 1421 should apply "to existing [police] records pre-dating Jan. 1, 2019." This followed a lawsuit filed by Berkeleyside and ACLU NorCal over application of the bill.
The city of Berkeley says it has no records of sexual assault or dishonesty-related police misconduct from the past five years and does not have to release use-of-force records from incidents before 2019.
After a racist incident in January, the owner of the Elmwood Cafe and W. Kamau Bell hosted 300 people to discuss race and implicit bias.
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