Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the public safety committee of Tuesday 02/24/2026. The time is now six 06:01PM and this meeting may come to order. Before sorry. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker card for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber, would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via Zoom is now due twenty four hours prior to the start of this meeting time. This meeting came to order at 06:01PM and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after making that time 06:11PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council members Brown. Present.

Live. Present. Houston.

Present.

And chair Wong. Present. Thank you. We have four members present. Chair before we begin do you have any announcements at this time?

No I don't. Let's go ahead and proceed.

Okay. Starting off with item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on Tuesday 02/10/2026 and we have no speakers that signed up.

Okay. Councilmember Brown.

I'll move approval of the minutes.

Second. Thank you. We have a

motion made by council member Brown seconded by council member Fife to accept sorry to accept the draft minutes from 02/10/2026 on roll. Council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes from 02/10/2026. Reading in item two determination of schedule of outstanding committee items and we do have two speakers that signed up. Okay we'll go to public comment. Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number two, Rajni Mandal and Asada Olubala.

I know that it is California law that every high school that has an athletic program must have at least one defibrillator in the on the campus. My question is what is the mandate, I didn't find anything for governing bodies, a policy for defibrillators to be available at city facilities? Is there an existing policy? If not would it be considered appropriate to put that on the agenda? I have to say that we have to have a report on how an individual got into this building, got up to the 11th Floor on Friday, stayed the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, and then and we don't know what that person was engaging in for four three and a half days, and on Monday, you know, that the car was stolen from the mayors and blah blah blah with this.

How did that happen? We need to have a report, not for you, but for me. I come here under circumstances that I really realized that our security system is individuals will observe and report. God help us if we have some situation where we had an individual came into this building with intent to do bodily harm, which was not the case, but it could have been the case. So we need to do some reporting out immediately on securing not only this building, but all of our facilities.

I do not and I'm elderly, and I'm telling you no disrespect, what we have here for security is non security. And I insist that we have appropriate security system put in place for myself and up

Rajni Mandel, District 4. I would like the IAB to CIPRA transition item to include a formal capacity and infrastructure analysis before any policy direction is given. Last year, CIPRA had about a 180 cases and internal affairs handles more than 1,500 investigations per year. So there is a structural scale difference. The city auditor's follow-up report shows multiple recommendations still partially implemented and a new performance audit is forthcoming. So I'd request that the committee review the performance audit and a comparative capacity analysis before advancing any transition framework. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments chair. That concludes all speakers on item two.

Anything from the administration? Missy Phillips.

Good afternoon chair. No nothing from the administration. Thank you.

Yes councilmember Brown.

Thank you so much chair. I did have a quick question so either to, chair Wong or to the administration. What is the status of the overtime item

that was supposed to come? Yeah. So the overtime item is coming before finance and management. This is going be March 10. So definitely invite my fellow committee members to join that. And for those of you who are not part of that committee, it's at 09:30. I know. I'm one of the earlier ones.

Excellent. Thank you so much. That's the OPTE overtime. And then I'll make a motion to move the item. Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Brown, second by council member Fife to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items as is. On roll, council members Brown. Aye. Five. Aye. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is. Yes. Sorry. As a

point of privilege, I realized there was one announcement I wanted to make at the top of the hour, is that we have a new executive director for the CPRA, Antonio Lawson. Lawson. So he's been serving as his interim and I just wanted to congratulate him on his new role as the permanent executive director. Okay. Alright.

Okay. Now reading in item number three. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a cooperative purchasing agreement with Stryker Sales LLC for the purchase lease maintenance and repair of advanced life support equipment in an amount not to exceed $681,877.80 per year for five years for a total for a total not to exceed amount of $3,409,389. And two waiving the advertising and competitive bidding process requirements and local business enterprise and small local business enterprise program requirements for the proposed cooperative purchasing agreement with Strecker Sales LLC and we have one speaker that signed up for this item.

Okay, great. Do we have a representative from OFD to speak on this item? Can someone from the city administration provide that role?

Through the chair I would ask if we can delay this item just so I can reach out to OFD to see if we can I get someone don't have enough context on this?

Yes that sounds good. Okay.

We'll return to item number three reading in item four. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into an agreement.

This that has occurred to me yes.

We will continue on to item five as this is an item from OPD. Adopt a resolution.

Sorry. So just to so we've identified a problem which is that we do not have a representative from OFD right now. So we are going to skip items three and four and we are moving to item five where we do have representatives from OPD.

Thanks. Thank you, chair. Reading in item five, adopt a resolution accepting the annual reports from the following city of Oakland Police Department surveillance technologies. A, automated license plate readers, b, crime lab biometrics d analysis technology, c, forward looking infrared, d, live stream transmitter, e, an sorry, unmanned aerial systems, f, forensic logic cop CopLink crime tracker crime tracer systems, g, pen register, and two, making a determination regarding whether the city should continue, continue to use each of these technologies. And we have three speakers that signed up to speak.

Okay. Alright. And then, yes, these OPD technologies are a mouthful to pronounce. Lieutenant Erkiza, the floor is yours. You is ten minutes enough?

I believe so.

Okay. Great.

Lieutenant Gabriel Erkeza from the Oakland Police Department. I'm the commander of our real time operations within the ceasefire section. Just for a little bit of background, we generally try to get these reports submitted to the Privacy Advisory Commission or the PAC started in April. The normal cadence is to try to get those pushed through in April and in May to provide time to present to public safety following that within the same calendar year. We did have some issues this year where for basically starting in May, we started pushing through some of these reports.

But then there was a priority for Community Safety Camera System policy, which spent a long time in the Privacy Advisory Commission and delayed many of our reports up until the end of the year. So all of these reports were submitted to the PAC and were pushed forward with the recommendation for adoption between April and November 2025. And that includes the seven reports that are contained here. To try to alleviate having this issue again this year, we're going to try to make sure that we get everything completed within April and May, which will give us some buffer time if there's more time that those annual reports need to spend within the PAC or any other issues that need to be addressed. So we will be working with that.

And I don't think right now we don't have a large surveillance policy that I think would take up a lot of time within that commission. So it is our goal to not have this repeat for next year, but it is something that we are keeping in mind and trying to address based on what occurred last year. So there are subject matter experts or SMEs for these annual reports that are here if there's any questions for specific information. And with that, I'll turn it back over for questions. Thank you, chair.

Yes. And I do have one clarifying question both for this body as well as members of the public since this is a two part resolution both accepting the annual reports as well as making a determination regarding whether the city should continue to use each of these technologies. It is each of these technologies if there's a procurement or a contract they they will continue to move to come before this body as a separate item for approval. Is that how this works? Whereas this is just a global direction from the city council that says that we are each of these technologies we're okay to use, but if there was a specific contract, it would still come come before this body?

Yes. If there was if we were renewing a contract or entering into a new contract, we would come to this body. Yes. That's correct.

Okay. Great. Thank you for clarifying that. I don't see any flashing mics. So why don't we first go to members of the public?

Calling in the names that signed up for item number five. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium. Or if you're on zoom please raise your hand to be easily identified. Rajni Mandal, Tuan Yeo, and Asada Olawala.

Rajne Mandel District 4. These annual reports show that oversight is working. The flock ALPR data was already presented to council last fall so there's nothing new in the packet that changes its documented outcomes framework. Any future changes to flux use or policy that were recently approved, we should wait until the city auditor completes its review under the new contract before making any changes. The remainder of the reports documents no misuse, no improper data sharing and no reported breaches during the reporting period.

So and I also support expanding the drone program for first response deployments where real time aerial assessment improves decision making and reduces risk before officers or civilians are placed in harm's way, all under existing written policy and oversight. Public safety and accountability are not in conflict here. These tools are governed, audited and producing results. We should not roll back effective investigative capacity based on speculation. I urge you to vote to continue and strengthen their use. Thank you.

Could everybody speak up, please?

So it has to be said that a tremendous amount of time has to be spent by the Oakland Police Department dealing with the mandate of the privacy commission. When they certain pieces of equipment, they have to, under certain I don't know if they do it every time, but they have to reproduce each time that a situation arose where the equipment was used, they have to explain the case and the circumstances of what happened, and then the body, the police, the privacy commission determines if it was appropriate. Very time consuming in those meetings to have to do all of this. Now if you all want to continue with that privacy commission mess, go right ahead. But what you should have found was a NSA commission that would look at the task, stop data, would look at the discipline procedures, all of the tasks that we have to do, and go over it, make sure it was done.

Twenty two years, and all of a sudden you need a commission to deal with privacy, but you don't need a commission to deal with the issues of excessive force and racial profiling. Don't make no sense. Plus the privacy commission has to deal with making sure that the police department doesn't do anything to collaborate with ICE or the Department of Justice with and they got to report out every circumstance of what they involved with with the FBI. It's crazy. All of what they have to do to demonstrate to the privates commission that that they're not violating the sanctuary city status.

But we continue to have excessive force, racial profiling going on that never gets majorly addressed. When the last time stop data was brought before this body?

So you guys have seen me organizing with the Asian community, but you guys might not know that I also work every day with the Latino community, and I've been working with them ever since I was picking out tomatoes in the fields with other immigrants as an minor underage child illegally. So regarding the surveillance, I'm very concerned, and I was the lone voice at the privacy commission years ago, concerned about deportation and the mass surveillance program that is the rent registry. So what happens to immigrants is at the border, when they try to cross, oftentimes, they don't succeed. They get fingerprinted. So ICE and and border patrol knows who they are.

But the second and the third time, they successfully crossed over, and they're part of our community. They worked very hard for very little pay, and they helped do essential work. But ICE doesn't know where they live. The red registry says who you are and where you live. That's the data that ICE needs to deport people and break up families.

The number of families that are people that would be deported by flock, zero. The number of criminals that are taken off the streets every day by flock cameras, 2,200 about. The number of communities that have yanked flock cameras over ice concerns, 20. The number of communities that have used flock, over 5,000 communities. Do not flunk math. That's 99.5% or more of communities use technology. The mayor got her SUV back because we use VLOC. So follow the data. Follow 99.5% of communities out there. Do what's right.

Protect your community. Public safety is important. Keep locked. Keep public safety. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item.

Alright. Thank you. And then one question I did have as well is just around the timing of this report. So this is a 2024 report. We are now at the beginning of 2026. Can you just explain the delays? Why we're seeing this report now and how do we get this more expeditiously going forward?

That's correct. Our normal cadence is to start in April. There's a number of surveillance related policies and there's actually one additional one that we will be hoping to get on the agenda for next month. But we start in April with the intention of going through April and May and getting all of them through and then being able giving us time to then present to public safety and then full council. So with that I think we because we had such a large policy that had a lot of attention, spent a lot of time in PAC, and then we had a number of meetings that were canceled that were related to not having quorum or that just ended up not getting we didn't end up having that meeting.

And that kind of slowed the process completely down. And then that December meeting where we intended to present these policies, that was completely taken up by the flock ALPR contract and then the community safety camera system policy. So that's why we got delayed into this year. In February, it was our first opportunity to present these particular annual reports. Our hope is to really focus on this year in April and May to get those policies to PAC, through PAC, and then to the commission with plenty of time in buffer before 2027.

Okay. Thank you. And then another question I have is it's noted that there were three technologies that were not in use or OPD did not possess this technology in 2024, cell site simulator, mobile ID, GPS tag trackerStar chase. Why were these noted in the report and what is the nature of these technologies? Is this something that you all are seeking to adopt these technologies in the future?

These are technologies that we had policies for but we don't currently utilize. Starchase we discontinued I think last at some point in '20 2023 but there is a potential that we would seek out another vendor for that. I don't think that's our intention at this point. But we if we have a policy that covers a technology that we don't utilize, we still report that to the privacy commission.

Gotcha. Understood. Councilmember Brown.

Thank you so much. Through the chair to Lieutenant Orkiza, of course thank you always for you know coming and presenting to us and all of your work this technology space. And so I understand the delay in getting the report to us and so of course I'm looking forward to you know I guess the 2025, right, report that hopefully will come to us much sooner. I am interested in just kind of reading through the reports. I would I guess through the chair also to the administration I think I would be really grateful for the next time that you're able to come in to present to us to even like walk us through like maybe like a compare and contrast of like hey like having particular technologies has you know increased the following, right?

So one item I'm gonna just kind of zero in on is the crime lab biometric technology. Right? And can you actually shed light on like have you all been able to see like an increase in in some of like the backlog cases, cold cases, etcetera because you have this technology?

Someone is here as a SME for that so I'll have them

Okay.

Present on that.

Excellent. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Bonnie Chang. I'm one of the biology unit supervisors for the crime laboratory.

Our

we've made a lot of progress in the last few years, with buying

Order

in

the Excuse me. Please, I would like to hear from the speaker. Please proceed, and please order in the chamber. Thank you, missus Sada. Plea missus Sada, I I will I am I will use security if please.

Okay. You that's the first warning. Okay? You will have three warnings before I ask people to exit.

Y'all don't put me on here. Police officers. Is that first

Miss Asada, that's your second warning. Please, speaker, if you could please go ahead.

In the last few years, we've purchased instruments to help us with automation, robots that can help us with higher throughput instead of doing it manually, processes that we would hand hand pipette instead of having a robot do that. So, the technology has helped us put through more samples in the same amount of time. That has helped us process more cases. For example, in 2024, we processed, I think it was 352 cases. In 2025 we did 414.

So it is helping us. What we do have our drawback is manpower. We have hiring fees and we do have vacancies and that is not helping us but the technology does help.

And so when you kind of recount those numbers is that resulting in cases closed?

They're resulting in us completing requests from the investigation unit.

I see. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And if I could through the chair, related to your question that we've I've had conversations with the chair of the pack related to annual reports and if there's a way to kind modernize how we've been presenting to have information like that readily available and using of a different format than six pages of words and maybe having more graphs, images. But simplifying it so it's easier for us to get these inner reports completed but in a way that provides meaningful information, to the public and to the to the council.

Yeah. Go ahead council member Brown.

Thank you so much. And so just I guess just to put on the radar, I know that there will be some requests that are, being made via, like, the Measure NN funding. And so I guess I'm curious if somewhere in there maybe there's a position for like a data analyst or something. I know we've been talking lot about you know needing that skill set so maybe this is also a place that it could land as well, right, within OPD to help with some of this reporting.

I don't have a vote, but I support that.

So who's putting that out there? Right? Okay. Thank you.

Council member Houston.

Through the chair, how are doing? Lieutenant Gabriel, how are doing?

Good. How are you doing?

Good. Good. I know it's probably gonna be hard to answer this one, but I just I'm just gonna ask it. It said 29 USA deployments in districts I mean, says six, but I know that's seven. So that's Area 6, so that means seven. Do you do you know what the results were from those 29 of, deployments? And it seems like in '23, District 7 was highest of deployments. We have 40. And in '24, we had 29. My district is just hot. And that's why I'm saying this for my council members to hear me. Help me. Help me. I'm gonna say them to my council members just watching. Help me.

So do you know what the results were from that from that those deployments? I know it's just I know you're not gonna be there.

Think they there's probably an overall breakdown. I don't know if it does it by district. Specifically we use the technology generally for yard searches where we've seen the greatest benefit or for barricaded suspects. So that's where we usually utilize the drones. So if we have someone say flee from a carjacking vehicle and they jump into the yards, where traditionally we were holding a perimeter and then doing a hand search which can be potentially extremely dangerous or utilizing a canine, we're utilizing a UAS systems for that. But I don't think we get into this report that specific down at district. Does that answer your question?

It sure does. Thank you. Thank you lieutenant.

If we could have I think it was Bonnie, was that her name with the crime lab come up again? Hi. Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions especially since the types of crimes that these are solving. I mean, this looks like this is for homicides, sexual assaults, kidnappings which are all, you know, incredibly important crimes for the city of Oakland to solve.

I'm just wondering if you can comment since I my understanding is some of the technology underlying DNA analysis has evolved over the last couple of years. And if you could comment on where is the police department in terms of our our capacity on this type of technology?

We're pretty advanced competitive with our other local laboratories in the Bay Area. As far as instrumentation software, we are validating a software called StarMix which will help us deconvolute larger person mixtures, mixtures of three, four persons, which sometimes we cannot interpret at this point. And once we complete the validation and we can implement it, that may be able to help us provide more answers to the department. As far as instrumentation, we're we purchased the last two STARLETs. We're validating those instruments to get them online and retiring some of the smaller robots for these larger liquid handlers so that they can handle a higher capacity.

Robots? That's how this works? No. This is fascinating. So interesting. Okay.

Is that it?

Yep. That's helpful. And then just lieutenant Erkiza, hopping on a comment that my council member council member Brown had said. Are there other technologies just generally speaking where it's because I I see technology with civil liberties as a force multiplier for the the police department. And as you know, we are understaffed, and this is important. Is there are there technologies, however, where we do need like a civilian analyst, something like that, that that it's important? Otherwise, we're not actually fulfilling the full potential of that technology.

We currently in my office have two analysts who are dedicated both to ceasefire and then also for the real time operations which involves a lot of the technology aspects. They are probably at the limit of what their bandwidth is so we would benefit I think overall of having someone to assist with data analysis and a lot of the work that we're seeing with these annual reports. And I think if if that's their dedicated job, we'll get a more in-depth picture of what what these technologies can do or what we're we're lacking whether it's additional technology or different technology to fill those roles.

Okay. Thank you. ACA Phillips, do you have anything to add there?

Thank you. Through this year, I just want to let the body know and members of the public that we are working on a data strategy manager position to go through our class and comp with human resources so that's something that we have identified as also an area of need to ensure that we have comprehensive data analysis to help to support this work. And then through the chair I do have a request additionally if we can go ahead and dispose of the OPD items and then go back to our OFD items.

Okay. I would say I would like to wrap up this item first and then we can go back to OFD. Council member Fife, go ahead.

Yeah. I wanna try to agree to the terms of both the chair and to ACA Phillips. But I I I have a quick question around attachment d that states that OPD shared flock ALPR data with close to 50 California law enforcement entities in 2024 and that there is that OPD is working with FLAC to distribute the permission form to agencies who haven't received it. Do we know which agencies haven't received that permission form through the chair?

At this point, we were I think at the we had distributed it to the agencies or at least the opportunity to submit their form and we expanded I think to around 80 agencies. Then during the process of the DGO I 32 or the community safety camera systems, we reassessed some of those agencies and pare it down up, I wanna say, to 60. But like I said, this this annual report captures the 2024 data. So this was I think it's 51 or 52 agencies through 2024. So it's not reflective of the agencies that entered in or provided the sharing form after that, if that makes sense.

You're way smarter than me. Can you say that again? No. No. Can

So so these are the agencies that are listed here are agencies that had entered in or provided a sharing form to us up until basically 01/01/2025. So it's not reflective of the agencies that entered or provided a sharing form following that time. So it's not reflective of the current state of the sharing. Okay. I guess sharing status with other agencies.

Okay. Well, because the report says that OPD is working to distribute the OPD permission form to agencies, when can we get an update on the agencies that we've shared that permission form with?

So the 2025 annual report I believe is slotted for April and that will have the updated sharing list.

Thank you.

Council member Houston. Go ahead.

Yes. To the chair I'd like to move it. I'd like to move it but what I wanted to ask you just real quick real technical. Does Area 6 which is District 7 but it blends in with District 6, right? What part of District 6 does that cover? Cause it's it should be a small part of District 6. Right? Area 6.

If I'm more familiar with our police districts. So I might I don't wanna

Okay. Get this wrong. I'll look it up. I just wanna know if you since you asked that, you smarter than council member Feife, you smarter than me too. I was gonna ask that question. So, yeah, just get that to me. Let me know.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. So I wanna move that. Okay. Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Houston seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the March agenda. On roll council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you.

Item number five passes with four ayes to to forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on consent. Noting the modifications made to the agenda that we will hear item number six next. Now reading in item six receive an informational report from the Oakland Police Department on the role of Skelly hearings and OPD's discipline process, current challenges in managing Skelly hearings and options to address the backlog of discipline cases awaiting Skelly hearings. And we do have five speakers that signed up. Sorry.

We had a back we had a discussion here. We are going through the OPD items, and then we will go to the OFD items. I see chief Beer is here. Will you be delivering the presentation? Okay. Please come up. Can I speak

for Good evening, chair? Thank you.

Oh, yes. Council member Brown did introduce this item, so you can go ahead and say if you

Excellent. Thank you so much chair Wong. And I just wanted to give some initial framing. Thank you. Good to see you chief Beer.

And so one of the reasons why I requested this item was earlier in 2025 there was a report that came to this body where it was outlined it was showcasing just some of the backlog of the Skelly cases. Would say it was upwards of you know well over a 100. Don't quote me on the exact number but as you all will be able to see in this presentation and in the report that there have been huge strides that have been made in this area. And one of the reasons why you know we were really focused in on this because we know that when you have officers that are awaiting like SCALI hearings in this process, they're also on administrative leave, right? And so that also will impact you know the you know our budget as well.

And so this was just something that was on the radar and so I just really wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to engage on the Skelly hearing process and and receive updates on the status. And so thank you all. Thank you to everyone that was able to generate a report and really work literally for an entire year to bring this number down. And so really looking forward to hearing the official report. So thank you.

Thank you, council member.

Alright. Chief Beer, take

it away. I appreciate it. So I'm here to introduce, I'm gonna give a higher overview, of what was requested, and then I'll introduce captain Hubbard to expand on it and answer questions. I will stick around because it sounds like there's gonna be some additional questions regarding admin leave that weren't part of the report. So I'll I'll I'll remain here for that. But, you are correct. There was well over a 100 actually, a 169 Skelly cases that were in backlog, and that was October 2024. As of January 2026, we're able to reduce those to 46, Kelly, cases pending. And 24 of those 46 have already been assigned. There's 22 that are outstanding.

Historically, the issue, was compounded by several factors. Lack of staffing at the time, up until we started to address it, there was only one professional staff member that was assigned to coordinate, create, and schedule the Skelly hearings. Currently, we have a professional staff member, a supervisor, and a lieutenant involved in the process. And since I took over, deputy chief Smith and myself, who he's my chief in charge of internal affairs, meet every two weeks, and we specifically review the Skelly cases and triage them while prioritizing the most immediate ones that need attention. There was also an inability to advance with technology.

This the professional staff member who's responsible for compiling all of these SCALI reports was doing it by hand. So they had to actually pull, all the documentation, which is extremely difficult to do and consume time very time consuming. It's a difficult endeavor. And then in 2023, captain Tedesco, now deputy chief Tedesco, started to digitalize all of IAB's files. And since we've done that, that's helped streamline the whole process of gathering all the materials that we do need to provide to the officers that are gonna have their scale of hearing or the representatives.

That saved a lot of time. Also, with the advancement of technology, professional staff member, we now are able to integrate the vision, and we use that for tracking notifications and deadline reminders. Also, Also, back before we started making the our efforts to change the the the problem, the backlog, there was an a very limited amount of Skelly hearing officers available. Typically actually, previously,

there was only

one executive team member that was responsible for the most serious cases, anything with twenty days of suspension or more up to termination. So that really caused a backlog there in the most serious ones. So now deputy like I said before, deputy chief Smith and I review those. And when necessary, we assign additional serious cases to the assistant chief for uninvolved deputy chiefs. Typically, the reason the past practice was deputy chiefs were used either in the review process for a lot of these investigations or they were part of the discipline hearing process.

So immediately when I took over, I rescused all the deputy chiefs from that process, and just retained deputy chief Smith since he was in charge of Internal Affairs Bureau and director Suttle since she's in charge of her personnel. Those were the only two executive members that I kept with Major in the discipline process, which freed up a number of deputy chiefs. And in addition, I'd like to thank, the city attorney's office as well as the city HR. They really came together and worked collaboratively with us. City attorney's office helped train 18, more Skelly officers, which contributed to that extreme, reduction in the backlog.

And captain Hubbard's when he gives his presentation, he's gonna also discuss additional efforts going forward where we're gonna double that number even more going into the near future. What this meant really was when we freed up the deputy chiefs, previously, you would only have captains that were available and they would shoulder that the lion's share of the Skellys. Now you have the deputy chiefs, captains, and with the additional training, we've incorporated lieutenants as well as other managers within the department or or professional staff. It's really helped us be able to pot like, spread load the work and carry forward. Would say even though we do have 46 standing, 24 of those are scheduled, and I'd imagine those other 22 be assigned here pretty shortly.

Also, one of the things that we struggled with in the past is members and professional staff members weren't given the opportunity to waive the Skelly process. So we've started education pro education education with our own members, and now we're seeing professional staff as well as sworn actually waive the Skelly and accept their discipline. So with that, I'll turn it over to captain Hover to present the actual report. Thank you. If that's okay, chair.

Thank you, chief Beer.

Good evening, everyone. I have a presentation. May I have control with this? Thank you. Alright. Good evening, everyone. My name is Brian Hubbard. I'm the acting captain over internal affairs and thank you for this opportunity to present this today. In this presentation, I have five things to cover. First, I'll explain the Skelly hearing, what a Skelly hearing is and why it matters.

Second, I'll describe the specific challenges that created the backlog. Third, I'll share the progress to date. And fourth, I'll walk you through the concrete process improvements we've implemented. And fifth, finally, I'll outline the path forward including additional strategies under review. What is a Skelly hearing?

Skelly hearing is a pre disciplinary due process hearing required under California law for non probationary civil service employees facing suspension, demotion, or termination. And when I say suspension, it's as low as suspension. The name comes, from the 1975 California Supreme Court decision Skelly v State Personnel Board, which established that civil service employees have a constitutional property interest in their employment. The law requires three things before discipline can be imposed. First, a written notice of the proposed action and the reason for it.

Second, a copy of the charges and the supporting materials. And third, an opportunity for the employee to respond either orally or in writing before a reasonably impartial or non involved, reviewer hears it. So it's important to understand that a Skelly hearing is not a full evidentiary trial. For sworn personnel, there's a right to representation, including an attorney. Professional staff have union representation.

In neither case is there a right to cross examine witnesses. It is a procedural safeguard, a check to ensure the department process was fair, the investigation was adequate, and the proposed discipline is just given the circumstances and the employee's record. Chief Beer already covered most of this, but I'm gonna be direct about the challenges we did face. In October 2024, OPD had a 169 Skelly cases pending. I understand that there were some confusion on the dates.

I think we misspoke in a in another public meeting. It's not 10/20/2025, it's October 2024 where we had a 169 Skellys pending. And we recognize, agreed that it was an unacceptable member, number. So we did some core, changes just to reduce the backlog. First, structural I'm sorry. There are three core issues that drove the backlog. The first is the structural capacity constraints. At any given time, only a limited number of personnel are eligible to serve as SCALA hearing officers. There must be a sufficient rank for certain cases. For example, serious cases involving termination, demotion, or a lengthy suspension must be conducted by a deputy chief.

And as the chief mentioned, in previous hearings for internal affairs cases, the entire almost the entire executive command staff were there, and that automatically set a recusal in place. And it really made it difficult, for us to find someone who who, is not involved, if you will, in that case. On top of that, speaking of recusals, they were strict. So an officer cannot be a witness, cannot have a role in recommending discipline, cannot have been involved in the investigation, cannot have served in the subject's chain of command, and that further reduced the pool of individual cases. Second, administrative workload.

Preparing a Skelly file file is labor intensive. It requires compiling investigative reports, body worn camera footage, personnel records, and other documentation. The most probably time consuming is the redaction of sensitive information. I'll talk about that here pretty soon. And then third and final, the competing operational demands.

The this is not a full time Skelly job that one would have. These are executives commanders and executives who serve as Skelly hearing officers on top of their other responsibilities, and they are running bureaus managing patrol operations, overseeing critical functions. Progress to date. As reported in the agenda report, from October 2024 to January 2026. We reduced the SCALI caseload from a 169 to 46, and that is a 73% reduction.

I wanna be clear about the timeline as I just said. It's October 2024 to January. And this was not an overnight fix. I mean, was many months, in the works. And and of those 46 cases as of January 22 are awaiting, assignment for a Skelly hearing officer, and that is the true backlog that I do wanna address this evening.

I also wanna note, because I know this question may come up, that the composition of the of the 46, 12 include professional staff members. The rest are sworn. The the other thing I wanna make clear is that Skellys do not equal admin leave. K? So I know that that I think was misunderstood that if we have x number of Skellys, then that means that those are the same number of personnel who are on admin leave getting paid to sit at home.

That's not true. K. Actually, we have 16 people on admin leave right now and 12 of those 16 are pending cases. They're actually still under investigation rather serious. Only four on that list are being skellied for termination and are actually at home. Still on still on on the payroll waiting for the Skelly to be concluded? I'm you didn't hear me? No. Okay. I'm sorry about that.

We have 16 members who are on admin leave. That number changes daily. We we had a big discussion on risk management today about it. Of those 16, there are 12 who are being investigated for serious matters where the chief decided to put them on on administrative leave. Okay? But that case, their cases have not been resolved. Four of the 16 are the ones who of discipline has already been rendered. It's their their recommendation is termination but we are waiting for the Skelly hearing before it's finalized. Mhmm. Yes.

So I'll just go back for the ones that are pending termination. So it it takes throughout the process they had to go through the presentation of the I the internal affairs investigation which then is presented at which point they're terminated. And that's when they start the process of processing them out of the police department. Just to clarify a little bit more on those numbers. So of the 16, actually, two are not on administrative leave.

They're on critical incident leave. So that number is actually 14. And that that's a huge reduction. When I took over in December, there was 38. Deputy chief Smith and I went line by line, looked at each case individually for where it was at, and either we returned them to work or we found them a place within the police department that was suitable for them to work.

And as captain Hubbard just explained, of those other 14, they their cases are serious enough where until the investigation is complete to prevent a liability issue for the police department of the city, that's why they remain on admin leave. But of note, that admin leave list has been reduced by 57% since December 2025.

Thank you, chief. Process improvements. The department implemented a series of targeted improvements and I wanna walk through each one and this of course helped us achieve the 73% reduction. First, expanded the Skelly hearing officer training pipeline. We brought in the eligibility so all trained lieutenants, captains, chiefs, professional staff managers, and directors can conduct Skelly hearings subject to the required recusal assessments.

IAB is, Internal Affairs Bureau, excuse me, is constantly working with the training division to immediately train acting lieutenants, captains, chiefs, and managers upon promotion or when they're assigned to that position. We have one coming up in the next or within this quarter in our in our command retreat. I just talked to deputy chief Ausmus today about that. And Skelly training is part of that onboarding process. City executive cross training.

The City of Oakland employee relations division has assisted by identifying utilizing other city executives to conduct Skelly hearings. This provides additional capacity, although there are limitations such as city, executives have their own competing demands, of course, with their regular assignment. And they do require training on police and professional staff practices. Digital format transition, we moved from a paper based Skelly file to digital. This absolutely reduced a lot of time just in itself because the files are already within the system.

Officer waiver option, and we wanna elevate this more. There there are times where staff choose not to contest proposed proposed discipline. I'll give you the most common example is an officer backs their car into a pole on accident. Let's say they received a one day suspension and they admit to it. Like, yeah, I messed up. I didn't I didn't adhere to my training properly. They may want to waive their SCAL hearing. It's like, I'll accept the one day suspension. Okay. So that's an example. I wanna elevate that more. Vision integration. We have a vision system that tracks our internal affairs files. We we have within it timelines. We have a cron law.

We have all these measures that help us track these things efficiently so they don't get lost in the pile. And additional personnel, like the chief mentioned, IAB has added personnel specifically to address the Skelly backlog. We also utilize light duty officers professional staff as they come up to help with the Skelly process even if it's a brief transition for them. Some strategies under review, just long term vision here. Batching scheduled I Skelly hearings.

So for example, let's say three officers were sustained and they received a one day suspension. They used to go out to different Skelly officers and that didn't make sense. So we batch them. As in all three of you will see the same Skelly officer because that Skelly officer would have an understanding what's what's going on. Looking at tiered hearing assignments due to discipline severity, it was kind of funneled through one, let's say, deputy chief and now the chief has really allotted now all the deputy chiefs who are eligible to hear these cases.

We're also working to better coordination with the CPRA on case timelines, aligning investigation completion dates to reduce delays between sustained findings and SCALI sched scheduling. Exploring automated redaction software. Yes. We do redactions by hand and there's a lot of software out there that can facilitate that. And then finally, just a better way that we can do file preparation.

Just, again, we have to provide all the files and this is a collective effort from the investigator all the way up to the top. When the case is submitted for final review, we want all of the evidence to be included in the vision file. So once discipline is rendered, we are ready to go with Skelly. And finally, just holistic community safety. We we want a timely resolution of misconduct allegations, and this is essential to maintaining public trust and ensuring officers who violate policy are held accountable.

Delays undermine the department's ability to address misconduct and, when necessary, separate employees whose conduct warrants it. And then finally, responsive trustworthy of the government. We wanna eliminate the backlog. It shows that we are taking employee accountability seriously, managing its processes efficiently. And there are direct fiscal implications. Officers on administrative leave, waiting hearings, for example, receive salaries. So there's an there's a financial reason why we need to make this more efficient. I will open up to any questions you may have. Thank you.

Okay. Great. And I I will just say I wanna commend the the department for really forcefully taking on this backlog. I know that this is, there's still more work to be done to be clear but this is this is significant progress.

Thank

you. I see council member Houston as his link. Go ahead.

Thank you captain Hubbard and thank you chief beard. How you doing? I wanted to find critical incident leave? You had mentioned critical incident leave. What is that?

Thank you, council members. So critical incident leave is a leave that's mandatory after, say, a level one use of force. For example, an officer involved shooting. So those officers are mandated by policy to have a minimum of seventy two hour, period where they're not at work. A part of that is there's a, process that they to go through which is meeting with a mental health professional to ensure that they're in the right state of mind and that they're they're supportive enough to come back as well.

And also through the chair, you had mentioned four were automatically going to be released. Is that true?

Yep.

Will we will we be able to hear what the reason why they're gonna be released in closed session? Will we be able or is that private?

You're you're you're referring to the four officers that are pending termination? Yes.

Because I like to know.

Yeah. We would we would have to consult with the city attorney on that one, councilman.

You able to comment on that, Patrick?

I would need to consult with the attorneys on that.

Okay.

Don't have

an answer for that

right now.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

You got one more question?

One more question. When you said the digital, everything was written by hand. And when you said it was digital and you mentioned Tadesco, I knew, you know, it was gonna happen right. You know? I knew he was gonna make it happen. So why was it all

So the police department did not carry forward with the times. And up until 2023, all of the documents were paper documents, and it was one professional staff member that had to retrieve all the documents related to any case that was that was gonna be turned over to a Skelly hearing officer. But those all those documents we compiled, and it would include the internal affairs investigation, any statements made, photograph of that were related to the actual investigation. Any any piece of evidence or paperwork related to it had to be compiled and turned over to the officer or their legal representative as well as the Skelly hearing officer, and there's timelines for that as well. So once the Skelly hearing officer receives it, they have ten days to review it and actually schedule the hearing officer that.

That actually wasn't being enforced, previously either. So just from the onset, the the the endeavor to gather all of that information and make sure it was in that packet in in its entirety was Intense. And very intense. Mhmm. And it was for one person. So when captain Tedesco was assigned to internal affairs, one of the first things he did was he identified that as being the choke point

Mhmm.

And started to modernize everything, make sure all the previous cases were scanned and uploaded so that way they'd be easily located and that there was a tracking system. And then with the, you know, bringing vision online, it was a lot more of organizational and tracking allow us to make sure we're meeting those deadlines and timelines.

Thank you chief. Thank you captain.

Thank you council member.

Council member five. Yes. I was thinking along the same lines as council member Houston about what happened with compiling all of those documents. But I have to ask through the chair, do you all not have Adobe

to do the redactions?

So now we're using Vision to do the redaction. Do you wanna actually get into the specifics of the technology?

You don't have to get into I I see you have the software needed to do redactions. Is that

We do now. We do now. Before it was manually lined out.

How is okay.

Yeah. It's it's not just it's not a straightforward line about it's not initially how to redact, it's what to redact that's challenging. I I I'm sure that there's other software that you can plug in keywords. I I want all this redacted. It's not like that. So I have to look for names. Adobe can redact. So it's just it's not as quick as we want it to be. But yes, we do have Adobe.

And to that point, is because this was a this Skelly case in 1975 went all the way to the Supreme Court, I assume that there are standards that are national perhaps with who can do this work. This sounds like work that an entry level paralegal could do with the appropriate training. Is there I I see in in one of the slides the the cross training with other executive staff. Is is that something that can be completely a 100% transferred to other staff in perhaps like HR so that higher ranking law enforcement officials can focus on other more important things. I've seen Tedesco in the field just as recently as a couple weekends ago.

And it really it it these administrative tasks seem so daunting and time consuming. Maybe they're all done by now, maybe you can answer that. But is there a possibility that the that these tasks go strictly to administrative staff versus high ranking police officers?

The we we do have policy in the city charter about Skelly hearing officers and their role. I don't wanna discount, but the hardest part is actually the material gathering and providing it to them. They then take it and review it and then have the hearing and then write a report that is not as elaborate as the investigation. To answer the question directly, there's nothing that says it has to be a police officer or someone under the umbrella of the

Order in the chamber.

Yeah. Under the umbrella of the police department. When we say cross training, we have been working with employee relations because they have been helping out. So, yes, that is possibility. I would like to help on the front end of getting these packets together and just having these assigned within a couple weeks of the discipline hearing. That's where we wanna be.

And to my colleague's question around HR personnel, I do see director Howe is in the, maybe she can also speak to this item.

I I do before she comes up, chair, I do like to add though that the push has been to incorporate our professional staff members as well. So managers have been brought into the fold, and it's not just deputy chiefs, it's captains, lieutenants, and we have reached out to other departments to help us with certain Skellys. I do think it's extremely important though that when you have a Skelly hearing that the Skelly hearing officer should have the greater knowledge of how policies are done in the police department standing operating procedures. There's a historical knowledge piece to this too, and that they will actually bring a different lens to that. I am confident though that in the other cases that we do farm out, that we were able to bring those the directors or deputy directors up to speed.

But, ultimately, for us, I think it it's it's an internal knowledge thing as well. You want the commanders to understand what's going on. You want to have them see what the issues are, whether it's gonna be something that was sustained. They can get to see, basically, the trends that are occurring within the police department, the trends that are occurring out in the street. But we are looking at that, and that's why we've doubled or more than doubled our our SCALI officers up to 18.

And I'm pretty confident as we do our next command ram retreat, it will be closer to 30. So, there there is a little bit more, I believe, that we actually get to absorb as commanders. And not only that, but we get to understand policies and how how our our own policies and standing operating procedures are used, as the officers are engaged in their duties. But I'll definitely turn it over to Mary Thank you.

Good evening, committee members. Mary Howe, director of human resources. I did wanna, through the chair, make one clarification to council member Fife. This is not a US supreme court case. It's a California supreme court case. And so there is no nationwide standard.

Thank you for that. Thank you for clarifying that. That's important. I do have a question but Mary I think we're good. Thank you. This is this is through the chair to the chief or mister Hubbard either of you. Can you help me understand I thought before discipline was rendered that a Skelly hearing had to occur first and it is well, you can answer my question by is that true or not?

Also how the the internal affairs investigation is presented at which point if the investigation is sustained and it's found that the member or professional staff, had violated an MOR or or a criminal statue, after it's sustained, then it's brought to a a discipline committee or it's presented directly to the chief for discipline. And once discipline is then issued, it is served to the member. And then once the member has then been served, then that's when we start process and create the the Skelly packet, and at which point it has to go out to the officer or their representative, and then it's scheduled with the Skelly hearing officer, and they get the packet as well. So it's just part of the officer's due process, which in the past was, I would say it was pretty much pushed even on certain members because they weren't educated to the point that they can actually waive it. And we've had Skelly hearings waived as recently as the last two weeks.

So it's and it is part of the officer's due process, but they still have to they still get served the discipline. It's proposed discipline.

But a Skelly hearing could reverse that potentially?

Potentially it could if so new evidence is presented to the Skelly officer, the Skelly officer generates the report and what wasn't taken into account is then brought back up to the chief and then the chief can either agree with the Skelly officer or continue upholding what was the proposed discipline to begin with.

And so who makes the final decision?

Well, if it's if it's just OPD, it's the chief of police. If it's a concurrent CPRA case and OPD, then the chief and the director of CPRA have to agree. If there's no agreement there, then it goes to the discipline committee.

And so there's four that are pending but that have not received Skelly hearings yet. Correct?

There's four pending termination. So one of the things that we started to do as soon as it took over is deputy chief Smith and I scrubbed each list and the termination, Skelly packets are now prioritized and they are, scheduled out to be heard by a scaring heli officer. Previous to that, the only scurrying officer for termination cases was the deputy chief in charge of our CID. But what we did was I removed the other deputy chiefs and the assistant chief from participating in the internal affairs presentation of the investigation. So now they're not involved in it and now they're opened up.

Because of it then they wouldn't they would be excluded because then they would be in the chain of of command then that would make

Well, them

they would have been part of the discipline process for the initial case when it was presented.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor. I know it's a little complex.

It's very complex. Councilmember Brown. Excellent. Well thank

you so much for you know putting together a very robust report and just for the leadership on this matter right. Whether we're looking at October 2024, I know that there was a report that, know, former chief ministerial came and he was he he may have said a 100 and, you know, 46 skelly, right. We know that in 2025 it was still high and so in this moment to see that in 2026 we're now down to 46, I think that that is you know definitely something to be applauded and it really speaks to the leadership to bring it down. And so I guess one question that I have in this moment is how do we well two well actually three. So there's a supplemental that was added to the packet and I really appreciate you all taking the time to answer some of the questions that I submitted.

And so I am curious one like how do we ensure that this number remains low, right? Because at the end of the day during that time frame it was well over a 100, right? So I am curious around like what you know I understand what got us there based on what the presentation said but how can we ensure that the number stays low and maybe let me know if I'm if I'm wrong but is it do you all routinely report to the police commission this number actually of where we are like with the Skellys? And so then what would be the process to ensure that also us as a body also has have that information routinely.

Yeah. So it was actually way more than a 146. It was a 169, I believe, in in October 2024.

Mhmm.

And I and the reason why I bring that up is because it shows although we increased the number of 18 Skelly hearing officers, we were able to reduce it over 70% in a short period of time. It's the use of technology. It's having more Skelly officers available. And I think how we get ahead of that and continue to gain momentum and maintain that as we go into the future is exactly what captain Hubbard's proposed, and that's training more officers and bringing that number up to 30. I think one of the issues in the past is it was it was marred with retirements.

It was it was set back with lack of people being available because of practices of overutilizing deputy chiefs so someone would have more advice or more perspective in in an IA, setting when it comes to the investigations. I think now that we streamlined it and we're holding our executives accountable to include the chief of police and the IAB deputy chief, to be more hands on and more involved in this process, to meet regularly and go over it individually for each case is gonna continue to make sure that those numbers stay low. We do report these very consistently to the police commission, and they're reported, every time we have, meetings within the police department with stakeholders related to the negotiated settlement agreement, as well as high, well the internal affairs, updates. We do go over which cases are pending SCALI as well as those that are on admin leave.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you so much. And then my other I just a clarifying question. So one of the questions that I had in the supplemental, question number four, what happens to officers while they await scaly hearings? And so the answer here says officers on administrative leave awaiting scaly hearings continue to receive salary and benefits while not performing operational duties. But did I hear from Captain Hubbard that that is actually not consistently the case or can I just get some clarity because as you were talking I think you were making a distinction around when that happens and when it doesn't?

So I'll just answer the first part and I'll turn it over to so he can address what he was speaking to. The administrative leave process, there initially, were a lot of officers on admin leave up to 38 at one point. So there's each case has to be, again, looked at for the actual, circumstances around it. And there are incidents where officers could be brought back to work. Some can be brought back to work and go back to patrol per se as their full duties.

Others, because of the nature of the allegation and it hasn't been proved or disproven, have to be put in a place where potentially no contact with the public and highly supervised, but can still help with, duties within the police department. And then we were able to actually look at that number and bring the mic set down to actually 14 right now. With regards to all Skellies, not all Skell not all officers awaiting Skelley are on admin leave. So I think that was kinda, probably the misconception is there was a belief that if you had a Skelly pending, that you were on automatically amit leave, and that's not the case. And that wasn't the case before.

But if you're on you're on if you're pending, a case that's potentially criminal or could result in termination or there's other concerns with it, we have to protect the community and the city and make sure that they're not put in that place. But they also still have their due process, and that's a California labor, issue.

Can you remind us how many are currently on admin leave?

So listed, there's 16, but it's actually 14. Okay. Two of that 16, they're only listed there just because that's the reporting process, but those two are at critical incident critical incident leave. And from the update I got today is they're scheduled to come back to work full duty here pretty soon. The the minimum is seventy two hours.

Understood. Do have more questions? Council member Brown?

No no more questions. And then I think maybe the last thing I will flag is I know that Director Lawson is also here

Yes. From I was planning to have him present as well but I have a couple of questions before we turn it over to Director Lawson. I'm just wondering just in terms of the current backlog, did you all address the Skelly backlog sequentially like for the 46 that remain, are they the most challenging cases or it's just a matter of sequence and when they were initially the IAD process initially finalized and came to the Skelly step.

So for me one of the things that stood out was the most serious cases. So I sat down with deputy chief Smith and we looked at anyone that was facing termination or if they had multiple cases with multiple suspensions pending. Those were risen to the top. I will turn it over for captain Hubbard because there was an another vetting process for those that had been waiting quite some time, But those typically weren't people that were on admin leave. So members that are staff professional staff members that are on admin leave were given priority. And then within that priority, it was the most serious cases. And then I'll turn it over for the management of the the least serious cases.

Yeah. Pretty accurate. Just, we wanna address the oldest first. There are some like I'll I'll use again the vehicle collision backed into a pole easy. If we can get the easy ones out also we will. Just but we want to address the oldest first and then of course the ones pending termination also. So those are the two avenues we use.

So just to summarize, is it fair to say that the current backlog is a mix of both newer cases and it sounds like maybe some of the more complex cases. Do we have that right?

That is accurate, yes.

Okay, great. Do you have any data too on just how long it takes for the SCALE hearing officers? How much time they spend on these cases?

I was hoping you wouldn't ask that question because my answer is very generic of it depends. And it depends on the complexity of the case. I'll just give you an anecdotal one that I had many years ago is is the officer didn't activate their body worn camera in a timely fashion, and they received suspension a a suspension day out of it. Easy. It was it was like one day for me to review everything, easy, and one day for me to write it. I I would say the most challenging part, I guess, is like scheduling the time for the scaling because they are entitled representation, so balancing that. But some of these cases, if you look at that binder on the table, is is thick as that binder. Just the amount of of evidence that one has to review. So that of course takes a little bit longer.

Yeah. Can can I add to that council sorry chair. Sorry chair.

But but rain so we can get a sense, you know.

Yes. Yeah. We yeah. We'll we'll work on that. But I do wanna say in the past, there the the timelines were very skewed. So one of the things now is we're holding the commanders to the standard and the standard of what's in what's expected of them. So a Skelly officer has ten business days after notification to schedule the hearing, with the member or the representative. And then after those ten days, they have they'll have ten days to get to the hearing date. Once the hearing date occurs, the Skelly officer has fourteen calendar days to, submit that report to the chief of police. That, I don't believe, was actually occurring, up until we started enforcing it.

And if they can't make that fourteen day period due to the complexity of it, and some of these Skelly cases do have multiple subjects where it may take, additional analysis and a lot more writing, then they actually personally have to ask the extension from me directly. And that justification has to be provided and then that way I know personally that there's a delay in that SCALE hearing. And then they'll have to come present that SCALE hearing to me.

Okay. And what are the cases by which CIPRA gets involved? Is it a particular subset or all of them?

So if it's a a co case, like if if it's a CIPRA and a OPD case, they're they're involved in it. They'll actually once the Skelly is done, it'll come to the chief of police. If the Skelly officer, is recommended anything other than what was proposed, I either have to agree with it or disagree with it. If I if I agree with the Skelly hearing officer and it's different than what was initially proposed, then it has to go to the director for agreement. If the director and the police chief do not agree, then it goes to the police commission.

Okay. Which ones become the ones that become a co CPR case?

Those are cases that are investigated both by CPR and the Oakland Police Department.

Yes. I know. I I'm just trying to figure out, like, what is the underlying criteria by which that's determined? This is now a case that needs to be investigated by both.

Let me see if I can do this from memory. In custody deaths, use of force, harassment, discrimination

Ah, okay.

Truthfulness. Those four. It's in the city charter though. So that's that's what we use.

Okay. Gotcha. That's helpful. Sorry.

I was misunderstanding.

Yes. I know. I know. I I just have a couple of questions. Alright. I've been patient so bear with me. Okay. So I also am wondering just, you know I've it sounds like 18 we have 18 hearing officers that's fantastic. I do find the recommendation to hire to train executive level city staff outside of OPD to be the recommendation the process recommendation. Why executive level?

So for in my perspective of it, and I do believe we will close to 30 hearing officers here pretty shortly once we complete the command retreat, but there's there could be incidents where it should go outside the police department, say, if an a high ranking officer may be involved. I I you know, it there could be an incident where it might be it might need to go outside due to conflict or the need for someone to be recused.

Yeah. But why why executive level instead of line levels?

Oh executive level for the police department?

Or executive level outside of the police department.

Oh no I'm sorry I was missing something. Why

that? Just because you know our executives have a lot going on. Yeah.

So if I if I may chair, our HR director and ER actually have a training coming up and I don't know it through the chair if you would like Mary Howe to come. There are criteria for others who are not executive level meaning directors to actually be able to be trained as hearing officers. I do not recall the criteria specifically but I do understand your question if you want the criteria specifically Mary Howe is here and available to answer that question as well as the questions regarding best practices to your point about who is eligible.

Good evening, Mary Howe again. I don't think it's enshrined anywhere but I think it's sometimes at the executive level there is an organizational understanding and application of this in the seriousness of whatever is being examined. And so and we're not suggesting that employees at different levels don't have that understanding but I think that most employees do put their nose to the grindstone and know basically their swim lane very well whereas executives probably have a broader view about implications for example. So it's more of a scope of understanding.

Okay, that's fair enough. I certainly wouldn't want to be a scaly hearing officer myself, I'll say that. And then one final question for me is just it does look like there's a number of law firms that specialize in law enforcement SCALI hearings as outside counsel. I'm wondering what the police department thinks about that as a as a potential way to get through the backlog. Hi.

While I am not the police officer, I think that a police department I think to to use a law firm where their billable hourly rate is anywhere from $3.50 on up to be a Skelly officer, I'm not exactly sure what what they would add to the process. And so then we would also have to contract with them which also takes an extraordinary long period of time to do an RFP, etcetera. But I also don't know I mean other than having an additional resource available, I'm not exactly sure what the magic sauce is of having an outside law firm do that for us to be quite candid.

Yeah. I think the argument being that right now it takes up the time of you know officers that could be doing police work rather than to be doing, you know, a a Skelly hearing. But I hear you on the procurement side of things because we're seeing that actively all the time. So okay. Did council member Houston still want to ask his question?

Thank

you. Thank you, I'm sorry. I know you were excited. You had a bunch of questions. They were good too. Some of mine's are answered. So what I like to say is that how to remain low? Keep doing what you're doing. And I have a question because I know the numbers. You said 169 and we got rid of 123, 46 are left and then 22 are case waiting. Right? That's correct. That's some good numbers. Right? So I have a question. The person that was doing it prior to Tadesco when all the technology piece walked in, were they sworn or unsworn officer that was doing that?

So captain Tedesco captain Tedesco at the time took over for a previous captain.

Yes. And it was a previous captain who was a sworn officer?

That was in charge of internal affairs, but the Skelly process at that time was one professional staff member that was responsible for creating the packets and issuing them out and scheduling the hearings.

Okay. So it was a staff member that was doing it. Yes. Somebody that's sworn this knows the what you guys know. So that's what there's a there it is right there. I mean, I've read it and I heard what you said. I heard it between you know, you say you read between the lines. I heard it. So let's keep it that way. We need a sworn officer, somebody that understands the process and the terms and everything and knows how to move it. You already see it right here. Numbers went from one sixty nine to 46. That's a 123 cases. And what is it? 2024 to thousand two twenty six, 22 cases waiting. Keep doing what you're doing. You guys doing a great job.

Thank you. Council member. Bye.

Before we turn it over to Antonio Lawson, just one quick clarifying question. So we've established it's not a one to one ratio for case per officer, right? It could be multiple cases on a singular officer. So we're not looking at 46 officers awaiting a decision.

That's correct, sure.

Okay, thank you. Before we move it, let's hear from Antonio Lawson who also has a presentation.

Good evening. I'm Tony Lawson. I'm the director of CPRA, and thank you for the opportunity to speak here today, I thank you for adding me on as now no no longer interim but now permanent executive director.

And before you get started Tony, I think some of your presentation is redundant to what the OPD has presented so I would love if you could just jump it to jump to your recommendations instead of walking through the entire thing.

That's what

I was gonna add to that. Thank you. I don't need to PowerPoint presentation because it is redundant in terms of what a Skelly process is. So a couple things I wanna clarify upfront. OPD has said said that there's now 46 pending Skelly cases and I have a very different number.

I have, I believe, 80 approximately 80 or 78. And my number comes from last Friday, the most recent. Every Friday, there's an agenda put out by OPD for the following Wednesday's IAB presentation and they identify in that agenda the pending or outstanding Skelly cases. And so I have I have from that number, I believe let's see. 87 cases, Skelly cases awaiting hearing.

And I didn't understand why there's a difference between the numbers we have, but I think it could be because of the batching now. And maybe OPD can answer that. I think as I understand it now, they are now combining cases, officers who have the same incident. So when we're looking at the numbers of 87, presumably that's the total number of officers in that scale of cases. And I don't know if OPD maybe they can correct me on that, but I'm trying to understand the difference in the numbers that I'm hearing here from the numbers that are coming out in the weekly reports.

Is someone from OPD able to speak to that?

I'm sorry I can't speak to it. We have a dashboard that we use by that tracks everything. We have a very good working relation. We meet weekly and I just like to add this to agenda just when we meet meet weekly to just make sure our numbers are correct. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. That sound it sounds like maybe just making sure that systems are talking to each other is important. Director Lawson, if can you continue with your presentation?

Yes. Thank you. So then just to clarify, so this is the agenda that we receive on Fridays and it lists each case, each individual, and each pending Skelly. And that agenda as of last Friday had eighties had, I believe, 87 cases awaiting Skelly. As you know, we made a proposal that CIPRA step in and take over the management of the SCALI hearings with outside SCALI officers.

And there are several reasons for that recommendation. First, I want to mention that we recently hired a project manager to take on that responsibility and part of our budget includes $200,000 directly devoted to reducing the SCALI backlog. So we have funding available to get outside representatives to take on the SCALI issue. And and there are a number of reasons well, three specific reasons why I think we should look outside for at least to reduce the backlog. The first one is diversion of resources.

This is a lot of resources that LPD is now dedicating and will have to continually dedicate to to reducing this backlog, whether it's 46 or 87, how many cases that they are. Serving as a SCALI officer is time consuming. We have that we we have that now dedicated to our high ranking officers. At a time when we are short staffed from the department and that we have the NSA requirements that we need to fulfill and trying to get out of that, I think it's important that we can devote most of our resources at OPD to policing issues and and then use the outside, whether administrative law judges or outside experienced attorneys who can then serve as scaly officers. So that diversion of resources I think is important if we and we have the funding now to to use outside resources so that our police department can be devoted to policing.

Second reason I I strongly suggest that we manage this with outside at least at least for short term is for impartiality. The SCALE process is a due process requirement, meaning the SCALE officer's job is to ensure that the proposed discipline is reasonable given the given the facts, given the disciplinary matrix. In this case, we have a matrix. And that is not the duty or responsibility of the scaly officer to impart or to inject their own opinion or their own ruling. They're they're only there to ensure that this ruling follows the due process and that the chief in making this determination was within their authority.

And the best way to do that is have someone who's outside of the department, who are independent from the departments, and I can tell you why we have the problem with this and this is why the third reason reason is long term cost. Right now well, let me explain back up and explain how Skelly works for CIPRA. As noted, there are there are certain cases that CIPRA and IAB jointly investigate and present to the chief. And those typically are cases involving in custody death, use of force, discrimination, or a crowd Fourth Amendment issues. In those cases, IAB does an investigation, SIPA does an investigation, and we present our findings to the chief and our recommendation.

If we all come to an agreement that there's sustained findings and it's and and agreement on what the discipline is, then that discipline is then imposed or at least proposed on that particular officer. That officer then has a right to a SCALE hearing. The SCALE officer's obligation as as outlined, you know, previously with OPD and and with myself is to ensure that due process has been served. The problem we've is that in all of the Skelly reports that I received back in my tenure, I think all but one has sought to reverse what the what the chief had recommended. So the scaly officers are coming back and saying, this is what I think was the best decision in this situation.

So let me give you an example how this plays out.

And director Lawson, if we could be brief just Sure. I'm doing a time check and we have we are at

07:33. Yes. Quickly here.

Thank you.

We'll have a scaly case that was with say chief Allison. Right? Former chief Allison. Well, he decided on the this may be a termination. The Scalia officer now disagrees. So you would have IEB, the chief, and CPR agreeing to terminate this individual. It goes to a Scalia officer internal with an OPD, eye raking, and they disagree. And they say, no. This is our recommendation, not termination. Now it comes back to the current chief who's not no you know, Alice is no good.

It's gonna come back. In this case, it was Mitchell. And and and it come back to chief Mitchell, which and I. Either we have to agree with that SCALI officer or we have to separately come to an agreement ourselves. So in some cases, there would be chief Mitchell would would want to agree with the SCALI officer. And I uniformly did not agree because I said, I don't I think the the the decision by the underlying chief was appropriate. There's no basis to reverse the chief. So we'd have disagreement. If we couldn't agree, then it would go to the OPC, the the commission. Inevitably, we came to an agreement.

But the long term problem you have is this. If that goes to arbitration you have a case where someone was recommended for termination by by by the chief, a Skelly officer then saying, no. He shouldn't be terminated to the chief going back and saying, no. They should be terminated. So I got two chiefs involved, an arbit Skelly officer within the department who's disagreeing.

That goes arbitration. That's the thirty year plaintiff's attorney in employment. I can tell you that's a hard case for the city to win because not only are you having disagreements within the city itself, you have it within the department. Arbitrary gets this package where two chiefs are saying terminate. The Scalia officer who's also a high ranking officer within the department is saying, no, he shouldn't be terminated. And in the meantime, that individual has been off and unpaid for a number of years. I I think if I see correct. I've seen cases where the pending arbitrations go back to 2017. If they prevail at arbitration and the scaly officer says, well, I I don't know what to do. I'm not gonna terminate.

I agree to maybe a suspension of thirty days. That individual now has to come back and correct me if I'm wrong, you got the city's gonna have to pay him back pay, including including overtime that they would have earned during that entire period and bring them back to a chief who sought to terminate them. And that's why I said this needs to be handled outside by people who are impartial so that even if they disagree with the chief, the message from within the the city is uniform. So that's why I'm my proposal was that.

Yes. Helpful. That's that's very helpful. I know that we also have some public commenters that have been waiting for a very long time. So I'm going to turn this over to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number six, Pamela Drake, Rajni Mandal, Tuan Yano, and Millie Cleveland.

I'm somewhat disappointed that you wanted to rush through the SIPRA presentation chair. I wanna support the recommendations that are being made by the director of SIPRA. I think the issue of impartiality is key. He already described a situation where a Skelly officer finds themselves in disagreement with the chief who is their boss. So let's be clear, it creates a conflict internal to the department.

I think the best measure is to move Skelly hearing officers outside of the department which occurs with all the other general employees in SEIU, IFPT, IBW. A Skelly is not convened by someone within the same department. I also wanna raise based on OPD's own reports, 19 of the sworn personnel on admin leave of the nineteen, nine have been off for one to two years. The annual cost cost us $22,000,406 and $2,000,406,100,000 dollars. That's almost $2,500,000 to pay for people who are staying at home watching Netflix.

So let's be clear. If you really wanna get rid of the backlog, you will remove this responsibility from the police department. And I also wanna say when when officers are out on admin leave, who's replacing them? Other officers on overtime. So you're accruing even more overtime, so you're being hit.

Rajni Mandal, district four. I wanna focus on structure. Skelly is a constitutionally acquired safeguard that ensures disciplined decisions are reviewed by neutral uninvolved decision maker before they are finalized. That multilayer review is intentional redundancy, not dysfunction. The staff report shows the backlog has decreased substantially over the past year as we discussed indicating that recent reforms are working.

They did not require contracting with somebody outside and adding extra cost. So before adding another layer of administrative expense, seems reasonable to allow the current reforms to continue. Disagreement between investigators, reviewers, and final decision makers is inherent in a due process system. It does not by itself signal structural failure. CPR does play an important investigative role and often makes discipline recommendations.

If the investigative body also administers the Skelly stage even if hearings are contracted out, that reduces the separation between investigation and independent review. Structural independence is what gives the discipline system credibility. That's it.

Skelly hearings. Oakland is dysfunctional because we don't do our homework and we are ill informed. What worked with the Skelly hearing clearing from January dropping significantly, clearing 73% to 40 something cases is because we did something right. What was that? That was we moved away from civilian, untrained administrative staff to hiring and putting in sworn officers to do their job, who understood the law, have experience, and are trained.

So using technology and officers doing the work meant we went from a 70 year old, slow moving process to a toddler who is running around and fishing and finishing the job. So why would we replace a process that's working with a harebrained, ill informed idea to get untrained civilian staff with with the problem we had before to begin with, to using the resources and the competency that we have, that we have demonstrated success. This is a power graph by ZEPRA. Same as when we I shot him in federal court. The mayor was there, the city attorney was there, and the police commission president, chair, Ricardo Ocasio wanted the same federal oversight as the federal monitor.

The mayor ignored him, the judge ignored him, the city attorney ignored him. I suggest you ignore this harebrained idea and stick with what works. Do your homework. Oakland needs competency. We don't need Sheng Chao out there hiring 20 something dedicated full time, not part time, full time officers looking to police misconduct when we only have 490 officers.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is up. At this time, chair, all names have been called.

Okay. Great. Council member Brown.

Alright. Well I know we wanna we're conscious of the time and I also wanna remain focused on like the I guess the concerns and the issues that I have in this moment. I think the first thing I want to call attention to is the discrepancy in the number and seeing if we can get some clarity around that. Hearing 87 versus 46 Is that like are is that because maybe an officer the same officer has a couple different investigations. Is that why there's this discrepancy in the number? Through the chair to the chief. Go ahead, chair chief.

Thanks, council thank you, council member. So the actual numbers are it's a backlog of 46 Skelly cases. And what we discussed previously is not every Skelly case is one for one. So out of the 46 Skelly cases, there's actually a total of 64 officers. That's the actual numbers.

So 46 actual Skelly cases pending with 64 officers being the subject of those Skelly cases. Of those 64 or well, if you we break it down by the Skelly cases. So of the 64 Skelly cases, that's including the total number 64 officers, 22 of those cases are already assigned. Oh, no. Sorry. Twenty twenty four of those cases already assigned, 22 are awaiting assignment.

Okay. And then I guess my next question here, Of the criteria there's four kind of there's a scope for CIPRA of four you know things that they're able to get involved in. How many of these cases are CIPRA involved in?

Like all of them?

No. Okay. No.

And I think I continue to be focused on the data. Like I am very interested in And I think maybe I had a question in my supplemental. So like from 2023 to present of all of the SCALI cases how many of them actually fit the criteria to which CIPRA can participate?

The actual percentage I don't know.

Right. And so I think that, you know, maybe we can have an informational in the future where we get more of the information because I think in order for I know for myself in order for me to make a really informed decision I like to see the numbers, right?

Maybe director Lawson can provide that since it's CIPRA. Yep. Okay gotcha.

Yeah 100%. But then also OPD has a role to play as far as like hey what are the other cases that are being considered that are outside of that scope, right?

We consider all of them.

Right. Yeah. But just kinda outlining that though in a report. I feel like that's the missing issue. And then I guess maybe lastly I'll just call attention to what was outlined and if you want to shed some light on it. Right? Professional staff was operating and working on this process but then there was this transition to ensuring that you know, officers were working on gathering the information and doing the work and we saw things rapidly progress. Is that an accurate analysis?

It is but I do have to give credit to the other city departments as well. The city attorney's office did come and provide extensive training so we could get more Skelly hearing officers as well as, city HR helped out, and we've heard from Mary Howe earlier today. So it was a combination of both adding Skelly hearing officers and modernizing the process and using technology as well as staffing, I e b, where they could properly process them and send them out and track them. So whereas before you had one professional staff member to process everything, send it out, coordinate it, set up the the scheduling, now you have a professional staff member, a sergeant, a lieutenant, and then the deputy chief with review by deputy chief and myself to include the use of technology for tracking as well as scheduling reminders.

Mhmm. And I think maybe lastly, Josiah, do you wanna just say this out loud that you know keeping in mind that this issue that we're tackling it has to do with you know incidences that the officers are involved in, right? That we shouldn't take lightly, right? That's that's what we are kind of having a conversation around like this process. And so I don't think we've talked enough about I guess the role of impartial like being impartial in kind of determining these cases and and and, you know, just making sure that that is also something that's a part of the conversation and how all of the entities basically play play a role.

So Yeah. Absolutely. That was one of the reasons why I had to free up the deputy chief. So you would have an impartial view or more access to police officers, not just from the executive staff, but also middle management and at the upper management level as far as the lieutenants. It's important to note that the Skelly off Skelly hearing officer does not make a determination. They only make a recommendation that then goes to the chief of police. It's up to the chief of police to make the decision to overturn what they initially issued based on new information that was provided, not on the opinion of a Skelly officer.

I see. But we don't have any data that shows us how often those recommendation is overturned?

So we would it depend on what time period that you would want, but we could I'd imagine look at that. But it's going to, I would imagine, fluctuate whenever you have different chiefs over a different time period. I can tell you it's not commonplace. It's very rare, in my experience dealing with previous chiefs that they'll overturn their initial discipline, decision unless there's new evidence involved that wasn't considered before which is not commonplace and hasn't been that I know of. Thank

you.

Thank you.

You. Council member Houston.

So I had moved to accept the information report but we got a discrepancy in some numbers and I'm a numbers person too big time. So let's just say it's 87. They cut it in half. That's incredible. Right? So my thing is that and I'm just giving the benefit of doubt. I do respect CPR, but they cut it in half. Let's keep it in the department where it's at. They're doing a great job. Tedesco picked it up. I know the work that he can do and I trust Beard. So I'm just saying this like this. Well, I wasn't talking to you. So let's move it. I moved to accept this information report. I wanna keep that in the department of the police department. I want the police to to continue to do the great job that they do and just say it was cut in half. That's incredible.

Thank you, council member Houston. I order in the chamber, please. I I think I actually wanna direct this question to ACA Phillips since you sit across both departments. What is the reason behind the discrepancy?

Through the chair I know that the department started working through their report a few weeks back so I can think of potentially that's where it is but I would have to defer to the practitioners of the work as they did do the supplemental and I do know that Skelly cases can have multiple officers to the chief's point to to share with that that information but at this time I cannot tell you specifically where that 20 CPRA versus OPD lies but I do know that these numbers were pulled a couple weeks ago as we started to prepare for this report.

Okay. Well I do want an update on this. I do think that we should have an update on this I'm thinking in six months time frame to have an update on the progress of getting through the additional backlog. So ACA Phillips will plan on scheduling that. Yes, council member Fife.

Did we have additional speakers? Public speakers No. Think we've got

I assume not. So I think we're good.

I just I think this was a really good discussion. I don't think it was timed well. I feel like mister Lawson, director Lawson was not afforded the equal time to present. And I'm a little concerned and one of my colleagues did bring up to me how I mentioned to him that being a chair involves managing an agenda and so we should spend approximately in committee which we're scheduled slated to be here for two hours, maybe twenty to thirty minutes per agenda item and we still have to hear from the fire department. So I cannot be I have a a 07:00 meeting in the morning and I cannot stay here for another couple hours.

So I wanna just ensure that when we are having these deeply important conversations that all of the presenters are afforded the amount of time that they need to get their points across so that we can make informed decisions because now I'm also concerned about the discrepancy that I'm hearing and I want clarity on that. But we just need to make sure that we're using our our our time wisely so that we can do our best work. That said, I think there was a motion. This is an informational report and I do think six months is is too much time in between what we heard today and the fact that we didn't hear a complete presentation. I would like it to come sooner than six months from now.

Okay. We can make that three months from now if this is doable. We'll we'll schedule that with the departments the respective departments. And I do think that we we have more items to go through. So, yes, I'd like to have this I'd like to call a vote on this.

Well I'm gonna have to be excused at 08:00. Okay. Through the chair to council member Brown is two years a good enough time frame to look and see yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you chair.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by council member Brown to receive oh, sorry. To receive and file this informational report in committee on roll council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you.

Item number six passes with four ayes to receive and file this information report in committee. Going back to item number three. Rereading in that title, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a cooperative purchasing agreement with Stryker Sales LLC for the purchase lease. Maintenance and repair of advanced life support equipment in an amount not to exceed $681,877.80 for five years for a total amount not to exceed $3,409,389 and waiving the advertising and competitive bidding process requirements and local business enterprise and small local business enterprise program requirements for the proposed cooperative purchasing agreement with Stryker Sales LLC and we have one speaker on the side up.

Good evening, deputy chief Devon Simmons, Hawking Fire Department. Thank you, madam chair, as well as public safety committee officials. Yes. So fire department staff recommends that the city adopt a resolution authorizing city administrator to enter a cooperative purchasing agreement with Stryker sales for the purchase, lease, and maintenance of medical equipment. 1997, the residents here in the city of Oakland passed Measure n, Paramedic Services Act, that provided seed money to purchase both basic life support as well as advanced life support equipment to provide service

at

a paramedic level to our residents and business community and visitors here in the city of Oakland. Since that time, the fire department has purchased medical equipment including Lucas monitor Lucas devices as well as EKG or cardiac monitoring devices, and now we are in need of upgrades. Those Lucas devices are devices that are mechanical air actuated that provide a that provide a high level of comprehensive and reliable CPR to patients who are in cardiac arrest. Whereas, the EKG or cardiac monitoring devices are devices used by our paramedics to provide or obtain vitals from patients who are sick and injured, as well as monitor for various medical conditions such as cardiac arrhythmia or myocardial infarction, as well as for treatment modalities that fall within advanced life support parameters. Adopting this resolution is in line with city priority of a holistic community safety community.

And once again, we ask that you adopt this resolution allowing us to enter agreement so that we can upgrade both our basic life support and advanced life support equipment.

Yeah. I do have one question which is just what is the funding source for this?

So this funding source will be from Measure N and this is November.

Okay. Great. So it is not actually coming from general fund dollars?

Most of it will not. There will be a small portion that may come from the general fund but most of it will come from measure n.

Okay. Great.

N. N as in November. Measure n.

Sorry. Order in the chamber. Council member Fife. Yes. Through the chair, can you explain the need for a waiver of the competitive solicitation process?

Yes. So currently we have been doing business with Stryker. They are a provider of the equipment not only to Oakland Fire Department but various fire departments here in Alameda County. And they provide, based on a demo that we did with several different, providers of cardiac monitoring, our paramedics, as well as staffers in our medical services division recommended that we go with this particular company based on the devices that they provide for use.

So it's a recommendation of staff who use the equipment?

That's correct, ma'am.

Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve. I sound like

I will second that. Thank you.

Going to the public speakers that signed up for item number three, miss Isata Olubala. Thank you. We have a motion Oops. We have a motion made by council member five, seconded by chair Wong. To approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on roll, council members Brown.

Aye.

Aye. Houston absent. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you.

Item number three passes with three ayes, one excused. Houston to forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item number four, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into an agreement with ImageTrend LLC to replace the Oakland Fire Department's record management system with National Emergency Response Information System, compliant artificial intelligence powered fire, and EMSRMS software at a cost of $1,006,659 for the term of 01/01/2026 through 12/31/2028 with the option to extend the agreement up to two years and an in an additional cost of $362,584 and without return to city council for a contract for a total contract amount not to exceed $1,369,243 and waiving the competitive multi step solicitation process for all contracts and the local small local business enterprise requirements for the Agreement with ImageTrend LLC and we have one speaker that signed up to speak. We have no speakers to sign up to speak. Okay.

Would you like to present?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Yes. So this particular item right here, going back three years ago, the then United States fire administrator rolled out an initiative to upgrade the record management system for all 30,000 fire departments both in United States and Canada. At the time, we was using a legacy system or RMS and through partnerships with with with several different entities as well as fire departments and fire service affinity groups, we came out with a new reporting system NEARS, National Emergency Reporting Information System. This particular program which is a requirement of all fire departments both in United States and Canada will allow us to have access to real time information as it relates to emergencies that fall under the category of fire, structure vegetation fires, EMS, so that we can make data informed decisions, better data informed decisions primarily from a preventive perspective. Secondly, this request will allow us to be compliant with the new national standards.

And then third, this request will allow us to be in alignment with other fire departments here in Alameda County who are also using ImageTrend as a record management system provider. Going back eight months ago, we formed a committee of fire department personnel, both paramedics and company officers to test three different systems. The recommendation to the support services division was to go with ImageTrend and based on that, a follow-up assessment, department or should say fire administration staff agreed with their recommendation to go with the image trend.

Okay. Great. It's and I'm all for modernizing our various departments. We know that that is a great need. Council member five.

You don't have to redact anything by hand. Never mind. Don't even answer that. I just wanna make a motion to approve staff's recommendation. Thank

you. We have a motion made by council member five, seconded by council member Brown. To approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on roll council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Houston absent. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you. Item number four passes with three ayes, one absent Houston. To forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on consent, moving on to open form, we have one person that signed up. Oh, sorry. Just noting that item number seven regarding the reaffirming the city of Oakland sanctuary city policy has been removed by the February 19 rules and legislation committee agenda and placed on the public safety pending list. No date specific. Now moving on to open forum. Missus Asada Olubala, do you still wish to speak?

I see.

Yeah. Thank you. I

just wanted to thank councilman council member Fife for addressing the lack of time that director Lawson was awarded. I think that he had a significant contribution particularly around the issue of impartiality and why outside counsel might be better than inside, as well as how it has contributed to the delays. There is a narrative in the police department that only police can sup or investigate police, and we have to stop that. So I'm just asking you whenever this comes back to please provide director Lawson ample time to explain the significance of his recommendation. It's not just about expediency and the idea

Thank you for your comments, miss Milley. Your time is up.

Okay. Just to respond, I understand we're also about to lose quorum so in many ways we have I have no choice but to proceed through the agenda. So, but yes, we will I will ensure that in the next time we address this topic, we have director Lawson come before first and then we have OPD. Okay. Okay. And with that, this meeting is adjourned.