Public Safety Committee - Special Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the public safety committee meeting of Tuesday, 04/21/2026. The time is now 06:15PM, and this meeting may come to order. 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 and would like to submit a speaker card, please pull 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 06:15PM, and speaker cards will no longer be accepted after 06:25PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council member Brown? Present. Five excused. Excused for now. Houston? Present. And chair Wong? Present. Present. Thank you. We have three members present, one excused. Five. And chair, before we begin, do you have any announcements at this time?

Just we have a packed agenda. So, committee members, keep your comments and your questions tight otherwise we're gonna be here all night. And then I am gonna change the order a bit of the agenda just to allow some of our colleagues to not be here all night. So we're gonna start with number seven with d v p then we'll go to agenda numbers items number six then eight, three, four, and then five.

Thank you, chair. Just noting that going over the modifications made to the agenda to hear items six sorry, seven, six, eight, three, four, and five after items one and two. Now reading in item one, as today is a special meeting, there are no minutes to be approved. Item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, and we have one speaker that signed up to speak.

Okay. We'll go ahead to public comment. Miss Asada Olawala?

I know later on you're gonna be talking about the NSA and you've got to remember that that primary one of the primary issues is, racial profiling. And one of the issues I see that could potentially be profiling or based on race is when you report to the media the identification of the individual accused arrested. Now sometimes they give the names and sometimes they don't. Why is it that you do that practice and you go always see a picture of a black person with their name if a crime is committed by them. Another thing is citations and warnings based on equity.

What is what is the data? Because you don't realize officers have a lot of choice on how they can handle a situation involving a possible arrest, involving a citation, involving a warning. We don't see that data. Lastly, truancy. I've said this before.

Stop data required by the NSA has truance stops, and we don't have anything that follows up on what's happening when officers stop these young people for truancy. And, of course, the OUSD has nothing in writing on how they deal with truancy. So just a few things about race equity that we need to see the data. And the last thing is doctor Everhart's report, what she's been doing related to the NSA. That's not in the report today, and I never see it ever.

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

Alright. Great. Well, let's go ahead and move. Oh, wait. ACA Phillips, anything to? Not at

this time through the chair, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Brown.

I'll move approval of the pending list.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Fife to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes. So accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. Now moving on to item seven. Adopt a resolution amending a professional service agree a services agreement with the trustees of the university of Pennsylvania.

For the term of 07/01/2025 to 12/31/2028 to add $200,000 for a total amount not to exceed $639,952 to evaluate the city of Oakland cease fire cease fire lifeline strategy and waiving this. The city of Oakland's local and small local business enterprise program requirements and competitive bidding process and awarding a grant agreement to Faith in Action East Bay for the term of 07/01/2026 to July to 06/30/2027 for services related to Oakland's ceasefire lifeline strategy in an amount not to exceed $150,000. And we have one speaker that signed up to speak.

Okay. Great. We'll go presentation. You have up to three minutes.

Thank you. Good evening. Jenny Lynn Shea, deputy chief of grants programs and evaluation for the department of violence prevention. I will wait for my slides. Great.

So we are seeking approval of two contracts that will enhance the city's ceasefire lifeline strategy. The first is an amendment of an existing three and a half year contract with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania to add $200,000 for a qualitative evaluation of the strategy. And the second is a new one year grant agreement with Faith in Action East Bay for a $150,000 also for Ceasefire Lifeline related services. Some context related to the current evaluation contract. So the current amount is 439,952 for a three and a

half year term from 07/01/2025 through 12/31/2028. The existing scope of work is focused on using quantitative data to describe the services that have been delivered and their impact on participant outcomes and shootings and homicides. So looking at number of individuals who have received custom notifications

or attended a call in, then have progressed into life coaching services with the Department of Violence Prevention and looking at outcomes for those participants in terms of criminal justice system involvement, arrests, convictions, victimization, also pro social outcomes like employment and housing, and then ultimately the impact on shootings and homicides to determine the strategy's impact on reducing those forms of violence. And researchers from the University of Pennsylvania were originally selected for this work because they are experts in the evaluation of focused deterrent strategies such as Ceasefire Lifeline. They have evaluated and authored papers on similar focused deterrent strategies across the country. They also specifically have prior experience working in Oakland. They were the researchers who conducted the evaluation of ceasefire in Oakland from 2012 through 2017 finding that 31.5% of the nearly 50% reductions in homicides during that period was due to the strategy directly.

Since then they have conducted multiple problem analyses of gun violence in Oakland and they also now have members of their staff who were formerly with the California Partnership for Safe Communities based in Oakland that conducted the audit of the ceasefire strategy back in 2023 that led to the revamp of the strategy and reimplementation in early twenty twenty four. So they are really uniquely positioned to conduct this work. The enhanced scope of work would allow the researchers to collect qualitative data to supplement the quantitative data already being analyzed through interviews with participants, direct service staff, and members of the ceasefire lifeline partnership team. The qualitative data is very important for understanding why the strategy is having the impacts that it is having. So what components of the life coaching are most important?

What aspects of supervision and data performance review are most critical to the model? What aspects of the partnership are most important? And also how those things can be strengthened over time. Then secondly, we're looking to execute a new grant agreement with Faith in Action East Bay. They are the central faith based partner in the Ceasefire Lifeline strategy.

They were actually instrumental in bringing Ceasefire to Oakland originally back in 2012. It was through their advocacy efforts that the model was adopted by Oakland. Since 2020, the DBP has been able to use CalVIP funds to pay for a full time staff member at Faith in Action East Bay to support the ceasefire lifeline custom notifications and call ins. So this individual personally participates in custom notifications, attends call ins, and also coordinates faith based representation in those activities. The person also distributes stipends to clergy members who participate and gift cards to individuals who receive the messages and our prospective life coaching clients.

Unfortunately, the DBP did not receive funding during the most recent CalVIP award cycle and therefore without this contract using general purpose funds, that position at Faith in Action East Bay would not be able to continue. And that is the end of the presentation. I'm happy to take questions.

Let's move to public comment.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number seven, missus Sato Olubala.

So y'all gonna give, faith in action a $150,000 to do call ins and notification. I know they involved in the ceasefire walks. They help organize that. I can't see that unless they're doing something more than that. And what qualifies them to do anything? When you make a call in, you gotta have some skills to talk to these young people to convince them to come to something. Okay? You can't just put anybody on the line to talk to these young people if that's what's happening. A notification, you're gonna write them a letter, a 150,000. Now here's what the issue is with ceasefire, one of many issues.

In order to validate ceasefire, one thing of data that you have to provide, total number of homicides so far, I think it's this year 16. How many of the 16 are gang related? Because cease fire is a gang related component. All homicides are not gang related. So you say homicides are down and you try to sell the message that whenever it goes down it's because of ceasefire. It goes down if ceasefire if all 16 of those murders are gang related. If they're not, ceasefire is not a part of that. Ceasefire has two components. You have the services, the outreach, the coach talking, and all of that. That's one side of ceasefire.

Then you have the police officers. I think you got 30 something officers who come under ceasefire. What do they do? They go out and target anybody who has not agreed to become a part of the initiative where they can change their lives. You never talk about that. How is that working? How do they perform that task? So you got services. You never go into depth. What are these services? Drug treatment, anger management, housing, relocation. Biggest issue, a lot of the gangs that we have don't even live in Oakland no more. So where does your outreach go?

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

Thank you, miss Sada. Council member Brown.

Okay, thank you so much. So through the chair thank you so much for the presentation always detailed. I know that you stated that the reason why you all are coming one of the reasons why you all are coming before us is because of the decrease in the state funding under CalVIP right so that this funding is no longer being covered. I did have a larger question about I guess just the future. Is this an item that would be able to be covered under like the Measure NN allocation?

So Measure NN allocates 75% to community based organizations to deliver services. It is possible that we could consider that in future funding cycles but for the next three years we've already begun our RFP process to distribute that money.

I see. Okay. Thank you.

Council member Houston.

Through the chair, miss Asada had mentioned something about scopes of work and things like that. On these two contracts one and two, what's the scope let's just start with awarding agreement with face faith in action. What's that scope of work? Because what we need to do is we need all anybody that we get time contracts to, we need data. We need a report back of what they've done, what they're doing so we know exactly where our taxpayers' monies are going. We need to know that because I get inquiries all the time. What are they doing? Why are they getting these contracts? It's a little bit different. City Of Oakland is different than Alameda County.

Alameda County makes you come back with data result based accountability and everything. We just seem like we just give money away. Mhmm. And that has to stop. And that's what we've been doing. So what I'd like to know is that for me to move on any of this, I need to have a report back every six months to find out what data and results they have and what they're doing, anybody. And that's across the board. That's just not here. So that's that's gonna be my request.

Through the chair, when we develop these contracts, we do develop scopes of work that clearly articulate deliverables for each of the contracts. And when they invoice, which is typically quarterly, they submit reports that detail the deliverables that they've completed in order to receive payment.

So through the chair. So are they project managers that oversee this? Because what the standards is is that what they'll do is they'll they'll they'll send their invoices or their scopes of work with their data, daily reports or whatever to that project manager. Then that project manager approves it, then it's uploaded. And that's how they get paid. Is this the same

Yes. Across the board?

Invoices are all approved by internal d v p staff members before they are paid. Good

evening through the chair. I'll add to Jenny Lynch's answer about the project management specifically for the faith in action East Bay contract. So the Faith in Action East Bay will work directly under the ceasefire lifeline strategy. And in the d v p for the ceasefire lifeline strategy, I am the project manager. And so we do weekly performance metric reviews with staff.

We utilize our apricot database to produce weekly performance management reports. And then for the ceasefire lifeline strategy specifically, the mayor's office holds quarterly performance reviews for both the DVP and OPD to make sure that we're all staying on track with our performance indicators to include how many call ins have we had, how many attendees were at the call ins, how many of those attendees from the call ins and custom notifications accepted services, how many have been enrolled in services for more than ninety days, how many of

those

individuals enrolled services completed their life maps and their life goals within forty five days of enrollment? What was the fidelity to the life coaching model including of the right now we have about a 110 of Oakland's highest risk individuals on life coaching inside the DVP. So what we're looking at weekly internally and then quarterly with the mayor is fidelity to an intensive case management model, meaning how many of those individuals had daily contact with their life coaches and how many of them saw their life coaches in person at least twice per week.

Thank you. And to the chair, so how do we see that as council members? How do we see those reports?

You can just make a request, sir, and we'll bring it all to you.

Okay. Alright. Thank you.

Okay.

So one thing, doctor Joshi, that you know that I've been thinking about is around just the and the public commenter did allude to this, like the gun violence and the gang violence that is coming into Oakland. And I know we cannot be responsible for the entire region and yet our city bears the brunt. So do you all have any thoughts or can part of this evaluation look at what are the, what are some steps that we can do to collaborate with these other cities that are coming into Oakland and we're we're dealing with the gunfire that they bring here.

Yes, chair. I think that's a two if I'm hearing you correctly, that's a two part question. The first part is about the evaluation and whether or not the evaluation will give us any additional information about outside gangs and groups that are coming into the city. And I think it will because it will do a deep dive into the demographics of the folks that are being served, of the folks that are being called in, of the folks that are being receiving custom notifications. Most oftentimes the folks that are receiving custom notifications and we do custom notifications several times per week both in Santa Rita Jail and in community, we are doing those custom notifications nine out of 10 times in the city of Oakland.

So that means that the person is either has an Oakland address or we found that they are laying their head at someone's house, maybe their family member's house in the city of Oakland often. So I think that while there is quite a bit of of group and gang violence that comes into Oakland and ends up being chance contact violence because we have a lot to do here that attracts people and that they have chance contacts while they're out partying, There's still a large number of people involved in group violence in this city that still live here. They may not have an address that is listed in an official database that is the city of Oakland. They may not even be telling their probation or parole officer that they live in Oakland, but they they spend the vast majority of their time here and that is how we're able to get the custom notifications mainly happening in the city of Oakland. So I think that the the evaluation will tell us more information about demographics.

What I'm telling you obviously is anecdotal from our day to day work. But one of the points of the evaluation is for us to actually utilize independent outside researchers to either confirm or combat what we believe that we're seeing in the day to day at a much more strategic and structural level.

Okay great, thank you. And then just to add on to my colleague's point, I know that the OPSCOT committee is coming before counsel within a few months with their Measure NN spending plan. I just am wondering if that position can be funded through that or just to hear the finer point in terms of why that couldn't be included since I know that we're all looking at ways not just d v p but for all of the departments find ways to ensure that when we don't have to spend down general fund we avoid doing that.

Absolutely. I think that question of sustainability is a really important question. We will definitely build it into Measure NN moving forward. But to Jenny Lynch's point, we were very confident that we were going to get CalVIP dollars again this year and you all may have heard me say that just based on performance, the site visit that we had with our CalVIP program officer and the historic lows that we've experienced in Oakland in terms of our progress combating violent crime. So the fact that we did not get CalVIP, the fact that CalVIP was actually underfunded, they had much less money to give out than they did in the past and they had record breaking increase in requests for CalVIP dollars mostly due to the federal cuts that people were experiencing across the state.

So I say that to say that competition was fierce, we still should have won, but they were only able to fund 10% of applications. And so one of the areas in which Oakland was dinged on the CalVIP application was this area called need. So clearly we have a great need if you are still looking at our crime data, although we've had 50% reductions, we are still coming in as extremely need based when you look at us compared to the rest of cities. What we are interpreting that need category as since we were dinged heavily may be because they think that we have a larger budget than other people. So with that in mind, that was a lesson learned that we were overly confident in our ability to get CalVIP and overly dependent on one funding stream to fund this critical part of the ceasefire lifeline effort.

So to your point moving forward we need to think more strategically, not be so dependent on grant dollars and really look at a combination of ten ten funding and measure NN to fund the baseline staffing that we need in order to sustain the strategy.

Great, thank you. I know we have a packed agenda so I do wanna wrap things up. You're gonna make a motion? Okay. Thank you.

Yes. I will make the motion but I just had one follow-up question. How much was the fiscal impact of not receiving the CalVIP dollars?

I mean, it's we were anticipating about $5,000,000 from Calvick over three years. So significant very significant.

5,000,000 over three years. Okay. Thank you. And so I'll make a motion to, move this item, to the full city council. And council member Fife. Yep. Alright.

Let's go ahead and move to a vote unless council member Houston, this is critical.

Just want a biannual, report back. I wanted to know what's the threshold if a organization is not meeting their requirements? Because I'm big on on this data. I'm telling I'm big on these scopes. I'm big on not just giving up this money. I want I want result based accountability, period. So what's the threshold?

As we do, council member Houston, the department of violence prevention in this iteration is extremely committed to results based accountability. And since I've been here in the past couple of years, unfortunately, we've had to cut several community based contracts for non performance.

Right.

So we we have done that and we will do that. It's not our first choice. We prefer to be a coaching organization that supports the ecosystem's health and sustainability. But once we've coached and we've supported and we've provided guidance and feedback, If that community based organization is unable to meet their deliverables, we go to the city attorney's office to make sure that we're on solid standing as far as, the language in the contract. And we give them the the requisite notice and we will cut the contract.

Thank you.

Okay. And I'll work with the department because I do wanna see the evaluations.

I do too. So Definitely.

Great. Alright. Let's go to that vote. Okay.

So if I may, chair, I'll work with the department so that we can go ahead and scope out what that looks like to bring a transparent report, biannually. So I think the request was, through the chair from council member Houston. Every six months, I believe, the the DVP leadership, we should be able to to bring that forward.

Okay. Thank you, ACA Phillips. Alright. Let's let's move forward with the vote.

Okay. Just sorry. For clarification through the chair to the maker of the motion, it's to approve the recommendations of staff with the request to bring forth a biannual report, or will you guys work separately on bringing forth a biannual report? We'll make it a part of the motion. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So that was a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Fife to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 05/05/2026 city council agenda with the request to bring forth, an informational report biannually. On roll, council member council members Brown. Aye. Five. Aye. Houston? Aye.

And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item number seven passes with four ayes to forward this item to the 05/05/2026 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item six, receive an informational report from OPD on OPD's progress towards compliance with a negotiated settlement agreement in the case of Delphine Allen et al versus the City of Oakland et al. And we have two speakers on this item.

Alright. Lisa you have up to ten minutes.

Thank you. Thank you, chair, and good evening council members and members of the public. My name is Lisa Osmis. I am the deputy chief. I oversee the Bureau of Risk Management, and one of my primary roles is NSA compliance.

So I'm gonna try and just summarize as best I can a lot of work that's being done. But the last time we presented to public safety was in September 2025, And at that time, we still had three tasks being monitored by the current independent monitoring team, task two, task five, and task 45. Since that last update count the to the council, the monitors released two reports. So the eleventh sustainability report is in your packet as part of your, addendums for you to read and review, but they've also since then and after unfortunately posting for this meeting, the 12 sustainability report was also released. I am happy to report that we are now currently in compliance with task five, which now leaves the rest as task two to come into compliance with and task 45 which is impartial compliance.

So task two. Task two is requires class one and class two IA cases to be investigated with one in within one hundred and eighty days, and the standard is at 85% of the time. In the eleventh sustainability report, the monitor assessed compliance with the cases closed in quarter one at 2025 at sixty five percent. In the twelfth report, the monitor found seventy seven percent compliance in class one cases, and in quarter two, we were at eighty percent. I'm sorry.

Seventy seven percent for quarter two and eighty percent for quarter three. We are still waiting on the report out for twenty twenty five quarter four, which I believe we will be in compliance with both class one and class two cases. But we have to wait and see how they evaluated that overall finding. Some of the concerns that we had in the beginning of 2025, IA faced some significant staffing shortages as well as CPRA, OIG with chief Beer. He's been really trying to do different things to try and help boost some of the staffing levels, making acting sergeants, having them in there to assist.

Currently, at the time, there were eight, I believe, to 10 investigators, what we call in the back of IA that handle the more serious cases, the class ones, usually truthfulness, obedience to laws, things like that. And they were carrying anywhere on the average of 30 cases which is double what a heavy caseload would be for an IA investigator. Right? So bringing those cases down has really assisted and helped with the numbers. Department also, with chief Beer taking over as interim chief, he moved and promoted deputy chief Aaron Smith to IA, had him in charge of the Internal Affairs Bureau, and they have been working closely with CPRA having regular meetings, weekly meetings on top of just not just the IA meetings, but just discussing actual cases and where they are at with each other in concurrence, not in concurrence.

I get regular updates from director Lawson now about cases that he is deemed to be in concurrence or has found a finding with. So we get regular updates that way. So I think that's really improved with the communication. And the CPRA is also as they slowly increase their staffing levels, is increase their one eighty timeline completions as well. So I think all of that together has really helped with task two.

I am very hopeful for quarter four twenty twenty five to be in compliance and the same for quarter one in 2026. Our initial numbers look very good. Again, we just have to wait for their final word. Related to task five. In the eleventh report, the monitor continued to find that task five was out of compliance.

Although assessing the 12 cases that they reviewed, they were all found satisfactory. There was no missing information. None of the investigations were deemed to be unsatisfactory or missing information. I think that's a huge statement. I am happy to say now with the twelfth sustainability report, they have actually deemed us to be in compliance, with all of the tasks and subtasks.

And and that's just, again, a collaborative effort within the department, within CPRA, using OIG. All of these things have have really been kind of brought us all together. Some other things, we've also done some audits and after action reports and just lesson learned from high value cases or high profile cases. So taking those lessons learned and applying them has been significant, which has been, I think, again, using the city, the OCAs within the department, the CPRA communicating, also with, the police commission just coming and helping during, discipline committees approaches, I think this brings us, again, one city all talking together brought task five into compliance with all those efforts. Right?

And I think that's probably one of the biggest things that's really helped us with the NSA so far. Task 45, the elusive task 45. This is the discipline and equity that is it's I'm not gonna say it's difficult. Again, because we're working together, I am very, very hopeful that this in the next or in the thirteenth sustainability report, I believe, is going to be in compliance, just based on all the work. In the eleventh report, the monitor shared that there were issues found, requirements, other tasks.

The biggest issue was the 2024 outcome in the IAB study where we found that a a very significant data showed that white officers were less likely to get a sustained case than black or Hispanic officers. Going through that data using Stanford, they're always alongside of us. We tried to find where that disparity was. What was that disparity? Was it internal affairs?

Was it internally generated, externally generated? Did we have bias within the investigations? What was that bias? We could not find that disparity specifically. So at that point, as the deputy chief, we we keep trying to find what the disparity is, but at some point, you actually have to write the report and everything you've done.

So I asked my police services manager, stop. Just write what we have. We will present it, and then we're gonna make some recommendations for the report. When we did that, we decided to do a qualitative study, and I'll go into that in just a minute and where that is at. With the 2024 report and we went to CMC, which is a case management, with the judge, he appreciated the efforts that OPD had but still wanted to see where the 2025 IA outcome and discipline report and numbers were.

I am happy to report that the court ordered that we have that in by the May 1. That was sent to the court on the April 13. It's a very preliminary report. There's no recommendation. It is only the numbers for the judge to look and review for the IMT, and it is available.

Obviously, it's a public document once it's sent to the courts. With that, what we've learned is that 2024 does appear to be that anomaly where we don't have that we don't have any significant disparities in 2025. So I'm very happy to say that. Based on the preliminary numbers, overall, the five year averages are sustained cases were nine percent for white officers, and Hispanic officers were staying at eight percent, and black officers or members were staying at seven percent. Asian members at 5% overall being the lowest.

So that five year average shows that the white officers were sustained at a higher rate. Black officers were not. There are several different entities or based on whether it's by age, by race, by internal, by external cases, we've done all the the research that we can find, and there's no significant disparities between the races, between the ages. However, we do have an increase in internal cases, which we're looking into. So some of the significant things that we're doing.

How do we find this disparity? Where do we see that it what is going on? So we decided to do a qualitative study, which we're in the middle of right now. That working group is a vast cross section of department and city employees. ACA Phillips is on that. We have OCA Martin. Chair Acosta Garcia is with us. Vice chair Booker usually attends with us. I have officers. I have captains.

I have director Flynn, myself, my manager. So we're going through what we wanna do is do a qualitative study to this. So there's gonna be 10 questions asked of officers, professional staff sworn all the way across the board. What is it that you feel is the issue when it comes to the internal affairs process? I think with the quantitative and the qualitative data that you do, we're gonna be able to come together and have a much better report out and just see what the significant disparities might be.

Also continuing our work with Stanford researchers, they're going to do another body worn camera review for us as well. That'll be coming out hopefully late next year. We are also conducting the 2025 perception survey. This is where it's an anonymous survey that officers, all sworn members, and professional staff can take. It's voluntary.

And we're working with Stanford to come up with all of those results and input to see what that also shows. Right? So with that and then also, we are doing a audit internally where we take the dis predisciplined report. There's aggravating and mitigating factors. That's probably the most subjective part of our report where to just depending on how you are as a person, your experience, your knowledge of the case, that can weigh into what the discipline is.

So we wanna try and remove as much of that subjective view and make it an objective review for the discipline. So that audit with the perceptions study with, our qualitative study or quantitative study, instead of taking each report and making recommendations from that, we would take all of those reports, put them together, and then make a report. Right? Here's where our policy should be. Also bringing that to the CPRA and the OIG because if the chief and the CPRA make a discipline recommendation, they don't agree, goes to the discipline committee.

But if we're each on a different page for discipline and how to look at it and how to review it, you introduce disparity right there. Right? So it creates its own disparity for all using discipline matrixes in a different way. So if we have one discipline matrix to use in the same way by everybody, no matter who does the discipline recommendation or decision, it it will take away from that disparity. And I think I've actually gone through that. So I'm sorry. I know that took a little bit of time, but I was trying to not speak too fast and get through it for you guys.

Let's go to the public comment. Calling in the

names that signed up to speak on item number six, miss Asada Olubala and Millie Cleveland.

Millie Cleveland, district four. I'm with coalition for police accountability. I really appreciate the report and the progress that the police department is making. I do wanna point out one thing that was in the report that the court had raised concerns about the capacity to sustain compliance. And in order to do that, oversight has to be able to review not only the three tasks that are currently may or may not be in compliance, but to have the ability to see a past task that were already in compliance are still in compliance.

That is the job of the inspector general. So I strongly suggest if this council is really concerned about maintaining compliance, you will get serious about funding the inspector general's position so that he can conduct the mandated audits that the charter requires. And if you're really concerned about sustainability, you will protect the independence of the inspector general and assure that there is not inappropriate interference from the city administration. Thank you.

When the lawsuit was filed 2000 and the result of it, a 2003 NSA mandate, a 119 people filed the complaint. A 118 were African American and one Latino. The issue that the NSA had that this police department had to deal with. Illegal searches, brutalization, excessive force, falsified reports, racial profiling. That's the issue of the NSA.

Now during the years, y'all have come up with constitutional policing and a whole lot of stuff, but that's the issues of the NSA. How do you eliminate from this, the police department, these practices? Then in 2019, the black peace police officers association follow congrievance that they were the victims of disparities related to hiring, unfair practices with promotion and discipline. And now what we're hearing today, oh, there are no disparities that are happening related to race in the police department. That ain't the truth.

There's disparities related to black people on every level, housing, jobs, education, and policing. So please don't get up here and talk about we don't have a issue of disparity. We do. Every level. And it's insulting when you try to present that. What we have to do is look at some of the mandates that come from the judge, what he wants to see. And I remember this because I saw it. I went one time. Culture change from the police department. And how we create that culture change is one of the things I don't know if he's still on that one, but I thought that was important.

Thank you for your comments, Cher. That concludes all speakers on the sinus. Councilmember Brown.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I do have some questions. She's still here. I guess I first wanna start off by just really expressing like, you know, gratitude to the leadership, chief Beer, yourself, administrator Phillips, and also the office of the mayor. Know that you all have been putting a lot of work into this and very confident that with kind of the leadership changes, we will see a positive outcome. Outcome. Right? That's what we all want. I did have a question.

I hope that I was following your, oral report, appropriately. I heard something about the putting together of a working group and I believe it has to do with matters related to task 45 and it made me think of this larger question about representation. And I know you named off a few folks who are kind of in that working group but kind of similar to what public speaker mentioned, right, kind of the historical precedent actually had to do with African American officers in being, know, overly disciplined. So kind of in creating a working group, one would hope that the engagement would be with those who are most impacted. So I just wanted to touch base on that.

Absolutely. Through the chair. So yes. And I I wanna make it very clear. There's disparities. There's not statistical disparities. Okay? There will always be disparities. We will always try to address our disparities. We look at that when we look at our stop data and our risk management. We always are trying to address what we see through the numbers. Right? We wanna see what those numbers are. So I don't wanna give any false perceptions that oh, everything's perfect and there's no problems. We will always see disparities up and down just depending on the work that we're doing or the areas that we are in.

So I just wanna make that clear. Right? So we always wanna address those disparities that we're seeing. Through the working group, yes, ma'am. There are across the board African American, Hispanic, white, Asian.

We have that all in within our working group so that everybody has a say, and everybody's opinions can come forward. Right? With that, I failed to mention that some of the work that we are doing is in the first command retreat for the year. We had director Flynn assist us and we started introducing implicit bias training specifically targeting internal affairs investigations just to make sure that us as as we're investigating these cases, we are looking at the case as objectively as we can. Right?

So we wanna make sure we're addressing and talking about biases. We all have them. They're all there. Are you taking a few minutes to making sure that you're addressing the case and not what your perception or subjectivity may bring. Right? So that's one of the biggest things. We're continuing that work with director Flynn bringing in her advanced race equity course. There's four parts to that. That also be presented in the command retreats, and then we'll bring that down to our sergeant continuing professionals course and then to our officers course. Right?

So we wanna continue our race work whether it's specific to a certain group across the board. We wanna make sure we're addressing all of those disparities. Right? Or not. Are we not seeing them? If we're not, why not? Right? So I just wanna make that clear that the work will continue especially through our risk management meetings that we have every quarter area wide plus we do them every month depending on if you're a CID or specialized unit. So those will get addressed.

Mhmm. Thank

you. I do have some questions and comments. I will say I'm a little concerned when I do read this report just because I see some areas where we, it seems like we may be sliding backwards at least in the last year. And it sounds like from your verbal comments assured that we actually won't continue that trend. For example in the discipline disparity, I mean that is pretty shocking in 2024 the disparity between the discipline of the black and Latino officers versus the white officers.

So I just, I would love to understand more like and I would say it's both task 45, right? This is the discipline and then task two is the completion timeline, the one hundred and eighty days that we have. And I would love to understand more about why you think we will not be slipping in 2025 and how we're going to be doing better despite some of the trends noted.

Freak me out,

sir. I didn't mean to scare you.

Council member how you doing? I'm a chief here.

Was the question again? She was just trying actually gonna bring Kristen up to kind of explain numbers and how we look at it and why we believe that we are not gonna be slipping back with our one eighties, our task two, our task five. I was just gonna explain the work that we've been doing.

I got I got that question. So actually, haven't been very intentional in regards to the staffing and internal affairs bureau. As you know, we recently made some changes at the executive level, which includes the chief being more involved in reviewing those cases, not just when they come to the chief for evaluation for sustained cases, but also the timelines. We're very, intentional sorry. Just ran up the stairs.

Very intentional with, we're we're as our numbers are coming back up, obviously, that's gonna take a while. We're assigning more investigators to internal affairs. We do know that per policy, it has to be a supervisor. So we do have a plan in place. It's a little bit of a innovative thinking, but it does fall within lines of policy, and that's to utilize acting sergeants.

We do have that program that's in effect for non patrol or non deployed units that could also be used internal affairs with the proper training as well as supervision. We are currently and I'll bring Chris Kristen up for this one, for the actual numbers, but we are currently, in compliance for our our timelines, as well as our, well, task two and task five. Task 45, deputy chief Smith and myself worked on an analysis of, the previous, concerns, which was drafted and then submitted for the next upcoming court hearing. But, Kristen, if you could please, you could elaborate on the numbers. Thank you.

For 2 or 45? 45. 45. So just to piggyback a little bit on what chief Osmis presented to you. When we looked at the numbers in 2024, obviously, we were alarmed that we saw such a big disparity between white officers and non white officers, specifically black and Hispanic officers in the sustained rates. We look at every year, we look at Please

order in the chamber. So Go ahead. We look Miss Asada, please. I need you to we need to be able to listen to the speaker.

So

Okay. I will remove you. This is your first warning. Okay, missus Otta? Okay. Thank you.

I will let you

misrepresent that Hispanic law is involved.

This is your second warning.

Okay. Okay.

So each year we're looking at we look at sustained rates and we do look at also the discipline that was meted out. So whether it was less severe discipline or more severe discipline. So in 2024, we definitely noticed we had concerns about the disparity between white and black and Hispanic officers specifically because there was we found statistically significant disparity between white and black and Hispanic officers. We we did a lot of analysis. We were unable to find specifically what might be causing that.

So that is part of the reason why we wanted to do some additional work. We're doing this qualitative study. We did our quantitative survey, which we're still working on the results. The judge asked us to expedite our 2005 numbers so that we could talk about them at the next CMC which is scheduled for May 25

numbers, you mean?

The '20 I'm sorry. The 2025 numbers. Yes.

Okay. Mhmm.

So we redid the same exact analysis that we did in 2024 on the 2025 numbers, and we found that there wasn't statistically significant difference or disparity between white and non white officers in 2025. We did see some areas if when you drill down and you start breaking up the the numbers into different groups to see if you can target where the reason for some of the differences in the rates, we were able to we did find that in some cases, white officers were potentially sustained at a lower rate than others. We found areas where officers were sustained at a higher rate than sergeants, so depending on how you look at the data. But overall, we didn't see statistical differences like we did in 2024. So there the gaps the gap between the different races or ranks or genders narrowed in most cases and we didn't see the significance that we saw in 2024.

Okay. Understood. And just one follow-up I have is around one thing I picked in the report was the likability aspect. So when an officer is well liked that sometimes that can influence whether the IAB is willing to discipline that officer. Also want to thank you all for being very transparent and honest about these challenges. But how are we creating some level of internal independence that way you know a buddy is not you know making disciplinary decisions around another officer because I think the the likability challenge speaks to that.

Do you wanna take that?

That's a great question, Sheriff. So that's something that we looked at when I first took over. So for deputy chief Smith, when we went back to do the analysis for the previous reporting period, we're looking forward to continue to do that just out of the pool, not just not just for the sustained cases, but also to your point to make sure there's no preferential treatment. So it'll take a data sample to go through. Difficult because there's a lot of cases and a lot of different MOR violations, but that's that that's our

one of our steps we're gonna take going forward. Okay. Great. Thank you. Council member Brown. And, I am also seeking

seeking a a motion. Motion. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. And I'm so sorry. Can you state your name for title for the record? Yes.

I apologize for that. I'm Kristen Burgess Maderos, and I'm the the data manager acting data manager right now.

Okay. Excellent. Nice to meet you. Sure. I can make a motion to receive and file. Is that what we Yep. Yeah. Thank you.

You. We have a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Houston to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Houston.

Aye.

And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Now reading in item eight. Receive an informational report from the city auditor on the audit of Oakland Police Oversight Agencies, the Oakland Police Commission, the Community Police Review Agency, and Office of the Inspector General, and we have four speakers that signed up to speak.

Great. Alright. Auditor Houston, you have the floor, and you have up to ten minutes and no more than that. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Michael c Houston, the city auditor and I'm here to present our recent audit of the City Of Oakland's police oversight agencies. During this presentation I'll introduce the audit team and the audit objectives, provide important background, share introduce the two recommendations that arose from the audit. The audit team included assistance to the auditor, Stephanie Noble, and graduate fellow, Marie Wortchel. So through this audit, we had three objectives.

We sought to assess the extent to which each of the three oversight bodies is acting in accordance with the city charter and municipal code requirements. We sought to identify obstacles, if any, each oversight body face in meeting the requirements laid out in the city charter and the municipal code. And we sought to evaluate the extent to which each of the oversight bodies provided effective oversight of the Oakland Police Department. Our audit report which is included in the packet and available on our website, oaklandauditor.com, identifies the events that explain the city of Oakland's commitment to police oversight. OPD has been under federal oversight since 2003.

A negotiated settlement agreement required OPD to implement 52 specific reforms referred to as TASC. In 2016, Oakland voters approved a community initiated proposal to establish a civilian police commission and community police review agency, measure l l. In 2018, the city council amended the municipal code with additional duties and authorities for the police commission and CPRA. In 2020, Oakland voters approved another community initiated proposal to strengthen the police commission and CPRA and establish an independent office of the inspector general, measure s one. In 2024, the city council could considered municipal code updates clarifying the o the inspector general scope of work and the police commission's disciplinary authority.

The city charter requires performance audits by my office of the police commission and the community police review agency every three years. Again the focus of this audit was the three police oversight agencies each of which have distinct roles. Generally, police commission oversees OPD policies and procedures. The community police review agency investigates complaints of police misconduct from a civilian orientation. And the office of inspector general monitors and audits police policies, practices, and procedures particularly pertaining to NSA requirements.

The police commission is a voluntary oversight body appointed by the mayor and the selection panel that oversees the other independent police oversight agencies. We included exhibit in the audit, it's it's here on this slide. It shows the structure and relationship between the various police oversight agencies and the city administrator, the mayor, the city council, and and other officials as well. Through this exhibit, we also sought to illustrate the different authority levels including appointment authority, removal authority, appointment authority and removal authority, managerial authority, administrative authority, and investigative audit authority. One of the benefits of audit reports is is informing the public about how their government works and how programs operate.

We assembled this exhibit to just to do just that but in considerable detail. And I think this exhibit is also effective in visually conveying that the police oversight in Oakland requires several departments and offices and is complex. So audit results. The first conclusion or finding was that the commission and CPRA have not yet implemented all previous audit recommendations from the 2020 audit of the Police Commission and Community Police Review Agency. That audit was conducted by the city auditor's office in 2020.

The audit report made that audit report made 41 recommendations aimed to improve the commission and community police review agency. The office of inspector general was not included in the 2020 audit because that audit predated measure s one, which established that office. This slide highlights some of the major findings from the 2020 audit report, which is also still available on the city auditor's website. In our recent audit, is the subject of this presentation, we found that the police commission and CPRA did make progress on past recommendations. The police commission implemented previous audit recommendations around staffing, transparency, and public meetings.

CPRA implemented recommendations related to investigation processes and procedures. The audit report we in the audit report, we noted that the city auditor's office follows up on the open recommendations as part of our semi annual audit recommendation follow-up report. I just presented on that, I think it was last week. And that's the report. We followed up on 14 open audit recommendations as part of our most process as of 12/31/2025.

The the police commission implemented four recommendations and the CPRA had implemented one recommendation. The next ARFU status report we conduct will be as of 06/30/2026. Nine recommendations as of right now remain outstanding. While pursuing our audit objective of assessing the extent to which each oversight agency was acting in accordance with its city charter and municipal code requirements. And we found that the commission, CPRA, and OIG met only 26 of 43 select city charter and municipal code requirements.

We identified requirements by reviewing the language within the city charter section six zero four, municipal code sections two point four five and two point four six. We designated requirements as statements that included terms like shall, must, at least, or no more than. And we identified 44 such requirements for the police commission. We identified 23 requirements for CPRA and we identified five requirements of the OIG. And from these, we judgmentally selected requirements for testing compliance based on our risk assessment.

Testing those requirements that we either thought were most important and or most likely to be out of compliance. Appendix a in the back of the report lists all the requirements identified for each oversight body. The requirements tested and results. And exhibit two in the audit report roughly summarized the results as well. The charter and municipal code requirements we selected for testing and identifies whether those requirements were in full compliance, partial compliance, or not in compliance.

Which leads to our next conclusion which was that vacancies, frozen positions, low minimum staffing requirements, and leadership turnover have hindered the police oversight agency's ability to fulfill their legally mandated duties. The police commission has just one full time staff to support the 44 legal mandates we found in the municipal code and city charter. We concluded that one staff member was insufficient. The city requires that CPRA have one line investigator per 100 police officers. At the time of our audit, CPRA would would need to fill at least two more investigator positions to meet that staffing requirement.

The OIG has been challenged to audit OPD's compliance with the NSA tasks due to frozen and deleted positions. And we know that significant turnover in leadership within the police oversight agencies since the 2020 audit. With the current chief of staff to the police commission, the CPRA director, and inspector general all having two years tenure or less. The police commission itself has also experienced turnover, vacancy, and below minimum membership. And we had another conclusion that the city charter and municipal code are inconsistent and conflict on hiring and removal of the heads of CPRA and the OIG.

This is actually detailed on page 11 of the audit report. The first bullet is pertains to municipal code section 2.45. The commission with the assistance of the city administrator shall be responsible for hiring the first and all subsequent civilian inspectors general. This conflicts with the city charter which states that the police commission has the power to fill the vacancies. Municipal code 2.45 states, the next bullet, all OIG staff including the inspector general shall be civil service employees in accordance with article nine of the city charter.

This conflicts with the city charter section six zero four e seven which states that the staff of the agency, OIG, and commission with the exception of the agency director and the IG themselves shall be civil service employees in accordance with article nine of the city charter. The next bullet, the city charter section six zero four e, it grants the commission authority to terminate CPRA's executive director by an affirmative vote of at least five commissioners. And it doesn't indicate that a finding of cause is necessary to terminate the executive director. And this varies from the termination requirements for the inspector general which requires adopting a finding of cause or findings of cause which may be defined by city ordinance under the city charter. Lastly, municipal code 2.45 h states that the commission should create a form for commissioners to use in individually providing annual comments, observations, and assessments to the city administrator regarding the IG's job performance.

Involving the city administrator in the performance appraisal of the IG is a threat to the independence of the IG. Having the IG report functionally to the police commission ensures independence because the audit function is outside the reporting line of the entities under audit. And these conflicts should be resolved as most would have been with adoption of chapter 2.47 amendment 2.47 municipal code amendments. And lastly, the structural independence would help to ensure the police oversight agencies have sufficient resources and administrative authority to meet their legal mandates. The city has budgeted all required minimum staffing requirements for the agencies in the most recent budget cycle, but the minimum staffing does not appear to meet the needs of the police commission and the CPRA or the OIG.

The freezing of the OIG's audit positions does not meet the requirement within the code which requires the city to allocate sufficient budget resources.

And I'm sorry, auditor Houston, we're at ten minutes so if you could just

Okay.

Try to get through the rest of these as quickly as possible. Thank you.

While the budget added to the OIG a 122 and a half thousand dollars for a qualified firm to conduct essential audits, evaluation, and reviews of OPT and CPRA, one audit manager cannot adequately meet the requirements of auditing 52 tasks within the NSA. Regarding the police commission, one administrative staff person, the chief of staff position appears insufficient for the support the police commission requires especially given its extensive mandates and the diversity and urgency of task required by the city charter and municipal code. Best practices and standards for independent audits and police oversight require oversight bodies to function independently and with sufficient resources. The city administration's critical role in the city's budget process and its role within the oversight agencies represents a structural threat to independence. We turn to industry standards as criteria.

General generally accepted government auditing standards, the principles and standards for offices of inspectors general, and NACO, the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. The police oversight agencies need sufficient resources to carry out their responsibilities responsibilities. And to be truly independent as measures l l and s one seem to prioritize, the police oversight agencies need autonomy in hiring and other administrative matters that without involvement from the city administration. We had two recommendations. This is the first one.

It's to the city attorney's office. We recommend that they provide an independent analysis of the resources needed including staffing to support the requirements of the police oversight agencies. The second one is to the city council. In conjunction with relevant stakeholders including the police commission, the the community police review agency, and the office of inspector general, the city council should develop and adopt revisions to the municipal code and pursue changes to the city charter as needed to resolve conflicts between the municipal code and the city charter, namely in clarifying whether the inspector general is a civil service position, removing language that requires police commissioners to submit performance appraisals of the inspector general to the city administrator, and consider whether a finding or findings of cause are needed to terminate CPRA's executive director. And my office will follow-up on these two recommendations until they are implemented.

The responses respectively by the city attorney and council president Jenkins are on the back of the report for your reference.

Thank you. And and this was a thorough audit. So thank you so much for this work. I know that we have four public comments, so let's turn to that.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number eight. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record. Or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily easily identified. Madeline Stacy, Asado Olavala, Rashida Gronage, and I have a blank speaker sheet, with the organization CPA. As standard practice, we'll take in person speakers first, so please come up if you signed up to speak.

Sorry. I didn't put my name, but I had the yellow sheet. Millie Cleveland with Coalition for Police Accountability. I really appreciate the thorough audit that was done by the auditor. I wanna say that I think it's important to note inability to meet any of the mandates is not due to any kind of incompetency by the directors of of the agencies, but once again due to the council's failure to provide the needed resources and staffing that are needed.

I also wanna raise that the conflict in the hiring and firing between the municipal code and the charter that oversees the CPRA director and the inspector general can easily be fixed by updating the enabling ought enabling ordinance so there's no real charter change that's needed. You can update the enabling ordinance, bring it to council, and have it read appropriately first and for first and second readings. Thank you.

Madeline Stacy, longtime Oakland resident. I just wanted to really uplift the incredible work that the city auditor does. Every every presentation you give is so detailed and so thorough and I think we are so lucky to have such an excellent auditor, city auditor office. It's impressive. Thank you.

And yes, just kind of echoing what she said that these agencies while they do need to implement the recommendations they really need the staffing and resources to do so. You can't drive a car on one wheel and that's what they're trying to do sometimes. We need to provide them with the three other wheels or maybe even two and they can kind of hobble along. But you can only get so far on one wheel. So they really need those resources so they can do what is really necessary which is to follow through and meet the recommendations made by the city auditor. That's it. Thank you.

I have I have a serious issue with any effort to undermine where black people are and to lessen that. Serious issue with that. So when you have a police department that has a specific group of people, you never hear them say anything about discrimination or disparity, and then one year it it's happening. That don't make sense. So the stats on who stops, who the police stop, African Americans.

I don't know what date this is. 3784. Latinos, 06/1983. Stops for questionings when you have a search. 9034. Latinos 2524. Don't come here one year all of a sudden we got a disparity with one group of people when it's black people. And and you got a community of Hispanics in the police department, whites are 31%, Latinos 28, blacks in numbers are decreasing, we only 18% now. Everything is declining with us. Everybody else is is incline.

And you gotta remember Hispanics is a ethnic groups. The majority of Hispanics are they call themselves white people. Okay. On this issue, I do not understand great audit all the time, but why we didn't have an audit? It says audit of Oakland's police oversight agencies.

So why wasn't the privacy commission audited? They are police oversight agency. And you have items on this agenda where the police, I'm sorry, the, privacy commission looked over to make sure that these items are okay to be presented to you. I think two or three of them. How come you jump on the

Thank you for your comments. Switching to Zoom user, Rashida Gronage. You can unmute yourself and begin your two minute comments.

Thank you. I just wanted to appreciate the city auditor's report, and it's very clear as the previous speakers mentioned that without sufficient resources, there's no way that anybody, whether it's a city department or an oversight agency, can perform according to expectations and deliverables. So what is clear, and the auditor mentioned this in several instances, is the disparity between what the charter requires and what the enabling ordinance discusses. And that can easily be rectified, but that's the responsibility of the city council. There was an updated ordinance that was presented to the city council in 2024 just before the current council took office, and so no action was taken on that updated ordinance that would have resolved many of the points that the city auditor made.

So I would hope that the city council will move forward and continue to look at the updated ordinance that is awaiting approval and possibly amend it further, to address many of the recommendations, that the city auditor has made. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments, Cher. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Thank you. Council member Houston.

Through the chair, auditor Houston, great, great job. Kept the pace up. Went rushing through it, and I love this. And it's clear. It's clear. We need some charter changes. And I'm gonna bring some charter changes forward because it's definitely clear from what you just said. And I'm about to start working on them right now, getting moving forward.

Thank you, council council member. I do have a few questions. So, so one of the findings that you had in this audit was that, CPRA has only 71% of its mandated investigator staffing. I am wondering, and maybe this is a question to you or ACA Phillips, given that the positions are actually budgeted, they're just vacant. Is that money being otherwise used to address the investigation backlog or otherwise by these agencies or is it yeah. What's going on with that with those funds?

Thank you for that question. I don't think that that money has been brought back to CPRA but I struggle to speculate. I should have just said I don't know. I'd be surprised if it did.

Okay. Sounds good. I have a few more questions. Just give me a second. Okay. Maybe I I see actually Tony Lawson there. Maybe Tony, you've got a comment here.

Good evening. Tony Lawson, director of CPRA, to the chair. With respect to, investigative investigators, we are current we've hired a supervisory investigator this past fall. We hired a permanent two within contract investigators who are now permanent investigators, and we have currently a job posting out to hire two to four more investigators. That posting should expire, I think, at the end of this week. So we will begin looking at those applicants. Last I heard us, so we had somewhere in the area of 40 to 50 applicants. So we hope to hire two to four more investigators. And that will get us in terms of where we are with line investigators, investigators,

we're we're

at at three line investigators when we should have at least seven. So we hope to hire two to four within the next two months.

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Another thing that was noted in the audit was that the OIG had spent about $122,000 to contract a private firm for audits because of its internal auditor positions being frozen. Do you have an evaluation or a sense that whether unfreezing those positions would be more cost effective than these recurring third party contracts?

We did not look into that. There 's too many variables to consider. It was outside the the scope of our review. So I think the question is to whether or not it would have been more cost effective to have in house folks versus contracting out for a 122 and a half thousand dollars. I can't really comment.

ACA Phillips, do you have a perspective on this? I know that you were in the OIG role yourself.

To this chair, I won't speculate on the current iteration of the inspector general but what I will say is the inspector general auditor position when I was the inspector general, The base salary was 119,000. That was the start of that position and that was just base salary without fringe. Okay.

Thank you. Council member Brown, go ahead.

Okay. Council member five. Thank you. I just wanted some clarity on a couple points around the independence of the the bodies that you spoke of council member I'm I'm sorry. Auditor Houston. Somebody gotta change their last name.

I don't know which one.

And I I do want to thank you for the thorough nature of your reports. They're always amazing. And so we're talking about staffing as an issue for for these independent bodies. I this is not directly related, but it is indirectly related. Where are you with your staffing?

Thank you for the question. We have eight and a half people in auditor's office. The charter requires 14. Measure n n funds an additional. One additional. We're we're up to 15, but we have eight and a half right now. But we have a vacancy and a few frozen positions. And I think we're going to we're on schedule to be authorized for additional staffing once the fiscal year hits.

Okay.

Because of the extreme fiscal necessity, the suspension of the minimum staffing to to to our office and many other city services.

Right. And the reason that I'm asking is because I'm I'm interested in it doesn't matter. I don't wanna go down that line of questioning right now. But I do want to understand your perspective on the conflict and language about hiring and firing the CPRA director and the I IG, the conflicts in the municipal code. Couldn't that be fixed with amending the enabling ordinance as one of the public speaker said?

Absolutely. And it's the one that was at 2024

proposal? From 2024.

Yeah. If that was to a lot of of the inconsistencies would be addressed if that was resurrected and and passed.

So is that something that you're recommending?

Yes. That's recommendation that's within recommendation recommendation number two. So recommendation two is includes all the the the content within that enabling ordinance.

So if if I wanted to move your recommendation through the council, I could consult this audit and potential stakeholders in the community and the city attorney's office to do that without the fiscal impact of a charter change.

Yeah. A lot of these are municipal code changes. But then that's recommendation two also is is broad on purpose because there might be the need for city charter changes.

Is there a fiscal impact to that? You you just met mentioned the fiscal necessity and the impacts of the Oakland our our budget, our financial standing right now. Right?

Yeah. I'm sure that would be really costly, but it would would be up to the city council, right, or or community members if they wanna pursue a city charter change to make specific amendments or changes. You know, we're intentionally kind of not, you know, agnostic on on that. Right. But a lot of the inconsistencies could be addressed by just moving that enabling ordinance forward.

So I know my council my council colleague suggested a charter change and I respect that. I'm going to try to move the less burdensome financially burdensome route through amending the enabling ordinance to make those changes that you're recommending in this particular report. So I just I'm I'm letting my colleagues know that that is what I I would like to advance. I'm complete.

Council member Houston. Yes. Through the chair and and and I respect what my council member is saying. But there's some other things that I want to to to change, in this charter also. So, it is coming up. It's with this police commission. Yeah. The police commission. It's things that that are hindering the movement of my officers and my chief. So, I heard you and and and I'm a, talk to my city attorney to see how I can we can move, especially if we have a charter revisions right now. Right? So it could be added into that charter change. So I'm a talk to my city attorney about it.

Sounds good. You wanna make a motion, council member Houston? You wanna make a motion as well, council member Houston? We still have a couple more items to get through tonight.

But, yeah, I'm I'm ready to move on.

Yep. Great.

I'll make a motion.

I'll second that.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by chair Wong. To approve the recommendations of staff, sorry. Or is this to receive and file in committee or to forward? Yes. Receive and file in in committee. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by chair Wong to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Aye. Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item number eight passes with four ayes. To receive and file this informational report in committee. Moving back to item number three.

Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a professional services agreement with Celebrite Inc. For the provision of universal forensic extraction devices and related services for the Oakland Police Department for a contract amount not to exceed $140,000 for the period of 07/01/2026 to 06/30/2027, waiving the competitive multistep solicitation and the local slash small local business enterprise program requirements and accepting the 2024 Celebrite annual report and making a determination regarding whether the city should continue to use this technology, and we have two speakers that signed up.

Alright. You have the floor. You have up to three minutes.

Good evening, council members. I'm sergeant Yun Zhao. I work in the cold case division of this open police department CID section. I'm here to ask for us increasing funding for OPD's CellBrite technology. Just briefly, very briefly go over what we use CellBrite for. Cell phones, obviously, is a huge part of our lives. And as such, it contains fair a treasure trove of evidence for all kinds of investigations that the Oakland Police Department runs in terms of crime. Right? It's a big part homicides, robberies. We're seeing connectivity between suspects, victims, and witnesses.

It's became an expected piece of evidence when we present it to the DA's office. And as we all know, most of our phones in our pocket are locked, and it comes in two flavors, Android and iPhones. The police department utilized Celebrite to conduct an extraction of a lot of these, phones. Last year in 2025, the police department conducted extractions of over 700 phones pursuing to search one for each of them. And out of those, all the Androids that we touch were extracted only through CellBrite, and that's the only technology we have that could extract Android phones.

Obviously, we understand that at this time, a $140,000 is a lot of money. The police department have continuously explored other potential vendors through visit with other forensic labs and speaking with other phone experts. Essentially, CellBrite and Greg Key had only CellBrite is only really tool that reliably extracts Android phones. And, again, when we draw back to the stat that we kept over 33% of the phones out of that 700 were Android. And right now, we have we have tried, testing a few other different vendors, but their technology is not up to par to what Sellbrite can do.

So without renewing the Sellbrite contract, we're looking at, you know, couple 100 phones that we cannot extract and we would not be able to use it for our investigations. Investigations. But the police department will is continuing to explore potential other vendors, just one for the cost issue of things as well as just keeping our technology. Things change and, obviously, we like to we knew Sellby for this year while we continuously explore other potential vendors for this technology. With that, any questions?

Why don't we move to public comment?

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number three, Madeline Stacy and missus Sata Olubala.

So it says the report says that the annual subscription cost has increased to approximately a $140,000. So we're paying an extra $140,000, or it is a $140,000 with some increase. I didn't understand the way it was presented, how much more money we're actually spending as this being an increase. So as I said before, this is an item that in order for it to be brought to you, the privacy commission had to recommend it. I'm I'm extremely concerned about the volume of authority that the privacy commission has.

And so what is this privacy? You know, black people don't believe in privacy. You can't close your door in my house. I gotta know what's going on. And your your your concept of privacy, we don't feel that way. You're not you're not gonna have a lot of black people come in here saying, I'm concerned about my privacy. I'm concerned about my life. Okay. I'm concerned about my safety, but that's y'all thing. That's the tree thing and the elephant stuff.

That's all y'all stuff. That's not our stuff. What's important is I want criminals, all tools made available so we can catch people who participating in criminal activity. We are being limited with this privacy component to have the best opportunity for this police department to move forward. They're not gonna say it, but this privacy commission is driving me crazy. Okay? So I did I did want some clarity on, oh, how much more money we're gonna be paying. And thank you, sir, for your service.

So just one thing is I noticed that we waived the multi like the solicitation process on this. Can you comment on some of the other vendors that you've looked at and and why we didn't go ahead and do an RFP for this given some of the cost challenges you just mentioned?

Yes. Out of those seven

I'm 100 folks

There's one other speaker. My bad.

Madeline Stacy. I know that OPG has been using Celebrite since 2014 but the use expanded significantly in 2024 with an update. Celebrite, I understand that they're the only ones that so far can reliably unlock Androids and you did cite some numbers like 33% of the phones are Androids. But we don't have any numbers as to how many of those phones really required being unlocked and how much of this data that we're getting from these phones is actually resulting in arrest or prosecution or whatnot. So while I understand the challenges, I still have to come back to the fact that Celebrite is an Israeli based company and they are rife with incidences of abuse of youths.

I mean you can Internet search it really easily over the years. It's bad. And ICE has been buying their software because of how effective it is at breaking into phones. And they have increased their spending increasingly more with this company services over the years. So this is an Israeli based company that ICE really loves. And so this is not a company company that we should be doing business with in Oakland, especially considering that we're waiving the competitive multi step solicitation process to give them $140,000 So engage in that solicitation. We can look for another company. It's just it's time to cut ties with this particular company. Thank you.

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

Thank you. Okay. Back to the question and the answer.

Yes, ma'am. So out of those 700 phones, I pretty much personally extract all of them. We have tried we we also have access to a gray key which does not cannot extract or have issues with a lot of these androids. And we know for best practice that's just it does not work well. We have tested Motorola which has a service and I can't quite remember the name.

They also are fairly behind in terms of extracting food Android data. And then we also try we're trying we tried and we might test again a company called xRY Pro. They claimed to have created a new update. We have spoken with the regional forensic lab regarding how good they are. And the feedback I got was they're good with obscure phones but not great at the current latest models in people's pockets. We have we continue to kind of look for additional vendors. There are a few other vendors that we email and look but then very quickly realize they're not what we wanted. So I didn't keep logs of those. But we have tried all the major ones that are available and out there.

Okay. And so there isn't an alternative that's really on the market that you can identify?

No. Unless there's a reason why all the forensic labs have both Selbran and Graig Keefe. There isn't anybody else that we can reliably switch to at this point.

Okay. And just to understand the nuts and bolts of what this technology does, is this essentially allowing the officers to go out into the field and like take a picture and then that extracts like the evidence like it just I would love to know what it really does because it's speaking in theory in the report.

Sure. So the way it works, we make an arrest or we conduct a search warrant. And as part of the arrest or search warrant, we seize, you know, a phone off someone. Right? So, you know, I get arrested for whatever they for homicide, and they took my phone as part of the case. At that point, per the law and per OPD policy, we have to seek a search warrant to extract this phone. So we get a judge's order. We go in doubt. We go extract data from this phone. And then again per law and per our policy, we have to seal all the information on this device that's not related to the homicide investigation.

So we generate report from that extraction we have and that's what our investigator reviews. And that data is protected onto upload it and encrypted on our evidence.com server. And per our policy and again per law where we cannot share the extracted data unless within the scope of investigation and tends to be the DA's officer's discovery or if a outside agents or or if we're conducting some sort of investigation with San Leandro Police over a series of robberies, they would have to write a search one to look at our data. So very rarely, well, does this data leave outside OPD control and that tends to only happen in terms of discovery for prosecution or search one for this data.

Okay. I see council member five has her mic.

Oh. Oh, thank you. Thank you, chair. I I'm gonna get on the soapbox for a second. Okay? Forgive me and forgive me to the public. But I want to state in response to two of our public speakers tonight that first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

And the reason I bring that up is right now the world is getting smaller and tech interests are using this type of technology to attack activists and civilians around the world. And the worst actors in the world are Israel and The United States. And in the beginning, they go for low hanging fruit that people really don't pay attention to, like socialists or trade unionists as we've seen decades previous. But this technology, which is why I was concerned about flock, can be utilized to undermine political movements, to undermine activists, to identify individuals who are just oppositional to a state and as we move towards a more and and I try not to use these words that get thrown around freely and kinda haphazardly, but as we move closer to fascism, everyone should be concerned about technology. I will not support, as I did not with Flock, a company an Israeli based company that is using technology and advanced military weapons to kill civilians.

And especially with the growth of the tech industry that's based in the East Bay, based in the San Francisco Bay, I know it's it's difficult to find other vendors, but I think that should be the primary work that the the the police force in Oakland is doing. And I'm sure it's challenging, but as with my conscience, I can't support that when there are other vendors that exist. There were other vendors for FLAC, and I'm glad that this contract is only for a year. But the world is changing, and we are going to need people that can resist and can do that with of the tools available to them. So this is my conscientious objection to utilizing a company that is based in Israel who is working who is advancing a a white national platform to kill people and I just wanted to state that for the record.

Thank you, chair for allowing me the moment.

Council member Houston.

Okay.

Well, did one of my colleagues want to make a motion or have any other comments or questions?

Councilmember Brown. Okay. Thank you so much. So I think on I mean after reading the report and I think a lot of times when I'm reading through items like this given my legal training I think I have a good understanding of what the prerequisite is to even utilize the technology right which is a search warrant, right. And it's if the individual is, know, OPD is going to, you know, maybe accuse them of you know being there's it's attached to a crime that they possibly did commit, right?

So it's it's a whole kind of internal process. And so I can also at the same time understand the sentiments of council member Fife. I did see that this is just a one year contract. I also noticed that we will be utilizing measure NN funds I believe for this technology as well. And so I guess my question would be how can we ensure that maybe as this returns the next time how can we actually have a true list of what other technology is available that is not linked to controversial you know things that we I mean, I have a whole list of a handful of articles that are linking this technology to not great things.

Through the chair, if it's okay if I could answer that question. Yeah. We're we're more than willing, to come back in a year and provide a report of the different vendors that we're, that we can kinda research and work through. I think it is important to note though that we have a extremely difficult problem with violent crime here in Oakland as well as human trafficking. And this tool, which is a major tool to combat human trafficking and our follow-up investigations with homicides, sometimes this is the only voice for our victims because they're dead.

And this is the only way we can get information to bring justice to that person that was murdered in our community. And in many ways, this is the only voice that speaks for the young girls that are being trafficked out in that blade. And in many times, this has left this is this particular technology has led to the rescue of other underage victims that were being exploited in the streets of our city. But we we take this technology tool very seriously. Sergeant Zhao, I think, painted a pretty clear picture of how protected it is by policy and law, But we are more than willing to provide detailed reports of the other research into other technology tools as we come back later, if that's okay.

Yep. I'll move the item.

Alright. Before we go to the to the vote, chief Beard, can you just articulate how that is, what you just explained, the fact that this may be the only voice for the victim that you just said?

Thank you, chair. So in many cases, and sergeant Zhao is an excellent homicide investigator, but I'll just steal his little bit of his thunder right now. It's not just for suspects, but we've also had to utilize the tool to extract data from victims phones and homicides. And a lot of times, you know, obviously, our victims can't speak because they're dead and the police are the only ones advocating for them. They're the only voices to bring justice back for them.

For human trafficking cases, it's also, it leads to investigative leads for follow-up on additional people that are exploiting or part of a group that are exploiting other girls or other, you know, the most vulnerable segment of our society. And we've used those tools to track down other exploiters as well as sometimes to find out where a lot of the victims are at. So it's a very versatile tool. And in many ways, it provides the investigators leads that they would never have. And I'd also highlight the fact that sergeant Zhao presented its its very crucial piece of evidence, particularly in human trafficking cases and homicide cases when we bring the bring that packet to the DA's office to have the most comprehensive look in the presentation of that case.

So a lot of times, this is the only voice for the victims.

Okay. Yep. That that makes sense. And I know in my own conversations with the issues highlighted the need for evidence, the barrier or the the standards around evidence are higher given, you know, where we are in terms of technology and it's not just we're being weighed against other cases in other cities and all of that. Okay thank you. That's helpful. K. You got one more comment?

I just that's it. Just got through the chair. I wanna utilize all the technology we can use to make your job easier and to to bring justice to our city. So I'm gonna support, you know, you know, I'm gonna support the police. If they're doing what's right, I'm a roll with them. If they're not, then I'm gonna go against it right. And I see that you guys are doing exactly the best that you can do for our city of Oakland, and I see it. I see it in my own district, right? So I wanna move this. So whatever technology you need to to to to make our city safer, I got you. So that's what I wanna share.

Through the chair to council member Houston, was that a second? Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Brown, second by council member Houston to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 05/05/2026, city council agenda on roll. Council members Brown? Aye. Aye. No. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong?

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with three ayes, one no to forward this item to the May 5 city council agenda on nonconsent. Reading in item number four, Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a three year agreement with the Peregrine Technologies for the provision of a law enforcement record search platform and related services for the Oakland Police Department at a cost not to exceed $1,024,000 for the time period 07/01/2026 to 06/30/2029 and waiving the competitive multi, multiple steps solicitation process and the local slash small local business enterprise requirements. And we have two speakers that signed up to speak.

You have up to three minutes.

Evening again. To kinda give a quick background, this is a technology that, Oakland Police Department have used since 2012. And in 2020, we're doing an establishment pack. We have a use as poll policy in place with this technology. OPD has used some different iteration.

Current iterations called Crime Tracer. What it does is a dashboard for our investigators and police officers to conduct searches of our reports and other reports that are shared with other agencies. Usually, it's public it would eventually be public information or public record reports, like crime reports, tickets, calls for service, and such like that. It's been kinda described more almost like a Google for cops. It does not so the issue that we had with PAC is that the current well, let me pick one step back.

The cost of Crime Tracer, it's gonna be approximately 800 something thousand dollars for the same, three year period. So it is an increase in that in that amount, but it's not it's something that we already been amount that we have been spending. So there there's been two major reason that OPD like to, switch over. Throughout annual reporting with the pack, we have not been able to really effectively audit Crime Tracer. It always been an issue.

They doesn't provide auditing tools or auditing trails that we would like to kinda track individual usage to ensure that data is not improperly shared with, you know, federal agency that we shouldn't talk to or outside the state. Additionally, the way Crime Tracer, the current system we're using, it's we can't opt out of sharing. So when you conduct when you when you when we input our data, other agencies share it, and we don't have a control of that data other than people subscriber subscribe into the CrimeChaser databases. Peregrine system, the one that we wish to switch to, does provide full audit trails. I am able we are, with their system, we're able to conduct searches of or audit of individual officer searches, and we also have insight onto what outside agency, came in to look at our data.

At on top of that, this is a opt in, kind of, sharing, meaning OPD and, the PAC will obviously have to approve what agency is allowed to look at our data. That gives us a lot more control in terms of, people's view and and data that's collected by the Oakland Police Department, and we're able to conduct a better regional sharing without exposing our citizens' data to, you know, other agents that we would not like them to, which is something that we cannot do with Crime Tracer. It's but, again, you know, this is a very vital tool in our investigation. Right? This allow us to make connections and reports that our investigator might not know.

They can conduct a search of, you know, a Honda Accord, whatever, and that pops up that finds that particular report that some other officer wrote, but no one really knew about until it searches and found it. So as a tool, it's extraordinary important. And that kind of brings up the second point of why we need to switch. A few of our, major regional partners, notably San Francisco, Sacramento, I think, believe Alameda County are switching over. And as they're switching over to the system, they're taking the data with with them.

So as it stands where we are right now, when Oakland police conduct a search for something, we do not we're not able to see San Francisco police data. And being across the bay, I feel that that's extraordinary important for Oakland and SF to, you know, properly data share with each other with the proper oversight. But we need to know, like, what's happening on theirs their end and vice versa. So that's kinda driving why we're asking for to waive the, competitive multistep because if the data over there, we don't there's no real other alternative company for us to see it if they took the data to Peregrine already. With that, I'm just gonna take some questions.

And we had public comment. Right? Let's go to that.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four, Madeline Stacy and Asada Olubala.

So you had two options with this and both options had cons and pros. So you're choosing the option that will give you the most, the least efficiency. Because with the option that you're not choosing, you would have. Multiple data systems. For a single interface that multiple opportunities to look at what you want with this system that you're choosing.

You you don't have the third party access to your data. As the the issue that's I guess more important to you. And what's more important to me is I wanna see the effort to get whatever you need in terms of solving or dealing with whatever you're dealing with accomplished. As I said before, too much of what you determine is important is about not letting data be exposed. And and that doesn't ring well with me.

Miss Fife, I gotta give you a high praise for that last comment. I didn't know that. I would have supported it too. We're not holding people accountable for Israel, you know, black folks. We don't have to do this, but we're generous enough to say it. That's not our stuff. But again, I am highly disappointed with the police department prioritizing data safety over the opportunity to get the data we need to get the work done that we need to get done.

Madeline Stacy. I understand the reasons that OPD wants to transfer from Crime Tracer. The primary reasons are as stated, not having adequate data governance control and losing access to neighboring agency data as they transfer to Peregrine. But it works both ways. Every agency that you open yourself up to, every agency that you want to get data from you're opening your data to them as well.

And once it goes into their hands you can't fully control who has access to that data. You end up having less control. AOPD has less control over that data the more they share it. And Peregrine is actually as a whole company, Peregrine Tech is currently working with the National Fusion Center Association and they're very proud of this and they're bragging online in an attempt to be implemented nationwide in fusion centers. And through these fusion centers, Federal Immigration Enforcement Agencies, ICE, would have access to our local data in violation of state and local law because as we know ICE doesn't care about laws or constitutions.

And Peregrine is also being used by other counties such as Lee County to modernize immigration enforcement. So Peregrine is a platform software that's effectively a Palantir spin off. It brings military grade surveillance driven by an inner circle of billionaire investors and former executives. Peregrine is led by CEO Nick Noon. He's the former head of U.

S. Special Operations at Palantir. This platform will consolidate residents' personal information ranging from automated license plate readers to geospatial mapping into a mass surveillance database that is vulnerable to security risk and constitutional privacy violations. These are millions of data points aggregated into a platform which prides itself for being a leader in predictive policing. It markets itself as a super powered Google for police. As you said, I don't find that a good thing. Predictive policing is simply a method of automating the already existing disparities faced by constantly over policed

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

Okay. Thank you. One question I have is, so I know that one of the significant drivers of our overtime at OPD is actually the fact that officers need to do quite a lot of documentation after an incident. And I'm wondering does this technology enable our officers to do that more efficiently? I think one thing I've been interested in that I've read happening in other agencies the ability for an officer to say verbalize an incident and for that to be transcribed instead of them doing like handwritten reports for example. Does that enable that or is that something you're looking into?

This system is not something that obviously allow us to like transcribe reports like that. But however it does have huge benefits for investigators and our preliminary investigator. You know, our officers respond to calls to conduct preliminary investigations to link information and reports together. Right? That's once we use crime tracer or even so we use these these kind of database searches. Our ability to be able to pull into reports that we never we haven't personally read or knew existed even as in Oakland Police Police Department. Like, I don't know who took the report in city hall for the last two weeks. However, if I had an incident that goes, hey. Something happened in city hall and it involves a guy named Bob. Right?

Being able to effectively sort through all that report that was generated in this area is a huge time saver. Otherwise, our alternative will be going back to fairly antiquated, systems and kind of search individual systems. Right? Our report goes into one system. Our ticket, goes in a different system. So it is a huge time saver in that sense. And I do kinda wanna address the sharing of information with, you know, things. We it's OPD has control in terms of what we would share with. And again, because of California law, our data cannot leave California. And, it is something that the company understands.

It's something that we obviously hold them to. And with our with the ability now to audit to see who outside is touching our data with this new set of technology, I can actually come and say that, no, we looked. And there is no such and such access or there's no such and just access. Right? If we see outside access, we can we with this current company, we can put a we can immediately address it. However, with the technology we could currently use in Crime Tracer, I do not know other than reach out to Crime Tracer and ask. I don't have a real time ability to audit and don't have a real time ability put an end to that if that happens.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And it and it sounds like what is ultimately driving this change, if you could if you could explain around the data controls, like what does this new vendor offer in terms of privacy and data control?

We can pick and choose what agency we wanna share with. So we can have very effective control in that sense. If we only wanna share with SF, we can SF will be the only one that can see our data. And so, obviously, there are regional partners that we wanna work with and that, that holds the same value as us in terms of and and that, you know, we we would benefit in term of criminal investigation by having access to data. So that's a huge level of data control that we wouldn't have before. Whereas before, we pull out all data together and it's just out there. Now we can actually kind of pick and choose. So that's huge.

Oh, really? Okay. What do mean it's out there? And that's my final question.

So Crime Tracer, the current technology we use, it's we don't have the ability to opt out of other agencies seeing our information. We cannot it's it's pulled together into a pool of information that all agency that have access to Crime Tracer can't see. Pound Peregrine is the one that that that that's one of the bigger selling point because, again, we've been working with PAC for this. We're not feeding anything new into the system that aren't already fed in Crime Tracer. So we're not feeding FLOC.

We're not feeding ALPR. We're still guide by the use policy that PAC oversees in terms of what we feed into the system. So we're not asking for us feeding that information into that into Perigree. So PAC's always issue PAC's issue has always been that we have unable to audit or see who's using our data, who else is using our data, and what we use or who internally using our data. Right? So and that's what driven part of this search and we found alternative that allows us to have that. And on top of the other benefits, we have access to other agents local agencies that we would like have access to data to.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Council member Fife and yeah.

Yeah. Y'all about to be mad at me today. Y'all might wanna put me off the public safety committee because I have the same concerns with the previous agenda. And I I wanna encourage folks, if you haven't seen it, to watch Spies of Mississippi. It's a documentary that was done to cover the Mississippi State Sovereignity Commission that was formed in 1956.

And it was a secret spy agency that they formed the government formed to spy on civil rights organizers, a lot of whom were children. And this was in 1956, so this is not like ancient history. And the reason I bring that up is because back in the day, they used technology that was high-tech at the time, which a lot of it included wiretapping. But now, you know, in 2026, the the technology that we have is just out of this world. But at that time, again, it was used to spy on innocent people that were trying to make the world better for black folks.

And predictive policing, the technology that especially this technology that was founded by Nick Noon or no one people pronounce it differently. Who is a former Palantir employee who they call themselves the Palantir mafia. They use criminal language to describe themselves that who have a strong philosophy against immigrants, against black folks, against undesirables. So I I know what I'm saying might might sound out of this world, but we've seen it in history before. And I really want us to think about utilizing technology that is not connected to the bad guys.

It feels like all of the technology that we bring here is connected to the bad guys. And I'm just wondering, maybe that's all that exists. I don't know. But I hope that we can really do our due diligence to address the issues that we face in our community. A lot of them which have grown out of discriminatory practices historically anyway, but that we do our due diligence to figure out how we address the issues of of criminal activity in our communities by utilizing technology that is not again connected to people with such bad politics and bad history with what they produce.

Palantir is in a fight right now with anthropic and one of them is really supportive of this fasc fascist in the White House and one is not. So I just wonder is there other technology around that maybe anthropic might be a part of of spawning that is not connected to Palantir in this whole network network of of of of bad bad

actors?

Actors.

Do you wanna answer that?

Chair. So, s b 54 prevents us from providing any of that information, is to include communicating with bad guys and and sharing information like that. Again, the guardrails are set in place that this would, really give OPD control of that information more so than what's already going into place. And what was spoken earlier tonight from when I was, you know, watching some of the other presentations, with DVP, and was brought up by our community members is there is a regional problem. We do have a regional problem with crime, and this is our way to get back, through technology, kinda bridge that gap with our staffing and not having enough police officers by utilizing information on a regional level.

Alright? So this is a a a plug and play technology for us to get online with Alameda County Sheriff's Department, San Francisco Police Sheriff's Department, and and San Jose, and those, county and other law enforcement agencies in Cocoa County because that's where we see where the crime's coming from Oakland or coming from other cities into our community. And that information sharing and while allowing us to protect against some of those concerns is paramount for us to continue to reduce crime and maintain the successes that we've had now for the last year?

Yeah. Council member

Houston. To the chair, good evening.

Good evening.

So I I understand what my council member is saying. If if we use a different, service provider, would that, be able to be intertwined with, the flock camera that the the county just approved another extension with flock. And I know that the that the city of Oak just happened today. And I know the city and the county works together and we've cotton individuals together using that. Right? But is there another if if we use another vendor, will it intertwine or can it talk to, what the county is doing with with the flock cameras?

So for my my understanding of Paraguin, it's a technology that allows us to pull that data from multiple different platforms, to include, you know, even jail information reports that are generated in other cities, and utilize the data that's coming from FLOC. Currently no. No. Sorry. Not not not from FLOC. Go ahead.

Sorry. We're not feeding or or or getting technologies from flock into Peregrine. It's it's it's at a point where it might it's it's gonna trigger sharing laws, auditing things. So at some point in the future, if we do decide that it's a step that we wanna go in, it's gonna be a discussion with PAC as we have to figure out auditing and how that does. It we can't just feed it right in without some sort of oversight thing. So at this point, we're not, asking. We're not going to flee flock into the Paragreen. Okay. Through the

chair, I'll move this item.

Okay. I will second that. And I just wanna make comment to that. I hear my colleagues, council member Fife's concerns say that I really do think that each of these public safety vendors, like I remember looking into some of the competitors against flock and it was like the ones that could actually I independently looked up some of the competition since I didn't want to just take the word of OPD, no offense. And it's like the ones that could take the scale of data and ALPR technology that we need in a city of our size.

It's like these guys have a direct contract with the Department of Home land Security. You know, it's like the options are, you know, limited. So I I do think just given our salary or excuse me, our staffing challenges that that we need to have technology. I just googled an article, and it looks like this pear green technology specifically helped the Atlanta Police Department see a 21% reduction in crime because of the the search capabilities. So I will second this.

Council member Fife, you wanna

Yeah. I just don't want my position to be misrepresented. What I'm asking for is our due diligence and what else is possible, what other technology is possible, what other firms, because I acknowledge that we need to address some serious issues regionally around crime. I don't dispute that, and I know, chief, you said sex traffic on the blade with girls. We all also have to talk about boys and the challenges that these issues are creating in our communities.

And at the same time, I pray that I'm wrong. I'm praying that we don't reproduce history, but the more that all of these local agencies invest in bad actors and these companies have some really bad actors, then we contribute to making them too big to fail where no one else can scale technology because they have the resources to do so. And with that on top of the the current president making it financially and economically impossible for other corporations or companies to compete with bad actors, it just puts us in a really bad situation. So I I my words are often twisted in this commit committee. My words are often twisted when it comes to public safety because I I have children.

I have grandchildren, and I want Oakland to be safe for them and everybody else's children. I'm just very concerned about who we continue to invest in and use using the the desperate needs of our city to justify again working primarily with bad actors. That's all.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by chair Wong to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the May 5 city council agenda. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Aye. No. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item passes with three ayes, one no. Five. To forward this item to the May 5 city council agenda on non consent. Reading in item five, receive an informational report of Oakland Police Department's Federal Law Enforcement Agency Task Force Annual Reports, and we have one speaker that signed up to speak.

Alright. This is the final item, guys. Three minutes.

Good evening. Jeff Samoka, acting captain in, criminal investigations division in Oakland Police Department here to give you a brief on the, annual report from the task force. And the task force that we're talking about are the US Marshals, US Secret Service, FBI Safe Streets, FBI Child Exploitation, ATF, and DEA. All of these reports previously have been submitted through the privacy committee. A note from the privacy committee, next year we're gonna make a we will make a more uniform report. Some of the language and some of the reports is should just be more concise and consistent. And we noted that and it'll be submitted for next year. With that, if you guys have any or if the council has any questions, we can take them.

Any questions? Can I entertain a motion? Oh, shoot. Sorry. Go to the speaker.

Miss Isata Olavala?

So every one of these agencies, the the police department has to come with a report to the privacy commission explaining exactly all of the interactions they had, what they did in detail to verify that they didn't have any appropriateness that would lead to your sanctuary city status that, illegal immigrants could be impacted. So a lot of this data thing is not just about privacy, it's about protecting people that are here illegally. Y'all have a commitment to that. So I understand what you're saying about we could become victims of certain things that have happened in the past. But what the city of Oakland is doing is protecting illegal immigrants through the privacy commission and this ordinance that you have related to the sanctuary city or ordinance, the privacy commission make sure that that ordinance ordinance is in in force.

That's a part of their job. And I don't want my safety put at risk because you want to protect some illegal people. Now anything you do is okay as long as it doesn't impact me. And this is how I see it. The maximum capacity to use all of the federal justice systems that we have, the FBI, the violent crime, that is being limited because you wanna protect some illegal people. And I don't have nothing against anybody, But if you are putting them ahead of my best interest, it's a problem. And that's how I see it.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item. Great. Questions, motions?

Council member Brown.

I'll I'll make a motion to move the item. Thank

you. That was a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Houston to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll, council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Aye. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye.

Nope. The

This item needs to be moved to city council.

Okay. Sorry. That was a motion made to receive and forward this item to the May 5 city council agenda. On roll again, council members Brown. I. Five. Yes. Houston. Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item five passes with four ayes to receive and forward this informational report to the Maypipp City Council agenda on consent. Now moving on to open forum, we have one public speaker, miss Isado Olavala.

So there was a report that came out that the, department of motor vehicles had to rescind 17,000 commercial, licenses because the people that had those licenses, their visas had expired, but the license was still in place, the 17,000 Sanctuary City people. Then we have, you don't understand how you are contributing to criminal activity. We have people in this country who have a partaking in criminal activity, the cartel, MS thirteen, or just some of them, they can easily come here because you allow them to come here. Some of the people that are coming here are not coming here because they came here illegally. They came here with visas, with travel visas, work visas, student visas, and they have expired.

That number is phenomenal, and you are protecting them. So you are protecting people who come here because they deserve a better chance. You have you are protecting people who have abused the system. They came here under a mandate that they would stay for a period of time, and they have avoid and I'm talking about a lot of Chinese people, baboo. And what about these, hotels for Chinese pregnant women when they come here? Y'all protecting them too? Y'all keep protecting it. You know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers for open forum.

Okay. Alright. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you, colleagues and the members of the public who stayed with us.