Military Culture Permeates Emeryville Police Department

 Emeryville's Militarized Police Force:

A Modest Proposal

Opinion

by Brian Donahue

Grand Poobah / Il Duce

For a hot minute, after officers from the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd, the nation cried enough is enough and police reform seemed to be on everyone’s lips.  Even here in Emeryville, the City Council passed a proclamation supporting State legislation proscribing police militarization.  All the heated talk ended quickly however and the police went back to being the police.  Here at the Tattler, we didn’t see police reform as a bandwagon to hop on and hop off.  We still think reform is the goal.  For instance, we see no cogent reason why our police should routinely carry military weapons of war on Emeryville's streets as they do.  The police here are adamant: they need more firepower, they need to always be armed with assault rifles with enough power to blast through three house walls and still kill a civilian.

Against that backdrop, we introduced a new, largely symbolic effort to bring our police back into our community, to reflect community values.  We suggested the Emeryville Police Department throw off their military personnel ranking system they use and replace it with a civilian ranking model.  In this way, the Chief would become EPD#1, the Captains would become EPD#2, the Lieutenants EPD#3 and so on.  Current Lieutenant Fred Dauer for instance, would become EPD#3 Fred Dauer or just #3 Dauer.

Field Marshal Dauer

Alas, the police took to this proposal like a cat takes to water: they responded with a full throated NO.  They will keep their military modus operandi including all the trappings, they insisted.  But the United States military, as everyone knows, are liars.  They always lie to get us into wars.  And then they lie again when we inquire as to how well they are prosecuting the war.  The Emeryville Police Department is in the thrall of and wants to be associated with this government agency that can be counted on to lie to the people; right down to their military ranking.   Our police love governmental lying.
 

So after years trying to get a less militaristic, more community friendly police department, we’re ready to throw in the towel.  Let’s give them what they want.  Let’s hyper-militarize the Emeryville Police Department.  If EPD Captain Oliver Collins is feared by the people with the military epithet 'captain', imagine how much better it would be if he were known as Generalissimo Oliver Collins.  Lieutenant Fred Dauer too will be even more fearsome as Field Marshall Fred Dauer.  That a militarized police department is cast as a good thing, why then equivocate Emeryville?  Let's start thanking them for their service, why not?  Let's wallow in military grandeur and idolatry.

Here’s our modest proposal:

Letter to the Tattler: Emeryville Needs an Ethics Commission

Emeryville Should Have an Independent Ethics Commission Like Other Bay Area Cities 

Open Letter 

by Elisabeth Montgomery

The City of Emeryville recently devoted time and energy to establishing a Code of Ethics, which I applaud since small communities must stay engaged and diligent about upholding government standards in our democracy. The City Council was asked to begin this process based on behaviors exhibited by our councilpersons during the July hiring hearings in 2021 when several applicants were for the open City Planning Commission. One councilperson spoke in hostile words towards one or more applicants. Disclaimer - one of the applicants happened to be my husband Eugene Tssui. When researching how to send a complaint about a City Council member’s conduct, I discovered that Emeryville had no ethics code. “Who handles complaints against council members?” The reply from the legal department was, “City Council will decide if the complaint is valid.”

Emmy Award winning 
Emeryville resident
Elisabeth Montgomery

Thus, I began a journey to understand how a Code of Ethics can inform our city leaders about running our local government. I wrote letters to then-mayor John Bauters and spoke to city lawyers and clerks. I reviewed city council transcripts and spoke with regional organizations that assist cities in setting up a Code of Ethics. Like our US Constitution, I learned that developing a great Code of Ethics is a “living document” that is always “in progress” and needs annual reviews. 

One hallmark of a great Code of Ethics is not just writing up a legal template for the city staff and saying it is done. Instead, it requires gathering input from the residents and community. According to legal experts at the Institute for Local Government, the other explicit guarantee to be embedded in the Ethics Code is that the clear objective - when confronted by constituents with challenges to city staff conduct - the City Council should not be the only decision-makers on the issue. Instead, an independent governance body should help decide the case. This will assure elected officials avoid perceptions that their values are based on their views rather than the everyday ethics that determine our laws. 

The current Emeryville Mayor must take the next step to inform residents, gather input, set up an oversight committee, and update the Code of Ethics in 2024. 

Elisabeth P. Montgomery, Ph.D., GCDF is an international career development educator and an Emmy Award winning documentary film producer.  She has lived for 34 years in Emeryville with her husband Eugene Tssui, himself an international architect and author.  Mr Tssui's work is currently being shown at the New York Museum of Modern Art.  The couple have been advocating for an ethics commission for Emeryville for the last two years.  The current Mayor of Emeryville, John Bauters, has recently said NO to the question of an ethics commission for Emeryville.

New Bike "Improvements" on Adeline Street Puts Cyclists in Harm's Way

Emeryville City Engineer to Adeline Street Bikes:  “Prepare to Get Doored!”

By John Fricke

Twenty years ago, Adeline Street (Oakland’s sections north and south of Emeryville, and Emeryville’s short section in the middle) included four travel lanes, in addition to parked cars on each side of the street. 

Adeline Street 20 years ago.

When I joined the city council, I pushed to convert the right travel lanes into bike lanes.  A vocal minority living in the Andante apartment building (Adeline and 40th Streets) sought to kill the project because diagonal parking spaces in front of their building would be converted to parallel parking.  They asserted that the whole exercise was meaningless given how short the Emeryville section of Adeline Street is. 

Thankfully, the pro-car voices did not prevail and the project was completed. 

Adeline Street up until two years ago.

(Several years after completion, the City of Oakland repaved its two sections of Adeline Street.  The City of Oakland striped its sections of Adeline Street nearly the same as in Emeryville.  The tail wagged the dog.)

For over fifteen years, Adeline Street was a relatively sound design for bikes; until Emeryville’s current city engineer (annual salary: $168,000) took a look at Adeline Street. 

The city engineer (duly licensed as both a civil engineer and a traffic engineer) recommended a plan which included, in one section near 45th Street, curving the bike lane up against the parked cars. 

Before:

Two years ago, before bungling: Note the ample space 
for car doors.

After:

Adeline today: Prepare to get doored. 

Bike riders are now sitting ducks for a passenger car door that abruptly opens in front of the bike.  So close is the newly-striped bike lane that a bike farthest to the left in the bike lane is still in harm’s way.

Bam!

Are traffic engineers allowed to arbitrarily shift a bike lane into harm’s way?  Not according to the California Highway Design Manual.  At over one thousand pages, the Highway Design Manual dictates exactly how all the public streets in California are to be laid out, including precise details regarding bicycle lanes.  “All city, county, regional and other local agencies responsible for bikeways or roads . . . shall follow the bikeway design criteria established in this manual and the California [Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices], as authorized in the Streets and Highways Code Sections 890.6 and 891(a).”  Section 115.1. 

According to the California Highway Design Manual, a bike lane shall be at least five feet wide and shall be at least eight feet from the vertical face of the curb.  The city engineer's new serpentine bike lane maintains the legally-required minimum width of 5 feet, but is only seven feet from the curb at its closest point.  This represents a swerve of four feet into the door zone.  The curving of the new bike lane is also in violation of the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices which states, “[b]icycle lane markings on Class II Bikeways (Bike Lane) should be placed a constant distance from the marked lane line or centerline . . ..”  Section 9C.04. 

Not only did the city engineer curve the bike lane into the door zone, he reconfigured most of the intersections to force bikes to make sharp turns. 

Street sign reads as follows- Bikes: now swerve right, then
swerve left.  Prepare to repeat until you reach the 
Oakland border.

These new intersection configurations violate the standards dictated by the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices: 

1:  the bike lane is to maintain a constant distance from the centerline (cited above).  Section 9C.04. 

2:  “Raised barriers (e.g., raised traffic bars and asphalt concrete dikes) or raised pavement markers shall not be used to delineate bike lanes on Class II Bikeways (Bike Lane).”  Section 9C.04.

Here is the required intersection configuration:

Normally, traffic engineers slavishly follow the state law requirements so that the city doesn’t get sued when someone is injured.  Not so in Emeryville.  How did this bungling design get approved by the city engineer, city attorney, city manager, and city council?  The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well in City Hall.

John Fricke is a longtime Emeryville resident, father of three, husband, lawyer, and former member of the Emeryville City Council.