Reversal: EPD Now Says It's Illegal to Park in Bike Lanes

Police Department Reverses Earlier Decision Legalizing Bike Lane Blocking

While Chief is Away on Medical Leave, Second in Command Announces it's Now Illegal To Park in Bike Lanes

A delivery truck blocking a bike lane on Horton Street in Emeryville last week received a ticket by the Emeryville police.  It’s a normal, everyday thing in cities across the Bay Area, but in Emeryville, it represents a great leap forward in bicycle safety.

Until April 14th, trucks blocking bike lanes didn’t get ticketed because it was a perfectly legal thing according to Emeryville’s Chief of Police Jeffery Jennings and his interpretation of California’s Vehicle Code.  But on that date, an attorney hired by the City of Emeryville to examine Chief Jennings’s claim, determined that, like other cities, Emeryville should consider vehicles blocking bike lanes as illegal.

April 27th, after the new April 14th EPD ruling,
this truck was blocking a bike lane on Horton Street.

A City hired 'special counsel', Christie Crowl, delivered her finding about the California Vehicle Code at an April 14th Transportation Committee meeting during a bike lane discussion item brought by Mayor John Bauters.  Emeryville’s police captain, second in command, Oliver Collins, who attended the meeting later told the Tattler the police department would take up Ms Crowl’s interpretation of the vehicle code, reversing the Chief's ruling, making Emeryville no longer an outlier among Bay Area cities.  Chief Jennings has been out for some weeks on medical leave and did not attend the Transportation Committee meeting.

...moments later, the truck received a parking
ticket for "blocking a bike lane" according to this
EPD employee issuing the citation.

The City of Emeryville and its police department has been flustered at the Tattler’s airing of Chief Jennings’s unique, some might say embarrassing reading of state law over the past months.  With the Chief out on long term leave, acting chief, Mr Collins wasted no time instructing his troops that the department would henceforth follow the ruling made by Ms Crowl, resulting in the ticketing of the truck on Horton Street for bike lane blocking.  The Police Department's actions hint that it wants to move past the imbroglio brought by Chief Jennings as quickly as possible.  The attorney’s opinion was made on April 14th and tickets for infraction were already being written by April 27th.
 

 Chief Jennings could not be reached for comment about this reversal of his edict.

The new ruling will have the effect of protecting bicyclists (when implemented) and it also brings Emeryville’s Municipal Code into compliance with the State's Vehicle Code which had previously been in conflict.  Emeryville’s code (4-9.12) makes it illegal to block bike lanes but the Chief said Emeryville’s law cannot supersede Sacramento law and so it was considered null and void.  Emeryville’s code, which reads, “It shall be unlawful for the operator of any train, truck, or other vehicle to stop or park in such a manner as to block or impede the flow of traffic” included bicycle traffic in the law before Chief Jennings's ruling.  

Emeryville Police Chief Jeff Jennings
Away on long term medical leave, 
Emeryville has moved on past him.

Mr Jennings announced that it's OK for vehicles to block bike lanes (for up to 72 hours) in a letter to the City last November as a result of frustration over mounting calls from angry bicyclists.  The Chief subsequently directed his employees not to ticket vehicles parked in bike lanes.  Publicly, he announced that any vehicles that blocked bike lanes but also parked in red curb zones or with 'no parking' signs would get tickets from his department.

The Tattler challenged the Chief’s red zone exception with a series of calls to the department over trucks parked in red zones  (that also were blocking bike lanes).  What we found was that police would not arrive if the dispatcher was informed that a red zone blocking truck was also blocking a bike lane.  We documented six such cases, waiting for the police for at least 20 minutes and up to one hour.  In no case did police ever arrive, let alone ticket the truck for the red zone violation.

Christie Crowl was hired by the City as special counsel expressly to rule on this bike lane issue for presentation to the  April 14th Transportation Committee meeting.  Ms Crowl served as Emeryville’s interim deputy city attorney before new City Attorney John Kennedy was hired March 2nd.  Ms Crowl is a partner at Jarvis Fay and Gibson, an Oakland based law firm specializing in government law.

It remains to be seen after Chief Jennings returns to his job if he will overturn his employee Captain Collins’s new ruling supporting bicyclists and safe bike lane travel.  For the record, Mr Collins told the Tattler he is confident the department will not go back to the days of legal bike lane blocking.  

The Law Before April 14th:
Each one of the following trucks were blocking 
red zones and blocking bike lanes.  The police were 
called but they never showed up.  No show means no tickets means it's
defacto legal.  The Chief said vehicles red zone blocking would mean tickets,
regardless of bike lanes.  These photos are part of the Tattler documentation that he
didn't mean what he said.  Demonstrably, it's OK, under Chief Jennings's (former) ruling, to block red zones as long as you're also blocking a bike lane.  He isn't fond of bicycling.

New Police Chief Moves to Increase Police Accountability

 New Chief Unilaterally Increases Police Accountability

Town Hall Public Debate on Militarization,

Citizen Complaints Democratized

Emeryville’s new Chief of Police, Jeffery Jennings, indicated this week he will usher in greater accountability and transparency at the police department by agreeing to a open town hall style public meeting addressing police use of force and re-writing the citizen complaint code against officers with a higher degree of probity and openness.  The town hall meeting will likely be held off until the fall owing to the COVID pandemic but the re-write of the complaint code will begin much sooner says the Chief.

The Chief’s democratic demeanor, representing a thawing of previous intractability at the EPD on these two issues, will bring a new local level of community engagement for the department against a backdrop of greater calls for police accountability nation-wide. 

As it stands now, a citizen who wishes to make a complaint against an Emeryville police officer is asked to surrender their name, their address and their date of birth, all expressly counter to citizen’s right to make complaints anonymously.  Chief Jennings agrees the way the code is written now is improper and he told the Tattler April 20th he “will make it right” so that it better comports with state law.  The questions about complainants’ identity will be clearly qualified that answers given are strictly on a voluntary basis.  The date of birth question will be dispensed with altogether according to Chief Jennings.

Chief Jeff Jennings

These questions, as currently asked of would be citizen complainants, besides being of dubious legality, have a stultifying effect on accountability owing to their coercive and intimidating nature.

The public town hall style meeting will be attended by police department employees including the Chief himself and will focus on the militarization of EPD including specifically the quiet issuance of AR-15 assault rifles some years ago to officers for use in their daily rounds in Emeryville.  The police will answer citizen's questions and the Chief will weigh in himself on the issuance of these weapons to the rank and file he says.  The Council chambers will likely be the location of the meeting and it will probably take place before a regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

Assault rifles are considered weapons of high firepower and great lethality by the state legislature and are illegal for most citizens to carry in the State of California.  Emeryville police started carrying these weapons about six years ago, around the time former Chief of Police Jennifer Tejada took office during a period when police forces began acquiring military grade weapons systems nation-wide.  Citizens requested accountability for the new level of force the police acquired in Emeryville but were rebuffed by Chief Tejada.  The department would not attend any such town hall meetings set up to debate the militarization of the department Chief Tejada said.  “The weapons of my officers are not going to be up to a public debate” Chief Tejada opined at a public safety meeting at the time and City Hall dropped the issue.

By reversing the department’s wall of silence around the assault rifles issued to police and the unilateral rewriting of the citizen complaint code, EPD signals it is open to a new period of glasnost.  It is hard to say if this democratization of Emeryville’s police comes as a result of the new Chief or from pressure from below, taken on as citizens demand greater police accountability nation-wide.  Perhaps it’s a bit of both.  But it is taken as a public good that the police department has more citizen support as they strongly pronounce their embrace of and need for ‘community policing’.  

Emeryville's Current Police Complaint Form
Complainant's name, address, date of birth not optional.  Many citizens, seeing these questions will drop the complaint. 
Accountability is effectively thwarted.  Is that the function of this?    

New Chief of Police Named

Former BART Deputy Chief to be 

Emeryville Top Cop

Jeffery Jennings moves from BART
brass to Emeryville Chief of Police

Breaking News

BART Deputy Chief Jeffery Jennings will be sworn in as Emeryville’s new Chief of Police in an event on Monday the City announced.  Deputy Jennings follows interim Chief Robert Schreeder who was appointed in June as the City searched for a new permanent Chief.  Outgoing Deputy Chief Jennings has 26 years of law enforcement experience which began at the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department where he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant before he became part of the BART top brass.  

Mr Jennings attended San Francisco State University and completed his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at CSU Sacramento.  He earned a graduate degree with a Master’s in Public Administration from Golden Gate University.

Deputy Chief Jennings found himself embroiled in controversy in 2016 when he defended fellow BART officers in San Francisco who punched a man already in handcuffs in front of scores of witnesses, at least one of whom recorded the altercation.  After police charged the man with battery as a result of spitting at them in addition to the original charge, Public Defender Jeff Adachi called for prosecutors to drop the remaining counts, saying his client did nothing wrong.“It’s really an example of what’s wrong with our system. The system run amok,” Mr Adachi said.  Chief Jennings earned the enmity of San Francisco cop watchers when he said the punch was a “tactical distraction blow” and nothing criminal.  

In 2017, then acting as temporary BART chief of police, Mr Jennings opposed a citizen oversight watchdog committee set up in the wake of the infamous BART Oscar Grant shooting.  The committee had proposed new standards for use of force requiring officers to use only the minimum amount of force necessary to make arrests. 

Mr Jeffery Jennings will command an Emeryville police force in transition as the City Council joins with citizens demanding more accountability after the shooting of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.