Emeryville Police Department Won't Release Racial Profiling Data Until 2023

 State to Force Emeryville to Track Race Data

Is The Emeryville Police Department Racist?

Citizens Can't Know Until 2023

Department Hasn't Been Tracking Data

News Analysis

For the amount of money the people of Emeryville pay for their police department, citizens should be able to check on the cops….to see what kind of a job they’re doing, like for instance racial profiling.…are they doing that?  To those who would want to know and that should be everyone, the police have a ready response: The people of Emeryville are not worthy of having that kind of information.  And the police are not required by law to keep the kinds of records that would inform citizens of that anyway.  They could, but they don’t.

The State of California is coming to the rescue however, bringing recalcitrant police departments like Emeryville’s to accountability and transparency.   Starting in 2022, Emeryville will be forced by law to track its police racial profiling data.  That’s cold comfort to Emeryville residents who want to know now if their police department is racist.  Full police accountability and transparency in Emeryville will have to wait.  

State law passed in 2015 (AB 953) requires every police department up and down California to track data that could prove if the police are racist.  Many departments are already complying with the law but Emeryville, waiting until the last minute, will not release its state mandated racial profiling data (collected starting in 2022) to the public until April of 2023.

The law, known as AB 953: The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, will require Emeryville to collect, archive and disseminate (redacted) data obtained when citizens are stopped by the police including the result of the stop, such as, no action, warning, citation, property seizure, or arrest.  Also police will be required to archive the perceived race or ethnicity, gender, and approximate age of the person stopped.

As it stands now, an insouciant EPD tracks none of this data and the Department as a whole, as well as the people of Emeryville, are in the dark as to any culture of racism that might exist here.  Our current interim chief of police Robert Schreeder says as much, stating EPD “needs to be much more robust in how we track data”.  He told the Tattler, “Where I come from, this kind of data is part of the annual [police] report.” 

From the 2016 RIPA Report
Racial profiling by police in California
is by far the most prevalent.

 

An advisory board set up by AB 953, the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) released a report in 2018 that found racial profiling is common among police districts.  The report showed Black drivers in California were stopped by police at 2.5 times the per capita rate of whites and searched three times as often.  Black people accounted for 15% of all stops but make up about 6% of the population.  Hispanics accounted for 40% of stops, a slightly higher per capita rate, while whites were a third of the stops, a slightly lower rate.

Moreover, “a higher percentage of Black individuals were stopped for reasonable suspicion than any other racial identity group,” the board reported.  Officers were shown to search Black people nearly three times as often as to search whites, though white suspects were more likely to yield contraband or other evidence.  Black people also were more likely to be arrested and stopped at night.

The 2018 RIPA report showed that of 451 police departments across the state, 26% received citizen complaints alleging racial or identity profiling for the 2016 calendar year (the first year after AB 953 became law).

The disturbing findings are not relegated to rural police departments in the state.  The Bay Area is shown to be a hot spot of racist police practices.  Indeed, racist police are right on our doorstep.  Concurrent with the legally required RIPA annual reporting, Stanford University researchers conducted a multi-year comprehensive analysis of 28,000 citizen stops made by the Oakland Police Department.  Overall, they found a consistent pattern of racial disparities in the community members stopped, handcuffed, searched, and arrested by the OPD.

Former Police Chief Tejada Implicated

After the much publicized May 25th murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, even white people are becoming increasingly aware of the systemic racism in police departments across the nation.  And against that backdrop, people of good will benefit from the kind of data AB 953 reveals.  Many police departments in California, sensing a problem, began tracking racial profiling data even before AB 953, including departments as small as Emeryville’s.  Unfortunately, that wisdom hasn’t been in evidence here.  

While Emeryville citizens can’t know if their police department is racist now because of a lack of this data, we can know this is not an accident.  It's because of a lack of interest by the EPD.

Money For Yoga But Not Racial Profiling Data
Yoga time and other 'mindfulness' programs
at EPD takes 18% of the police budget.

The new law passed in 2015, just before the City of Emeryville  hired former Chief of Police Jennifer Tejada.  Chief Tejada was well aware of AB 953 and the systemic culture of police racism the law seeks to expose but she chose not to direct her officers to begin collecting the data that is needed.  Instead, Ms Tejada engaged in a program of officer ‘wellness’ at the department that focused on officer yoga.  Current Chief Schreeder noted Emeryville spends 18% of its budget on Ms Tejada’s wellness program; an unusually high percentage he reported to the City Council at a July 21st meeting.  Video can be seen HERE.

Former Chief Tejada, during her tenure preferred to not track data that would reveal possible racism at EPD but she did feel comfortable enough to release racist police blotter posts to the City’s website.  Over a period of a year after the Tattler exposed it, Chief Tejada kept issuing the racial identity of alleged perpetrators of crime in the blotter without any accompanying information that might bring the perpetrators to justice.  Citizens reading the City website at that time learned about “Black” suspects to specific crimes but no other identifying information, leading racially aware citizens to question why.  After the Chief could not supply a reason for her racist blotter posts, the City Manager ended the practice (all while the Tattler reported).  That media exposure was a lesson in how public embarrassment can be a great motivator for civic entities to engage in better behavior, and presumably the same will be able to be said about AB 953. 

The Tattler began an investigation into finding out if the Emeryville Police Department is racist on June 28th with a story entitled 'Announcing: The Emeryville Tattler Police Accountability Project'.  This disclosure that EPD will not release racial profiling data until April of 2023 serves as the culmination of the Tattler investigation.

Citizens can begin reporting complaints about suspected racial profiling incidents to the Emeryville police after April 2022.  The police will enter any reports into the new data base after that date.  Before April 2022, EPD has not specifically committed to keep or archive any racial profiling complaints.  Citizens will be able to track the 2022 data beginning April 2023 when the EPD reveals it in their annual report.  Only then will Emeryville residents be able to see if they’re getting a good value for the money they pay for their police (and if their police are racist).

Correction: We earlier reported the chief of police is hired by the City Council.  In fact the Chief is hired by the City Manager.  We apologize for the error.

Are They Racist?
Many police departments are.  The former Chief was (pictured at center bottom).
We don't know about Emeryville's police in the aggregate because it has 
not been a priority to reveal it to the public.
We'll find out in April of 2023.

Announcing: The Emeryville Tattler Police Accountability Project

The Emeryville Tattler Police Accountability Project

Has EPD Engaged in Racial Profiling?

The Police Accountability Project Will Find Out

Public Announcement
The Emeryville Tattler is in the process of obtaining years of data from the police department that will show indications of racial profiling the department may have engaged in. With a series of Public Records Requests, we will expose the field notes currently in the possession of the Emeryville Police Department that will show among other things, the race of civilians stopped in their vehicles, and as pedestrians in the commons and when the police use force for any reason.  If the police find an individual or group of individuals ‘suspicious’ for whatever reason and they stop them, we will know the race of those stopped.  We will be enabled to compare our police department with other departments.
The resultant data collected will reveal hard truths about our police department independent of any government claims to the contrary and thus will be very helpful in delivering the police reform the citizens are clamoring for.

In the wake of the mass nation-wide racist police brutality protests rocking our country, Emeryville residents would be wise to question the police in our own little town.  It’s clear police departments around the nation are racist.  But is our own little department also racist?  If they’re interviewed on the subject, police uniformly downplay or even deny there’s a problem.  Police sometimes lie...even Emeryville police. That’s to be expected. But what is the difference between what the government claims is the case and the actual record?  That’s what we intend to find out.

The Emeryville Police Department
Is it as good as they say?  The records that will show us
belong to us.  We're going to get the records and open them.

Citizens should know that Emeryville's City Hall, scared of open citizen revolt, is attempting to seize the narrative on police reform. They're seeing this as primarily a public relations problem and they're attacking it in a two pronged way; they're playing down calls for reform while admitting some cause for reform at the margins (that they say they can be trusted with administering).  They're going out of their way to assure the citizens the police department is already effectively a priori constrained with their recent City web posting that would mollify an agitated public.  And the City Council is also preparing meetings that will putatively reveal some problems at the police department and offer some fixes.  The first such meeting is slated for late July.  However, the timing of all this newfound desire for police accountability should be seen as suspect.
The Tattler has reported on evidence of racism at EPD and the existence of an undemocratic culture there for years and the Council has shown no interest in even investigating.  From the EPD killing of a black woman, Yuvette Henderson, to the militarization of department weaponry with the wholesale issuance of assault rifles, to the racist postings by the Chief of Police on the City’s website police blotter, there has been a lot to look at for would be reformers.  Unfortunately we could not get a City Council member interested in looking at any of it.  Claims made now for self reform will not be seen as credible or good enough.

The Tattler will report on what the City Council reveals in their investigations into our police department of course, but we suspect there’s not going to be much of anything helpful brought by them.  That’s where the Tattler will step in and fill the void with actual and relevant data.  We've already begun the data collection process but so far the EPD hasn’t been forthcoming with our initial public record request.  We're undaunted and you can count on the Tattler's dogged persistence as we retrieve the public records the people have a right to see.  We hope the City Council will partner with the Tattler and use what we find to drive reform as we begin the Emeryville Tattler Police Accountability Project.  Watch this space...