The End of Collegiality at the Emeryville City Council? Yes, But Why?

 Petulant Name Calling, Ugly Xenophobia and Racism 

Emeryville's Famous City Council Collegiality Evaporates

News Analysis/Opinion

The ugly specter of xenophobia was raised at the December 12th City Council meeting along with petulant name calling and something else by one Council member against another when Councilwoman Ally Medina, reversing the long storied Emeryville City Council culture of collegiality, attacked her new colleague, the incoming Kalimah Priforce.  Eight days after the outburst, at another meeting, Ms Medina announced her resignation from the City Council,  citing personal reasons of a financial nature.  

The disobliging attitude against Council member Priforce, who had been sworn in only moments before the attack, came after he had respectfully expressed his discomfort in Council member John Bauters being selected by the Council majority to serve a second back-to-back term as mayor.   Ms Medina defended the selection and accused Mr Priforce of sexism with his stated discomfort, calling out his male privilege and disparaging him as a "man" who will not be listened to.

Former Council member Dianne Martinez
and current member Ally Medina. 
They're panicked.

After a San Francisco friend of Mr Priforce phoned in during the public comment period, defending him against the attack, Council member Medina denounced the commenter as having come from outside Emeryville and therefore illegitimate.  “Be well aware that with a simple public records act request we can look at all of your text messages and confirm who is and who is not from Emeryville”, she warned Mr Priforce with xenophobic and autocratic flair.  Left unmentioned by Ms Medina is the red carpet treatment given to every out-of-town developer who comes to Emeryville with an apartment tower proposal she (and the rest of them) always lavish praise on.  Didactically lecturing Council member Priforce and acting as if Emeryville were not a regional player in power politics, ugly xenophobia is only to be aimed at Mr Priforce it would seem, others are to get a pass.

Noteworthy was the fact that the rest of the Council sat in stoney silence during Ms Medina’s tirade against our new Councilman, letting her comments stand unchallenged.

Council member Kalimah Priforce
....the reason the City Council
is so distraught.

Also of note in the evening filled with Council chicanery was the stern publicly given harangue directed at Mr Priforce by retiring City Councilwoman Dianne Martinez.  The outgoing Martinez wanted the incoming Priforce to know collegiality is the coin of the realm in the Emeryville Council chamber and that he is on notice to oblige.  The irony that Ms Martinez’s friend on the Council, Ms Medina, attacked the newly instated Councilman moments later, was lost on Dianne Martinez.

The first-two meetings ordeal faced by our new Council member Kalimah Priforce was shocking to be sure.  It leaves us wondering why.  Mr Priforce made statements on the campaign trail that would indicate he might be an independent voice on the Council, it is true.  He was heard questioning Emeryville’s new pro-marketplace housing policies for instance.   But the force aligned against him was strangely disproportional.  Is this to be a new era of Council infighting we’re entering?  If Mr Priforce, who is Black, actually is an independent voice, that will likely be the case.  But the disrespect shown by the Council majority and the asymmetrical force of the attack makes us think there’s more at play here.  Name calling and lecturing the incoming City Councilman?  We think the Council is unduly afraid of Mr Priforce.  We think this is mostly racism.

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.

Defund the Emeryville Police Department

Defunding Is Our Best Hope For REAL 
Police Reform

Their Backs Against the Wall, Police Praise Protesters 
Against Police Racism

Next Will Come Phony Talk of 'Reform'

News Analysis/Opinion
After many retail establishments were broken into and merchandise stolen, the Chief of Police wrote a letter to the people last week telling us that looters in Emeryville are taking away from genuine and peaceful protests against the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.  Chief Jennifer Tejada's letter told us she supports the peaceful protests going on and she said she wants “equality for all” and to “give voice to those who are marginalized” and that “racism is real”.
And with that, our chief of police is repeating what chiefs of police are saying all across the country.  Racism must end, the chiefs are saying and they're nearly tripping over themselves to announce they are allied with the peaceful protestors that have taken over America’s streets of late while denouncing looters (even as some are clearly ordering attacks against peaceful protesters).  Praising peaceful protesters against police racism has become the thing to do for police chiefs in America in June 2020.  Thus, ipso facto, each police department is not racist they would have us believe.  It must be other police departments that are the racist ones.

Next up in this archetype is massive ‘police reform’.  Like last time, police departments are going to tell us they’re going to self reform.  In fact that discussion is already being presented by many chiefs.  They say they recognize the problem police have with race and they’re ready for reform.
So what’s going to be offered up?  Sensitivity training, police attending seminars on race sensitivity, First Amendment rights and that kind of thing.  Virtually every police department in America is going to be on board because the police hear our frustrations they say.  Chief Tejada says it.  Should we feel hope and encouragement by these stirring words?  Is this going to be enough to solve this problem that Chief Tejada recognizes?

Emeryville's Chief of Police
Jennifer Tejada
She loves peaceful 
protest against police racism
in June 2020. In 2017,
she loved racist police 
blotter posts.

The answer to those questions is: we should look to what they do rather than what they say they’re going to do.

Broken Record
‘The police are going to reform themselves to address systemic racism’.  Where have we heard that before?
We’ve heard it every time the media grabs onto a compelling story with above the fold reports of a racist police culture, starting with the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and extending past the shooting of Michael Brown and the choking of Eric Garner.  Academic studies have shown it over and over; police are far more racist than the control group of average Americans.  There is an enduring  culture of anti-black racism among America's police departments and everybody knows it.
Police keep telling us during these crises that they ‘get it’ and they’re going to reform.  But policing in America doesn’t get fixed.  Since Rodney King, it’s actually gone in the opposite direction as departments get more and more militarized, police arming themselves with deadlier firepower leading to more killings of citizens, usually unarmed black men.  All this has evolved against police claiming wholesale persecution of them by the public.  They’re claiming there’s a ‘war on police’ despite the fact policing has never been safer in America than it is right now.  They’re presenting a narrative of the loathsome public that hates police that must be controlled or else police will be killed or attacked.  This is driving municipalities around the country to pour more money into police departments.  Constrained by budgets, cities increase spending on police at the expense of community services.  Emeryville's police budget now resembles the pentagon's budget as a percentage of government spending.

Where police departments across America goes, so goes Emeryville’s police department.  This is a broken paradigm.  We should never expect any police department, including the Emeryville police department to self reform.  Police departments will only change if we force them to.  That force is their budget.  We need to join with other cities who are now openly talking about changing the paradigm by going after police budgets.  We need to begin defunding the EPD.  That’s the only mechanism that will drive real change.

We must learn the only reason America's cops are talking so eloquently now about reform is their backs are against the wall.  They're hoping the talk will be enough to defuse the situation and they'll be able to stop real reform.  Indeed, every other time police faced this level of public outrage, it's been enough to eventually force a return to normal.  What’s normal?  Normal is when chiefs of police around the country feel emboldened enough for instance to castigate Colin Kaepernick for his peaceful protest of kneeling during the National Anthem.  Mr Kaepernick was outraged over racist police brutality in 2016 and so he peacefully protested.  But that was unacceptable said America’s police.  Now that their backs are against the wall, police say peaceful protest against police brutality is suddenly perfectly fine.  Just ask Chief Tejada.  Where was Jennifer Tejada when Mr Kaepernick was protesting peacefully.  We didn’t get any letters supporting him then, did we?

And what can we learn from our Chief of Police who wants us to rally behind the police who are rallying behind the peaceful protesters (she says) all while castigating the looters?  These are to be looked at as two separate groups of people she says; one good, the other bad.  What she isn’t saying (not part of the police narrative) or doesn’t know (even worse) is the peaceful protesters and the looters are one and the same.  America’s poor and working people of all colors, especially black people, have had their fill.  They’re using the only means available to them to try for change.  People pushed to the edge will turn to violence.  It’s totally to be expected.  The worse it gets for average Americans in contemporary America the more we can expect uprisings like this.  We can expect growing violence in such a downward spiral.  What isn’t helpful is our chief of police joining the chorus of chiefs everywhere trying to hang onto the narrative that empowers them at our expense.  She’s trying to keep the money flowing to the police and we’re trying to upset the dominant paradigm that only leads to more violence and more racism.  The looters and the vandals don't 'take away' from what the peaceful protesters are doing; it's all part of a greater whole, we're all in it together and it's all to be expected regardless of what Chief Tejada says.

We cannot expect vast numbers of people, the poor, working class and black people to behave in a manner that no other people would do.  People cannot be expected to be super human.  We can not have what Chief Tejada is driving us towards: a narrative that would posit black people’s civil rights are only as enduring as average people’s ability to not loot when they’re backs are against the wall and they’re rightfully angry.  We are not accepting attempts to divide us.

We should remember Chief Tejada’s record at the Emeryville Police Department.  After EPD shot and killed Yuvette Henderson, a black woman in 2015, Chief Tejada told us the State of California is wrong about the AR-15 assault rifle that killed Ms Henderson.  Chief Tejada told us that lawmakers in Sacramento who banned AR-15s have it all wrong about these weapons now carried by Emeryville police.  They are not assault rifles she says, rather simple sporting rifles.  This was her narrative when there was talk of taking away these guns from our police.  She was trying to downplay the deadly firepower of these assault weapons.  Incidentally, witnesses and forensic testimony reported the kill shot by an Emeryville police officer's AR-15 was made after Ms Henderson had been hit in the side and her gun she had flew back six feet behind her, making the kill shot unnecessary according to the testimony at the civil trial following the police clearing themselves of any wrong doing.
We should also remember Chief Tejada refused to stop posting racist crime reports in Emeryville’s official crime blotter in 2016/17.  It took nearly a year of Tattler reports for Ms Tejada to finally stop.

Emeryville should use this time to finally do something to change the unacceptable paradigm of anti-black police racism in our little neck of the woods.  It is our good fortune that our current Chief of Police is retiring now amid these epic protests.  We should use this time to drive real change and stop allowing soothing language from police attempting to save their funding, lull us back to sleep until the next crisis.  We need to think globally and act locally.  We need to use our nuclear option now at this propitious moment, and start defunding our police to force change now in the place that never changes.

Early Release of Test Scores Reveals a Failing Emery School District

Prospects for African American Students 

Dim at Emery

Teachers Warning of Consequences of "Racist Practices"

Appear to be Vindicated

Black Students "Not Served"

News Analysis
Emery Unified School District released an early peek at last season’s yet to be officially released state sanctioned student test scores at Wednesday’s School Board meeting revealing a school wide drop in academic achievement and a district with vexatious problems educating African American students specifically. The disturbing figures come on the heels of a June 15th School Board meeting where nine teachers rose to give warning of such negative consequences as a result of “racist practices” implemented by School Superintendent John Rubio.
 At the Wednesday night meeting, high school principal Jessica Goode said the numbers she called “repugnant”, showed that African American students “are not being served” at the beleaguered school district despite an attempt by Mr Rubio to spin the data to show the opposite.

The presenter of the data at the meeting, Dr Kell, an Emery administrator, indicated the District has formulated a plan to deal with the plunging test scores involving "integrating horizontal and vertical coherence" and a call to "improve the organizational climate" among other ideas. The three Board members attending the meeting Wednesday night seemed to take the bad news in stride but member Cruz Vargas said he was happy the District had come up with a plan to turn the numbers around for next year.

School Board Member
Cruz Vargas
A self described "numbers man",
Cruz didn't say anything about the low
test score numbers but he's happy
there's a plan to turn test scores
 around for next year.

The taxpayer investment of $100 million in a new school campus last year had no affect on a persistent pattern of falling test scores at Emery since Superintendent Rubio was hired three years ago. Despite a decade of promises that the gleaming new facilities at the Emeryville Center of Community Life would help bring up scores on their own, the bad numbers revealed Wednesday were seen by the Superintendent as a chance to countervail the charges of racism from the teachers by using the data to show a rising African American student cohort as compared with others even as test scores within that cohort still showed a decline.

District Spins Racial Achievement Gap 
The achievement gap is measured as the difference between the highest achieving racial cohort, traditionally Asians at Emery and their inverse, African Americans.  Mr Rubio took pains to show a closing gap between academic school year 2015-16 and 2016-17 by using plunging test scores of Asian students, an 11% drop, contrasted by African American student’s drop of 4% netting a 8% drop in the achievement gap in English Language test scores.  The exercise in abject legerdemain by Mr Rubio net a 9% drop in the math achievement gap using the same tactics, leveraging a 12% drop in Asian student test scores against a 3% drop for African Americans.  If the Superintendent was queasy massaging the numbers to show student success by highlighting one group of student's relative uptick by leveraging the failure of another group, he didn't show it.

Rubio Celebrates 'Student Success' 
While the Superintendent unveiled his brand after he was hired by the Board in the form of a new slogan for Emery, “Partners Power Student Success”, Emery Unified’s state testing results have deteriorated since the implementation of the new slogan, this year’s being the worst yet. The preliminary data given Wednesday proved 75% of students did not meet the state standards in English Language Arts.  Last year less than 1 in 3 students met the English Language Art Standards.   Only 30% of the students were proficient or above in ELA, tied with Oakland Schools.  Now down to 1 in 4, it’s possible Emery has dropped below Oakland.  In Math, the story is even worse.  About 1 in 5 students met the standard for mathematics.  Only 79% of the students failed to meet the standard. Last year, Emery was 1% higher than OUSD causing speculation about if that stays true, or given the trajectory, if Emery is now already at the bottom of Alameda County Schools.

A Brief Rise Before Rubio, Then Return To Failure 
The goal of building the Emeryville Center of Community Life was to build on the success that Emery achieved after coming out of receivership.  From 2007 to 2010, Emery improved its academic achievement each year.  Testing was suspended by the state as California transitioned to the Common Core and computer based ‘Smarter Balanced’ assessments.  Testing resumed in Mr Rubio’s first year with the district and that’s when the progress stalled, then reversed.  Each subsequent year as test scores are released, Emery struggles to paint a rosy picture and urges patience until a new plan takes effect for the next year.  Last year at a presentation by the new high school principal, Ms. Goode, she described her plan to improve math performance.  One Board member at the time, Christian Patz (currently a City Council Member) questioned how the new plan was different from the previous plan.  Ms. Goode did not have an answer.
The same could have been asked of the newest plan, rich in arcane academic jargon but lacking in detail, regardless of the excited exclamations from Board member Vargas who as a self described “numbers man” has said he understands that ‘rebranding’ matters and the use of words like ‘innovation’ are good tools to flash.

Black Students Not Served
There were some positives in this year's test scores, white students improved their math and language arts scores by 5%.  Interesting since Mr Rubio worked hard to change Emery’s previous mission statement which included the phrase, “To End Racist and Classist Practices.” Since that change, outgoing staff have told the school board about their concerns about how people of color are treated on campus.  Now the achievement gap, the difference between the how students of color do versus white has grown, despite the Superintendent’s attempt to obscure that fact.  White students attending Emery were twice as likely to have met the standards in math than African American students.  The gap was even larger in English Language Arts.  The achievement gap at Emery is significantly smaller than the gap in state test scores (based on prior year tests) because white students in Emery score well below the state average, as do African American students.  Asian students in Emery had the biggest decline, dropping double digits in both Language Arts and Math.  English Learners remained about the same, while Latinos, the fastest growing group at Emery and the state, matched the District’s 5% drop.

It should be noted that the scores reported come from the district’s presentation to the school board on September 13, 2017.  The state has not yet released scores to the public.  Comparisons to other districts or the state for this story were made using last year’s scores and the numbers just pre-released by Emery.

Black People at Emery: Nameless and Not Heard

School Board to Black Teachers:

'We Are Not Listening to You'

Board President
Donn Merriam
'The minutes will not be
made to reflect what
the teachers said.'

News Analysis
Despite Emery teacher's charges directed towards the Superintendent of the Schools, outlining his bullying and racist practices, made at a now infamous June 15th School Board meeting, the Board gave a big thumbs up to embattled Superintendent John Rubio last week when they voted their approval of a scrubbing of the public record; erasing the teacher’s public testimonies in the official minutes.  The teacher’s testimonies condemned a top down racist culture that has risen up at Emery Unified School District and a Superintendent that ignores or subverts the concerns of African American educators at the district.  The official minutes of that meeting, written by Mr Rubio himself and now approved by the the School Board (4-1 Member Barbara Inch dissenting), play down the teacher’s concerns and expunge even any mention of the Superintendent and his central role in the existential dysfunction at the District the teachers testified against.  

The minutes approved by the Board at the follow on June 28th meeting, give ample space for two other (white) speakers at the June 15th meeting who came to praise the District, respectfully providing their names for the record but the black teachers (and their white colleagues) got short shrift, their concerns ignored, their names not even mentioned.  The Board majority approved minutes, by proving the teacher’s claims in its naked ablution, brazenly affirm and help support the racist culture at Emery Unified.  

Board Member Cruz Vargas
'The Board is fine with ignoring
black teachers.'

Some of these black teachers have worked at Emery for years and now, as they quit because of the venality of this Superintendent, the Board disrespectfully ignores their specific concerns, leaving no record of their professional accounting.  These honorable District employees were not even given time to properly say their piece; they were only given the same three minutes to address the Board given to the general public.   

Board Member Bailey Langner, an attorney, said it best among her colleagues at the June 28th meeting; the minutes cannot be used to accurately record any of what the teachers said or even to casually mention that they are dissatisfied with the job done by the Superintendent because according to Ms Langner, “Minutes are not meant to be verbatim.”  We’ll leave it to an authoritarian minded attorney to use a straw man fallacy like that.
Even African American Board member Brynnda Collins, who upon hearing the teacher's testimonies said the "time for action" is upon us June 15th, bizarrely voted with her three colleagues June 28th to approve Superintendent Rubio's minutes to take away from what the teachers had said. 

Presciently and informatively, one of Mr Rubio's first acts as Superintendent almost three years ago was to amend Emery's official Mission Statement.  References to ending racist (and classist) policies, central in the former mission statement were expunged by Mr Rubio with the Board's approval.  At the time it didn't seem ominous to most. 

Board Member
Brynnda Collins
"Now is the time for action"...
and then she voted to approve
the minutes.

There’s a silver lining that’s been revealed by the Board refusing to adjust the minutes of the June 15th meeting to reflect the truth if not to respect the teachers; the good news is the real agenda of the School Board is now irrefutable.  The easiest thing in the world to do would have been for the School Board to adjust these white washed minutes.  It’s actually required by law but here at Emery it seems what matters more is for this Board to support the Superintendent, apparently no matter what; even to lower themselves into this degraded racist culture the teachers alerted us to. Not this Superintendent’s deplorable teacher retention record, the worst in the Bay Area, not even his failure to follow the Mandated Reporter law leaving would be sexually assaulted children and their parents disbelieved at Emery can sway this Board as they go about their prime directive: protecting the Superintendent.

Board Member
Bailey Langner
'Sorry teachers, minutes cannot 
be made to reflect reality.
Not when we have our own
narrative to push.'

The Board’s vote June 28th to disregard the teachers, especially the black teachers at Emery serves now to focus all teachers, parents, and regular citizens to the importance that elected officials not act as renegades but instead to reflect a community's values (appointed Board members Langner and Collins were not elected by the people).  Emeryville is not racist and we won't countenance racist institutions paid to speak and act for us. A correction in the form of a plebiscite will likely be due Emery coming soon to a voting booth near all of us. 

Correction: Board member Collins was appointed to her Board position along with Member Langner.  The story has been changed to reflect that.  Thanks to the commenter who brought it to our attention.

Emeryville Suspects: Black Males

Purveyors in Racist Stereotypes: 
Emeryville Police Department 

Black Males Are Suspect, Black Females Too

Our Government Undermines Our Values

News Analysis/Opinion
Emeryville's Police Department releases monthly crime information to the public.  They want us to know that among the crimes committed, earlier this month, a victim was robbed at gun point by three men at 6399 Christie Avenue.  More pressingly they want us to know about the suspects, presumably so we can be on the look out for them.  Who are the suspects? "Three Black males" says EPD.  That's it; three Black males.  Nothing about what direction they fled or what they were wearing or how old they appeared to be or anything else about what they looked like other than the fact they are 'Black'.  But let's not forget Black females. Another crime happened as reported in this month's crime blotter at 3839 Emery Street, the location of Ulta cosmetics store.  The  police want us to know the description of a shoplifter at Ulta who fled the scene; that suspect is a black female you understand.  Again, nothing else has been offered as to the physical characteristics of the female, just that she's 'Black'.  Why are they telling us only the race of the suspects?  What are we supposed to do with this information?

This is how the Emeryville Police Department's publicly offered crime blotter forwards a racist meme about Blacks and crime.  The idea behind the blotter ostensibly is so citizens can know about crime in their town and to disseminate information to enlist the public to help bring perpetrators to justice.  We don't know if the Police Department is withholding other information about the suspects in this month's blotter beyond the fact they are Black.  We imagine that's all the information the police have for whatever reasons.  But why do they feel a need to tell us the suspect's race?  Will that fact help bring anybody to justice without any other physical descriptions offered?  As a faithful copy and paster of the EPD crime blotter every month, why does the right wing blog in Emeryville, the E'Ville Eye also want us to know these suspects are Black?


Why are they doing this?  Is this a public service?
The answer is NO, this information will not help anybody.  It WILL hurt people however.  It will hurt citizens both directly and indirectly.  It hurts everyone. The E'Ville Eye and the Emeryville Police Department are collaborating on a project to perpetuate racist stereotypes.  The City of Emeryville also publishes the racist stereotypes on its website.  It's being done in our name.

How do we know this is racist?  Besides the obvious nature of it, we put it to the test and the Emeryville Police Department itself showed us it's racist.  We called the police after we saw a gentleman walking down the sidewalk along San Pablo Avenue after the E'Ville Eye posted the crime blotter.  The man in question was Black: and that fits the description of the suspects as described by the police.  The police officer came out to take down our information but was incredulous when we reported that we have no information specifically tying the gentleman to the crime.  "How do you know he's one of the suspects (to the Christie Avenue robbery)?" the officer asked us.  "Because you told us he's a suspect" was our response...."because he's black".  The officer responded he thought the tip from us was "ridiculous"...and there's finally something we can agree on.  But the Department as a whole thinks the Black gentleman walking down the sidewalk IS a suspect.  The Emeryville Police Department crime blotter is clear: all Black males in Emeryville are suspects in the Christie Avenue robbery.

It's easy to see why the E'Ville Eye joyfully posts the EPD crime blotter every month; the racist stereotyping dovetails with that blog's right wing views, affirms the reader's predilections towards this kind of sociopathy and drives clicks resulting in more ad revenue for Rob Arias, the editor of that blog.  But why does the Emeryville Police Department do it?  It's hard for us to imagine our police department is purposefully forwarding racist stereotypes (but we should be open to the idea that may be indeed what's being done).  We think more likely it's being done out of ignorance and insensitivity.  This Department is ours, the people of Emeryville.  Emeryville is not racist.  The Police Department needs to cease this odious activity.  If they're going to tell us about suspects in specific crimes, they need to tell us information beyond the suspect's race, otherwise this Department is subverting our Emeryville values.

From the blotter this month:
ROBBERY:
District 3
6399 Christie Ave., #330: A male victim was robbed at gunpoint. LOSS: An iPhone, a laptop, an iPad, and several other cell phones. Suspects: (3) Black males.

District 5
Ulta, 3839 Emery St. #200: A shoplifter brandished a stun gun at employees and threaten to tase them to avoid detention. LOSS: Fragrances. Suspect: Black female.