✚ Please sign the petition asking the American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross to protect the use of their emblem as a symbol, and not allow its use on police vehicles used to intimidate and assault citizens.
Feb 022015
Margarita Lacabe
Feb 022015
San Leandrans at the January 8, 2015, anti-police militarization rally.
Fear is a stone throw away from political repression, literally.
Update: The closed session meeting was finally cancelled on the day of the vote, but the City Council chambers were filled with police officers in uniform, in order to intimidate public speakers. Two dozen citizens still spoke out against the tank. Only one San Leandro citizen without business ties to the police department spoke in favor of it.
Mayor Pauline Cutter has called for a special closed session meeting of the San Leandro City Council tonight, to take place before the Council votes to acquire a BearCat (Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck) for the Police Department. The Council will secretly consult with SLPD Lieutenant Michael Sobek on a “threat to public services and facilities.” When a neighbor inquired as to the nature of this threat, citing concerns for the children and students that will be participating in tonight’s rally, Cutter responded:
M., the agenda was revised because I decided not to have the pictures taken Monday night since there was going to be so much happening.
I believe there will be a lot of folks at the rally, I know it’s been posted all over the Internet and I just wanted to provide the new members some education on what their choices are if they feel threatened or unsafe during the meeting.
I will try my best to make sure everyone gets heard and everyone feels safe. I’m not expecting anything to happen but just want to give a little support to the new members and let them know that we have options if the meeting gets disrupted. I can honestly say I know of no plans for the police trying to interfere with the rally if fact I would imagine they of all people there would like everyone to have a peaceful rally.
There have been numerous rallies before City Council meetings, on contentious issues ranging from the flying of the Chinese flag over City Hall to the use of classroom funds to pay for police officers to spy on students. A rally against police militarization before a Council meeting a mere three weeks ago garnered broad media attention and resulted in no greater disruption than spontaneous applause at points made by public speakers.
The fact that the City Council will be meeting secretly with the Police is particularly worrisome, as it suggests that the “options” Mayor Cutter wants her colleagues to consider solely involve police repression. The Council, after all, will not be meeting with the City Attorney to understand what constitutes constitutionally protected speech at public meetings nor will it meet with facilities personnel to understand the security features present at the City Hall chambers. Council meetings on contentious issues are usually heavily attended by police officers both in and out of uniform.
Even more worrisome is the fear of the citizenry that Mayor Pauline Cutter has voiced through this action and which her colleagues have yet to repudiate (they are invited to do so in the comments section). A Mayor and a Council who fear their own citizens will surely arm the Police with repressive weapons to be used against them and will authorize the use of such weapons at the slightest hint of social unrest. In this context, neither the purchase of the BearCat nor the policy which authorizes its use in every conceivable situation, including peaceful protests, is casual. But it’s exactly such attitudes that must embolden citizens to stand up for their human rights and civil liberties and demand an end to police militarization and government repression.
Feb 012015
If the San Leandro Police Department gets their way, not only will they get a brand new Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck (Bearcat), but they will be able to use it in whichever way they want. The proposed policy allows use of the vehicle for “purposes including, but not limited to, calls for service involving potentially armed subjects, Tactical Team callouts, search warrants, officer or citizen rescues, or authorized training” (emphasis added). The policy, furthermore, allows the use of the BearCat “during non-violent demonstrations” when “there are objective facts demonstrating a risk of injury or death to police officers and/or the public.” As every human activity involves risk of injury – people can always fall, butt heads, get sunstroke – this language allows for the use of the vehicle at any non-violent demonstration.
The policy, furthermore, places no limits in the use of vehicle as a shooting platform (the BearCat comes equipped with 11 gun ports and a rotating roof hatch with a gunner stand) or on the use of the tear gas deployment equipment in the vehicle.
Even if the policy was stricter, the San Leandro Police has a history of disregarding policy when it doesn’t suit its needs. In 2013, for example, the City Council passed a social media policy that prohibited the publication of photos of people in social media without the subject’s expressed authorization. The police disregarded this policy from the beginning, when I pressed the City Attorney about this, he responded that the City Manager would update the policy to suit the SLPD’s needs. When Chief of Police Sandra Spagnoli, not only disregarded policy but broke the law by using City time and resources to coordinate lobbying against a medical marijuana dispensary ordinance, she faced no consequences whatsoever.
But a broad policy does signify that the SLPD will have no qualms about using this vehicle in any and every situation that it encounters, against regular citizens and non-violent protestors, that it will use it to intimidate members of the community and that it is more interested in appearing as an occupying force than a community safety tool.
The City Council will be voting on the BearCat on Monday, Feb. 2nd, at 7 PM. A rally against the BearCat will take place at City Hall starting at 6 PM.
Jan 312015
City Manager Chris Zapata
Police Chief Now to Report to City Manager, CIO to Report to Community Development Director
Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli, whose latest accomplishment includes the SLPD’s shooting of fleeing black and Latino suspects in three separate occasions, is now reporting directly to City Manager Chris Zapata. She was previously reporting to Assistant City Manager Lianne Marshall. Zapata has been explicit on his unwavering confidence on the police chief and has long taken the attitude that she can do no wrong, he has even excused the multitudes of falsehoods Spagnoli has conveyed to the City Council and the community as unintentional “misstatements”. However, Spagnoli’s attempts to have the School District take money from classrooms to pay for police officer salaries ruffled political feathers above Zapata’s paygrade and he has been advised to reign her in. Whether he has the ability to do so, however, is questionable.
Meanwhile, Chief Innovation Officer Deborah Acosta is no longer reporting to Chris Zapata directly. Instead she will report to Community Development Director Cynthia Battenberg. Acosta was brought in to market and expand Lit San Leandro, the city’s fiber optic loop, and to attract business and investment to town. Battenberg has no experience on these matters.
Acosta appears to not have been consulted about this de facto demotion, which brings about the likelihood that she might not want to stick around. Given that she is considered to be the most competent person at City Hall and that the City has gambled on Lit San Leandro beings its economic engine for the future, her exit would have a tremendous negative impact on the City. Zapata’s decision to demote Acosta is most likely due to his own inability to manage more than a few department heads at the time – but also illustrates how he appears to have lost interest on his position as City Manager and is just going through the motions. He has reportedly applied for other jobs, but he has been unable to convince any other city to hire him.
Marketing Lit San Leandro, meanwhile, has been more difficult than Acosta anticipated due, in great part, to Zapata’s hands off approach to the Police Department. This has led to numerous incidents of police brutality, rampant racial profiling, police spying on school children, false arrests of men suspected of being gay, and community rifts due to increased surveillance and police militarization. These incidents are regularly covered by the press and, coming on top on San Leandro’s long history of racial discrimination, do not make San Leandro a welcoming place for businesses researching San Leandro as a possible base of operations. While the fiberloop is very attractive to businesses, other cities are in the process of installing their own, so San Leandro’s window of opportunity is limited.
(This article has been edited by the addition of the third paragraph)
Jan 242015
The following essay is by San Leandro citizen Tim Holmes
San Leandro Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli marched with our San Leandro High School students in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To claim to honor Dr. King while simultaneously propagandizing the purchase of a Bearcat for local police use (a tank with the lipstick of “medical” slapped on it) is a slap in the face of the memory of a man for whom that tank would represent the very boot of the oppressor.
To claim to walk in Dr. King’s honor while sitting at the helm of a rapidly expanding surveillance apparatus aimed at people not suspected of any crime, is offensive. Even more so as our government used illegal surveillance to gather private information with which they they attempted to blackmail Dr King, demanding he end his political activism under threat of exposing an affair, which is not illegal.
To those who suggest a camera on every block because you “have nothing to hide”, remember that while you may not be a target, those who fought for our freedoms and those who fight today to preserve them ARE targeted and we all pay the price for the squashing of political dissent, as will our children.
To those who say saving even one life is worth the tank and the surveillance state, I would remind you that men and women by the hundreds of thousands have given their lives to get and keep the freedoms and rights you are so casually tossing to the side as if worthless, for a possibility to “save one life.” There are things more precious than our individual selves and the freedom of our people is one for which Americans have and will continue to lay their lives down when necessary. Please, stop disrespecting those who have made such sacrifices by disrespecting the value of the rights the people of our country have earned through blood and loss.
To honor Dr. King would mean to act in a way consistent with his life and work, not pursuing the increase of oppression over the people of our country.
What would the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. feel should be done regarding the tank?
I suspect he’d make a clear case for the injustice and wrong-headedness of escalating a war against our own people and the inevitable impact in particular to the black people of America who have yet to feel relief from the crushing boot of oppression in a police state that has only continued to grow since his death.
Were he here to comment, he might site a psalms and proverb, neither of which would mention getting bigger weapons and putting up bigger walls, but would speak to actions we must take which will lay the groundwork so that equality is possible and so that we can break down the barriers between us: police and citizen, black and white, warrior and victim, oppressors and oppressed, occupiers and the occupied.
I hope Dr. King, his life and his death, is on all the council’s minds when they vote whether to reject the teargas-equipped Bearcat “Medevec” tank.