pages: CityCouncil/2020-06-29.pdf, 13
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CityCouncil | 2020-06-29 | 13 | Councilmembers, received an email about Police Officers wearing Blue Lives Matter face masks; the Police Chief stated it was not a big deal, but there is now a policy against wearing the masks; he raised the issue because he was very concerned by Councilmember Oddie's comments trying to equivocate that everyone's experiences are the same; everyone's experience is not the same; he has to remind himself to stay centered on how lucky, entitled, and privileged he is as a middle-aged White man; he agrees that the Officers are people; they do a difficult job and he has a lot of respect for them; he has done ride-alongs and has talked about how they impacted him; the impact of the Officers hearing the community complain about the racists system is not equivalent to the impact on people and speakers; he looks forward to having many conversation regarding the issue; racism is not an individual action, it is a system; making it an individual action allows us to feel that somehow we are morally superior to people that we label as racists; the incident on May 23rd seems that we are indicting specific people as being immoral, which is not what is happening; he has never once talked about the specific action of any given person involved in the incident; at the end of the day, it is a system that the Council perpetuates; when people are told to calm down and step back, the system is being perpetuated; he echoes all of Councilmember Vella's comments; he was a little disappointed that the Council asked for a conversation to come forward on a topic that turned into a conversation about law enforcement when actually the adopted language was regarding the City provision of community services, responses and law enforcement, including policy review of existing policies; it was intentional so as not to get into the argument of whether the Police are good or bad; there will be law enforcement in Alameda to provide crime and violence prevention; when he talks to the Police Department staff at all levels, they talk about all the types of responses Council has made them responsible for; all Council has done is say there are plans and programs in place to be responsive; Council cannot one day say the Police are no longer responding to 5150 calls and have the Fire Department do it, but not talk to them or the City Manager about it; he thinks Alameda needs a community-led process, not a staff-led process; Council needs to trust the community to tell them which direction to go and to help identify goals and objectives; what he is proposing tonight is to identify a couple of Councilmembers who could work to find seven to nine people to fill a steering committee; tonight's meeting can be continued so the names can be approved by the Council next Tuesday; he proposes to hold some Town Halls this month to get community feedback and propose the objectives and goals before the whole Council; the steering committee members should not all be of like minds and should represent a diverse range of voices; most people would agree with what Council wants to provide, which is safety and security for everybody; because of tonight's conversation, which is perpetuated by City staff and is extremely problematic, people are under the idea that Council is somehow suggesting the Police are not going to come if someone is being attacked or if their house is being broken into; nobody has proposed that; what he proposes, as a general idea, is for a community-led process that is kicked- off tonight; Council is a month into this; next week will be a month since the video came out; Council needs to start moving forward to identify the two Councilmembers to serve as ex-officio non-voting members of a steering committee to bring back input from the document and have staff start looking at the Police Chief's June 10th policy direction to identify ways to put things into action and come back for discussion so that when the Special Meeting Alameda City Council 13 June 29, 2020 | CityCouncil/2020-06-29.pdf |