Andrea Pritchett

The Berkeley City Council returned from a six-week recess, approving the police union contract and funding for the Miyawaki Pocket Forest Pilot Program during its Tuesday meeting.

Berkeley council members voted to confirm Jen Louis as Berkeley Police Department’s chief of police May 9.

Over the past decades, movements starting from the Free Speech movement in the mid-1960s to recent protests like the United Automobile Workers, or UAW, strike have shown trends of significant differences and similarities that have translated over time.

Organizers and demonstrators with Berkeley Copwatch and the Defend People’s Park Movement gathered Wednesday for a rally, march and barbeque at People’s Park to protest UC development on the land. 

Members of the Berkeley Mental Health Commission presented plans to divert mental health crisis responses away from Santa Rita Jail and the John George Psychiatric Hospital at Wednesday’s Police Accountability Board meeting.

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest.” The words rang out as a chorus of more than 100 community members gathered on the birthday of a Black transgender woman who died in police custody in Berkeley eight years ago.

After receiving community backlash for exceptions to tear gas prohibitions, at its Wednesday meeting the Berkeley Police Review Commission, or PRC, altered the language of the guidelines to clarify that tear gas is banned from use in crowd control and management situations.

Amid concerns around surveillance and privacy, San Francisco banned police use of facial recognition technology May 14 after the state Assembly’s Feb. 21 introduction of a similar ban.

The Berkeley Police Review Commission, or PRC, gathered Wednesday for its regular meeting to discuss surveillance use policies, budget summaries and the use of spit hoods by the Berkeley Police Department, among other items.