The Berkeley Police Division was in turmoil Thursday following the leak of textual content messages that allegedly present the president of the law enforcement officials union making racially charged remarks and calling for arrest quotas.
The rising scandal resulted within the union president, Sgt. Darren Kacalek, being positioned on administrative depart Wednesday. He additionally stepped down from his place as union head. It additionally placed on pause the Metropolis Council’s pending appointment of a brand new police chief, Jennifer Louis, the Berkeley Scanner reported.
The tranche of texts had been uncovered final week by a metropolis police officer who was fired final yr, Corey Shedoudy. He claimed he obtained the messages through the arbitration course of to get again his job.
“Proof was uncovered that uncovered the unethical and unlawful follow of arrest quotas of downtown unhoused ordered by Sgt. Darren Kacalek,” Shedoudy wrote in an e mail to the mayor and Metropolis Council. The officer was reportedly fired for deliberately colliding his bike right into a automobile.
As a member of the Downtown Job Drive and BPD Bike Drive in 2020, Shedoudy claimed that Kacalek — a sergeant within the police division on the time — required him and different officers to make 100 arrests per 30 days, “which was on the time greater than the remainder of the police division mixed,” Shedoudy wrote within the e mail.
The quotas continued after Louis was named interim chief, Shedoudy stated.
The police had been ordered by Kacalek to make use of “questionable authorized techniques” akin to cease and frisk, probation searches with no affordable suspicion of against the law, and “stay-away” orders from UC Berkeley.
The chosen texts that Shedoudy despatched to the mayor on Nov. 10 included racially charged messages about individuals arrested in addition to a joke Kacalek despatched seemingly a few illness that “wipes out the homeless pop.” The messages had been made public by Oakland advocacy group Safe Justice.
In one other occasion, Kacalek requested officers in the event that they seen a similarity between 5 arrestees.
“They’d Covid?” one officer guesses.
“All the identical heritage,” Kacalek responds.
In his e mail to metropolis officers, Shedoudy referred to as for an investigation into the texts, claiming that Louis has responded to him with “deafening silence.”
“It’s extraordinarily disgusting. I’m cynically and sadly not stunned,” stated Brian Hofer, who runs Safe Justice, a felony justice reform advocacy group. “The textual content messages are revealing a racist tradition and we’re seeing it mirrored within the metrics.”
Almost 35% of police stops in Berkeley within the final yr had been of Black individuals, even if solely 8% of town is Black, based on the census.
At a take away assembly Wednesday, Hofer stated Berkeley Metropolis Supervisor Dee Williams-Ridley withdrew the council vote on Louis’ appointment.
Shedoudy additionally stated that on the finish of his arbitration course of he can be releasing publicly texts that present the follow of “unlawful arrest quotas, racism, proof suppression, mendacity, and quid professional quos” contained in the DTF/Bike Drive.
Neither Kacalek nor Shedoudy responded to requests for remark. The Berkeley Police Division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A Metropolis Council member directed inquiries to town lawyer, who didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
