Police
The fee, intended to charge enough to cover the actual cost of the service, applies only to previously private police misconduct records made disclosable by the recent and upcoming police transparency legislation Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 847. SB 1421, enacted in January, has made a number of formerly unreleased police misconduct records disclosable to the public, including records related to officer-involved shootings, uses of force resulting in serious injury, on-duty sexual assaults and police dishonesty.
The report last year by MBD Innovations, a public safety consulting group, identified six key issues within the department: a lack of a compelling vision; a disconnect between management and staff; poor morale; poor handling of high-profile disciplinary cases; a lacking relationship between the city manager and the police chief; and an unnecessarily acrimonious relationship between the Richmond Police Officers Association and the Richmond Police Department (RPD) administration.
On Tuesday, the Richmond City Council voted to not proceed with annexing the unincorporated area of North Richmond, with only Mayor Tom Butt voting in favor. Additionally, Butt removed three proposed appointments to the Citizens Police Review Commission from the agenda—one of them highly controversial. Until the appointments are finalized, it leaves the commission to operate with only five out of nine members. City attorney Bruce Goodmiller also announced that the city is beginning negotiations with developer SunCal to build…
The Richmond Police Department recently went live with a new online portal dedicated to providing statistics and data on law enforcement activities in the city, completing its commitment to the Police Data Initiative started by the Obama administration in 2015. Joining the ranks of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, the city’s website, Richmond Open Data, provides general information on categories such as calls for service, traffic stops and use of force incidents in a spreadsheet format, which can be…
The February Citizen’s Police Review Commission (CPRC) meeting began with the announcement of a $20,000 allocation to streamline CPRC’s administrative tasks and ended with a discussion on the death of Pedie Perez, who was killed by a Richmond police officer in 2014.
Richmond Police Sgt. Florencio Rivera lifts a thick leather belt from the trunk of his police cruiser. He points to several objects dangling from it — pepper spray, handcuffs, riot baton, pistol, Taser — and explains: These are just stand-ins. The baton is made of foam, the Taser is unloaded, and the pistol fires Airsoft pellets. Together, they represent a pretend version of the “duty kit” carried by Richmond officers. Rivera is supervising a mock scenario as part of the…
Richmond Police met with residents over coffee to improve community and law enforcement relationships.