Berkeley oversight office reports 43 complaints, flags higher stops of unhoused people

Interim Director of Police Accountability Kathy Lee told the Berkeley City Council on July 14 that the Office of the Director of Police Accountability (ODPA) received 43 complaints in 2025 from 27 unique complainants and produced findings on 69 allegations across nine investigated cases.

Lee said staffing shortages drove administrative decisions last year: "There was an investigator who left ... the office was actually budgeted for 2 investigators and lost the 2nd investigator during the hiring freeze," and that capacity constraints led to 22 additional administrative closures in 2025.

The report, required by the city charter, lays out ODPA and Police Accountability Board (PAB) processes. "This presentation is mandated by the city charter section 1 25 subsection 16 c," Lee said, summarizing intake, prima facie screening, investigator steps (interviews, records and body-worn camera review), and how findings are presented to the board.

Jose Murillo, the ODPA policy analyst who presented the data analysis, said the office relied on multiple lenses—descriptive, residency, temporal and housing-status—to examine stops. "Of course, there's 4,540 stops as was reported by the BPD earlier this year," Murillo said, and he highlighted that "the number of stops of unhoused individuals [was] 937," a share higher than their measured population.

Murillo described racial and outcome patterns: in the ODPA's analysis, Black or African American individuals accounted for 152 use-of-force instances (48.3 percent of recorded incidents), and while search rates varied across groups, search yields (the rate at which searches produced items) were "relatively close" across larger groups.

Lee emphasized a notable disagreement pattern between the PAB and the police chief: "What stands out here is that of the 13 allegations that were sustained by the PAB, the chief agreed with none of them," a disparity council members repeatedly asked the ODPA to help the city understand. ODPA staff said they had not performed a control study to identify root causes and recommended the council consider a study to control for variables such as exposure in public spaces and service-driven interactions.

Council members pressed for more clarity and context. Questions focused on whether complaint summaries in the report adequately describe the seriousness of sustained allegations (staff noted types and case details are in the appendices), the process and timelines for policy-review requests (ODPA gives a 30-day preliminary recommendation for intake), and whether delays receiving records from the police department affected investigations; Lee said timing extensions have been used and that, in some cases, records were incomplete in prior years.

Public commenters urged better notice procedures for encampment clearings and more transparency around crisis-intervention training and the department's early-warning system. One commenter said of a recent clearing, "they didn't receive any notice," and asked for clearer timelines for people with cognitive or other vulnerabilities.

The PAB and ODPA highlighted partnerships and next steps: Murillo noted collaboration with UC Berkeley's Criminal Law and Justice Center and Social Sector Solutions at the Haas School of Business to strengthen outreach and improve analytical capacity. Lee said priorities for 2026 include finalizing permanent regulations, strengthening policy oversight, expanding community outreach, and addressing staffing to reduce administrative closures.

The council did not take formal policy action at the work session; the meeting closed with a routine adjournment vote.