6/8/20 Oakland Police Commission Meeting Public Comments
The online meeting was called on Monday, June 8 to address the treatment of protesters by the Oakland Police Department during the recent George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter Movement in Oakland, California, which began on Friday, May 29, 2020. Below are comments made by several individuals who made speeches, while the rest are from the public made over the course of roughly three hours. The transcripts are lightly edited for clarity and brevity. If you feel the transcript misrepresents you, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter: @SarahBelleLin Instead of cherry-picking statements and trying to summarize/paraphrase people’s thoughts, I’d rather do justice to those who spoke and lay all their thoughts bare. This is a long document - 23 pages long. The statements may be triggering for those sensitive to police violence and brutality, so please take caution in proceeding if you believe you might be negatively impacted. For additional context, the Oakland Police Commission is not to be confused as part of the Oakland Police Department. The Commission is made up of community members who “oversee Oakland Police Department’s policies, practices, and customs to meet national standards of constitutional policing and to oversee the Community Police Review Agency which investigates police misconduct and recommends discipline,” as stated on the City of Oakland’s website. *Although the meeting was public, I will not provide the identities of those who made the comments. If you would like to verify the identities yourselves, visit https://www.oaklandca.gov/boards-commissions/police-commission/meetings for the link to the meeting video*
The online meeting was called on Monday, June 8 to address the treatment of protesters by the Oakland Police Department during the recent George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter Movement in Oakland, California, which began on Friday, May 29, 2020.
Below are comments made by several individuals who made speeches, while the rest are from the public made over the course of roughly three hours. The transcripts are lightly edited for clarity and brevity. If you feel the transcript misrepresents you, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter: @SarahBelleLin
Instead of cherry-picking statements and trying to summarize/paraphrase people’s thoughts, I’d rather do justice to those who spoke and lay all their thoughts bare. This is a long document - 23 pages long. The statements may be triggering for those sensitive to police violence and brutality, so please take caution in proceeding if you believe you might be negatively impacted.
For additional context, the Oakland Police Commission is not to be confused as part of the Oakland Police Department. The Commission is made up of community members who “oversee Oakland Police Department’s policies, practices, and customs to meet national standards of constitutional policing and to oversee the Community Police Review Agency which investigates police misconduct and recommends discipline,” as stated on the City of Oakland’s website.
*Although the meeting was public, I will not provide the identities of those who made the comments. If you would like to verify the identities yourselves, visit https://www.oaklandca.gov/boards-commissions/police-commission/meetings for the link to the meeting video*
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Speaker 1: (47:31)
I am a resident of district five and I just want to say that OPD has a complete disregard for
human life. In the past week, I've seen them tear gas crowds with children and that they throw in
flash grenades at tech crowds of people. When went off next to my ear, I was deaf. And for a
little bit, I want to remind people that these are not nonlethal weapons. They're less lethal, which
means sometimes they're lethal, which means they're lethal. Um, they also don't wear a mass.
The other demonstrations I pleaded with them without mass they're incredibly rude. They were
used. They walk around me sober without Massaad during this pandemic, I'm going to urge
Oakland to be on the right side of history here. Um, and have officials take a look at OPD. This
is an obsolete organization. This is a barbaric organization and we are not in a place where we
need to be putting up with it anymore.
“My question is how many more Black men, women and children have to be killed in this country
by federal, state and city-sanctioned murder and mayhem. We have been in this country 400
years after being kidnapped from our native land and ever since that time, the Oakland Police
Department and every police department in the city in the entire United States has been
responsible for the deaths of Black men, women and children. I urge everyone tomorrow to vote
at the City Council meeting at 11:30 and demand that the council vote unanimously to pass the
police commission's version of Measure LL until we can defund the police. Any council person
who does not vote to support the police commission's version, stop saying Black lives matter.”
“I'm an attorney for the homeless based in Oakland. In addition to the long-term call for
defunding the OPD, I would like to call for the immediate action that can be taken today to
publicly correct the record regarding Monday night’s protest to retract the statement that the
OPD made that they were sure the crowd was clear of minors or that there were molotov
cocktails and to issue a formal apology and immediately vow to cease the use of tear gas, flash
bangs, and kettling. Additionally, I asked that body cam footage for the protest to be released to
the public. I was in that crowd Monday night. I walked from Oakland Tech with many others. I
stood next to a 10-year-old girl and her parents. When we were teargassed, I assisted an
elderly man on the way out. He had a cane. I took video and audio footage where people were
screaming for the gas to stop. Let the public judge you for tear gas, gassing, peaceful children.”
“We send our kids to school and if we send our kids to school and they come back sick with
some kind of chemical exposure and a week later, the principal couldn't tell us what happene,
he would be fired. If the superintendent couldn't tell us, he would be fired. So fuck LeRonne
Armstrong. Fire LeRonne Armstrong for having the nerve to show up today and tell us a week
later, he can't answer a simple question. Did OPD do it? It's a well-established pattern. It's a lie
promising to investigate yourself eventually. LeRonne Armstrong gets paid over $400,000 a
year in salary and benefit. He lives in Dublin. In 2018, he said racial disparity in police stops is
due to the fact that racial groups commit more crime than white people. Fuck LeRonne
Armstrong. Fire LeRonne Armstrong. Fire the whole OPD. Defund OPD.”
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