MINUTES. The meeting convened at 6:20 pm with Chairperson Bob Meola presiding.

Transcription

1 Peace & Justice Commission North Berkeley Senior Center Regular Meeting October 6, 2008 MINUTES The meeting convened at 6:20 pm with Chairperson Bob Meola presiding. ROLL CALL Present: Diana Bohn, Donald Brody, Elliot Cohen, Wendy Kenin, George Lippman, Jane Litman, Rita Maran, Bob Meola, Michael Sherman, Megan Winkelman, Jonathan Wornick Absent: Patti Campbell, Phoebe Anne Sorgen COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC Community members (7) regarding: ACTIONS TAKEN Death Penalty in Alameda County Oak Grove/UC Land-Use Committee BP Project Sweat-Shop Free Ordinance Item # 2: Scheduling a final, 2008 Commission meeting on November 3, 7pm. M/S/C: (Meola, Lippman) Diana Bohn, Wendy Kenin, George Lippman, Jane Litman, Rita Maran, Bob Meola, Megan Winkelman None Donald Brody, Elliot Cohen, Michael Sherman, Jonathan Wornick Item # 5: Adoption of September 8, 2008 meeting minutes (corrected). M/S/C: (Meola, Winkelman) Diana Bohn, Donald Brody, Wendy Kenin, George Lippman, Bob Meola, Michael Sherman, Megan Winkelman, Jonathan Wornick Jane Litman (due to absence), Elliot Cohen (see explanation below, Attachment 2), Rita Maran (see concurrence with explanation below, Attachment 2) None. ///////////////////

2 Item # 5: Adoption of July 7, 2008 meeting minutes. M/S/C: (Sherman/Lippman) Diana Bohn, Wendy Kenin, George Lippman, Jane Litman, Rita Maran, Bob Meola, Michael Sherman Donald Brody (due to absence), Megan Winkelman (due to absence), Jonathan Wornick (due to absence), Elliot Cohen (see explanation below, Attachment 2) None. /////////////////// Item # 6: Police Misconduct on the Raid on the Long Haul (improper execution of search warrant) M/S/C: (Litman/Sherman) Adoption of amended, substitute motion re Item # 6 (see Attachment # 1) Diana Bohn, Elliot Cohen, Wendy Kenin, George Lippman, Jane Litman, Rita Maran, Bob Meola, Michael Sherman, Megan Winkelman, None. Donald Brody, Jonathan Wornick. NEXT MEETING The next regular meeting will be on Monday, November 3, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center with a deadline of Friday, October 24, 2008 at 12 noon for submission of agenda items and materials for the November Agenda packet. Dates are subject to change, please contact the Commission Secretary to confirm. The meeting was adjourned at 10:05 p.m. Respectfully Submitted, Eric M. Brenman, Secretary Peace & Justice Commission

3 Attachment # 1 Police Misconduct in the Raid on The Long Haul (Agenda Item # 6) To: Honorable Mayor and December 16, 2008 Members of the City Council From: Peace and Justice Commission Subject: Police Raid on the Long Haul RECOMMENDATION: We wish to communicate to the Berkeley City Council the following: Given the erosion of civil and first amendment rights in the United States, the Peace and Justice Commission of the City of Berkeley is deeply concerned about the August, 27, 2008 raid on The Long Haul, since it involves a radio station and newspaper. We bring our concern to the Berkeley City Council, we urge the public to educate itself on the matter, and we, as a City Commission, commit to keeping the issue on our agenda until it is justly resolved. BACKGROUND The following is from a press release issued by The Long Haul on August 28, Berkeley, CA -- At 10:30 am on Wednesday, August 27th, the UC Berkeley police, plainclothes FBI agents, and an Alameda County sheriff raided at gunpoint the Long Haul, a long-standing community library and info shop. Police spent at least an hour and a half searching the premises without allowing Long Haul members entry to their building. More than a dozen computers and other equipment were seized in the morning raid. Having made no attempt to contact Long Haul members, agents forced their way into the building by entering a neighboring non-profit office with guns drawn. Police refused to provide a search warrant until after the raid was over and property was seized. Following is an article from the Berkeley Daily Planet. Civil Rights, Liberties Challenged by Long Haul Raid, Say Lawyers By Richard Brenneman Thursday September 18, 2008 Lawyers representing two civil liberties groups are preparing to wage a legal battle over the Long Haul raid, and other constitutional rights groups are paying close attention. Campus police, the FBI and the Alameda County Sheriff s Department raided the anarchist collective Aug. 27 and seized every computer in the building in search of the sender or senders of threatening s to UC Berkeley scientists who experiment on animals. Attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild are working on a legal response with non-guild attorneys to respond legally, said Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the guild s Bay

4 Area chapter. Joining with the guild are attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which specializes in civil liberties issues arising from the cyber world. Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said the Long Haul raid raises a number of troubling issues, and Villarreal agreed. We definitely think that the search was excessive and that the warrant and statement of probable cause were insufficient, said Villarreal, who noted that police entered the building with drawn pistols. The search warrant affidavit UCPD Detective Bill Kasiske used to obtain judicial approval for the raid failed to mention that the building housed an alternative quarterly newspaper an institution entitled to special protection under federal law, something that troubles Scheer and the attorneys. Slingshot is a quarterly, independent, radical, newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988 by the Slingshot Collective, declared the publication s website, adding that [g]overnment seizure of Slingshot collective computers is a direct attack on freedom of the press and in particular, the independent, non-corporate, alternative press. There could be problems under the federal Privacy Protection Act, a federal law which makes it harder to seize computers belonging to organizations in the business of disseminating information, Scheer said. Nothing in the search warrant indicated to the judge that police might seize a publication s computers. The warrant also failed to mention that a number of groups were housed under the same roof. Officers also confiscated an unattached computer hard drive that contains the files of another news medium, Berkeley Liberation Radio. In his affidavit, Kasiske specifically mentions that the Long Haul website advertises that they offer a computer room with four computers for activist-oriented access. He didn t mentioned that the site s home page specifically refers to the other groups, including Slingshot. I question whether the raid would have happened in the same way if the building housed a larger newspaper like the Daily Planet or a corporate medium like the San Francisco Chronicle, or even a business like Kinko s where there are public computers, Villarreal said. Scheer said he wondered what police would have done had the s been sent from the offices of Pacific Gas & Electric. Would they have seized all the computers, say 500 of them? I don t think so, he said. Scheer said he was particularly troubled that the affidavit made no mention of the publication, which federal law states must be treated differently. The fact that there s a publication there doesn t make it immune, but the federal statute does require that police provide additional information specific to that publication, he said.

5 If the rule is that all computers with the same Internet address are fair game, someone needs to announce that, because the public isn t aware of it. It s not intuitive, Scheer said. The issue could become even more complex if someone should send s through an unsuspecting third party s wireless [wi-fi] Internet connection, he said, something that could be done by a passing pedestrian or a neighbor. In addition to the publication, other groups working out of the Long Haul include East Bay Prisoner Support, the Long Haul itself, the Anarchist Study Group and bicycling advocates Cycles of Change. Villarreal said the seizure of the computers used by a number of activist groups has a widespread chilling effect on other media, on others working in prisoner support and on people working on campaigns involved with law enforcement issues. The guild attorney said that in addition to the First and Fourth Amendment issues involving freedom of the press and freedom of association, the guild is working with individuals who might be targeted for prosecution because of the raid. There are also issues about getting the property returned, he said, as well as the potential for a civil rights lawsuit. On the day of the raid, Berkeley civil rights attorney James B. Chanin whose office is a block north of the Long Haul on Shattuck Avenue said he couldn t imagine the judge knew that the building housed many different organizations. It would shock me if the judge knew that. He said a warrant targeting a specific group wouldn t let police go into a building and seize everybody s stuff. But that s what I believe happened, and that s not right. Chanin hadn t seen the affidavit at the time, but his comments proved prescient after the affidavit was filed with the court Sept. 8. While Kasiske s affidavit said nothing of the different organizations that are housed under the Long Haul s roof and are mentioned at the organization s website ( he did mention that the site advertises that they offer a computer room with four computers for activist oriented access. Those terminals were housed in a separate part of the building, a loft level at the rear of the building isolated from the other computers police seized. They were also the only computers cited in the affidavit. Some of the computers seized were housed behind padlocked doors in separate rooms, and police neatly removed the locks and hasps, taping them on the walls or doors next to their former locations. Slingshot posted a message to staff and supporters after the raid: Most of the computer data lost was backed up. We do not think that the police got a copy of our mailing list or distribution address list (which are maintained at another location on a different computer) and we wanted to re-assure our volunteer distributors that we do not think the police have your address.

6 Villareal said that in addition to efforts on the legal front, there should also be a political dimension to the community s response. In the long run, he said, that s even more important. THE CURRENT SITUATION Some of the property has now been returned to The Long Haul. No compensation has been tendered for damaged or confiscated property. No criminal charges have been filed against any individual or individuals or any organization as a result of this raid on The Long Haul. The people and organizations that had their computers and files stolen from them without due process have no way to conduct their business and are hoping to receive donations of computers that will enable them to resume their work.. Justice has taken a vacation. Radio Free Berkeley and Food Not Bombs are two of the organizations based at the Long Haul. CONTACT PERSON Robert Meola, Chairperson, Peace and Justice Commission, (510) Eric Brenman, Secretary, Peace and Justice Commission, (510) ////////////////////

7 Attachment # 2 Meeting Minutes (Item # 5) Submitted by Commissioner Cohen (with concurrence by Commissioner Maran): I abstain from approval of the minutes of July and September 2008 because the minutes were not included in our packets and I could not inspect them in advance of the meeting. I place this abstention in the record because this is the fifth time in a row that the minutes have not been delivered in a timely manner. At each such meeting I have objected. Such failure to timely deliver the minutes prevents us from considering the accuracy of the minutes when memories are recent. The failure to timely deliver minutes also violates the Brown Act in that it prevents the minutes of our meeting from being made available to the public for months following each meeting. The July minutes in particular are minutes I have been calling about since soon after that meeting because members of the public have asked me for copies of a resolution past [sic] at that meeting. These calls were disregarded and the public has been deprived of their legal right to inspect that resolution for this entire period. This is a violation of state law. I put this abstention on the record to make clear my objection to this practice and provide evidence that the City has been given notice of the fact that the Brown Act is regularly and persistently violated..[sic] There is no justification for this persistent lateness in getting meetings [sic] into agenda packets. ////////////////////