Subcommittee on Systemic and Community Racism

Systemic & Community Racism Subcommittee Recommendations

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1) BUSINESS RACIAL ACCOUNTABILITY PLEDGE:

City will offer anti-racism training for businesses led, at least in part, by black or POC facilitators. Experienced facilitators will work with all stakeholders in advance of the training to ensure the training is tailored to the needs of our community. As part of the training business owners and their employees will work through an anti-racist curriculum including readings, videos, role playing exercises, and assessments to evaluate their understanding of the material. Upon successful completion of the training businesses will sign an anti-racist accountability pledge and be given a plaque/decal to indicate their commitment to actively pursuing the tenets of anti-racism as laid out in the curriculum they use. Biennial recertification will be granted after the completion of continuing education about the topic. 

2) CREATE AND ADOPT A CLEAR AND CONCISE PROTOCOL FOR SOCIAL MEDIA:

After reviewing other policies and best practices within other (larger) police departments, we would like to advise the Alameda Police Department to adopt a similar protocol. Guidelines need to be in place for Social Media. Recently, APD posted a Black man’s face on their Facebook, after he’d been taken into custody, NOT convicted. They showed it to make other Alameda’s citizens aware of “bad people.” They allowed open, non-moderated public comment.  At the very least, we feel comments should have disabled. This is damaging, especially if they arrested the wrong person. 

  • Our subcommittee will share some best practices such as the SFPD’s practices. For example, SFPD does not share pictures of folks who’ve already been taken into custody. 
  • Upon further review and RFIs from the city, we have determined that no such protocol currently exists. We are happy to help implement and outline these practices, as needed.
  • Attached are the SFPD’s current Social Media practices and policies: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MSS95aXwhuPi7WVut4oYhd7YRmInqaQc/view?ths=true

3) PUBLIC FEEDBACK PORTAL | “Public Safety Accountability Tool”:

We recommend that the city add an additional reporting and feedback system (i.e. “City of Alameda Antiracism Reporting/Feedback Tool”) for residents to report instances of prejudice, abuse of power, and racism that they witness. Once a report is received, that data shall be provided to city staff for assessment. We recommend amplifying this portal’s existence to the community once it’s active, via all communication methods the city currently utilizes to communicate with its residents.

Once this data is collected from this portal, it shall be assessed and/or addressed, much like the current data from the policing portal but with a larger scope. Any instances of prejudice/racism within our local healthcare providers, landlords, and City Services (Fire/EMT, code enforcement, building inspection) will be documented in this database and shared with the appropriate parties to be assessed accordingly.

We have identified this existing portal, and we feel like it is a good place to start:

Share Feedback -- Presently, this feedback goes into the pipeline and gets routed depending on the nature of the feedback. We are recommending these options be amended to include more explicit, unambiguous language about racism, racial profiling, and implicit biases (Image 1). The link/badge for our recommended upgrade to the current portal will be located on the APD page (where the existing feedback portal is currently located), on the main APD page (Image 2) near the “contact us” link, as well as on the homepage of the City of Alameda’s website to ensure it’s easily accessible.

4) BUDGETS ARE ALIGNED WITH ANTI-RACISM & EQUITY STRATEGY

We recommend that the city examine the budget allocations across different areas including, policing, education, staffing, and specifically, this program. We are asking for more focus to be placed on this work after March, 2021. Working alongside the Alameda Board of Education, we are hoping to implement a racial awareness and education program in all Alameda schools by September, 2021.

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SUMMARY OF CURRENT RECOMMENDATIONS as of 14 January 2021:

  • “Public Safety Accountability Tool” 
  • Incident Reporting Database System (Anonymously or not anonymous, with a request for follow up)
  • Social Media strategy protocol
  • Budget allocations for ongoing social justice and equity work
  • Local Business Accountability Pledge 

Please take the community survey here to share your feedback on the subcommittee recommendations. A report of the preliminary recommendations from all five Subcommittees can be downloaded here(PDF, 765KB).