ACLU Says City Has Weakened Proposed Surveillance Advisory Board’s Functions
“Caméra de vidéo-surveillance” by zigazou76 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The newly minted chapter of the ACLU Solano County co-hosted an online discussion about Vallejo’s proposed Surveillance Accountability Board on Thursday night. The civil rights’ watchdog outlined changes in the City’s proposed ad hoc committee that it found troubling and encouraged concerned community members to get involved.
The committee will ideally be comprised of independent people appointed from each district and contain civil liberties experts, and a city staffer hand-picked by the mayor. It’s primary purpose will be to oversee the Vallejo Police Department’s use of surveillance technology, which it is increasingly relying upon to fight crime due to understaffing, Chief Shawny Williams has told the city council.
The surveillance in question is so-called “stingray” tech, which uses cell-site simulators to track people’s location via their cellphone. VPD has also installed license plate readers all over town to identify suspects and stolen vehicles. The Chief also wants to increase CCTV cameras throughout the city.
Advocates for the advisory board were pleased that City Attorney and the council appeared to respond to their request to fast-track the committee, moving its discussion and implementation up from an original estimated unrolling in December to, well, now. But both the ACLU and Oakland Privacy now say that some teeth have been removed from the charter.
“VPD pushed to add an exigency clause to the policy to allow no time limit to report,” said Raquel Ortega from the ACLU during the on-line meeting.
This last-minute addition of an exigency clause says that VPD can use its tech in case of “emergency” and will “provide a report to the Board as soon as practicable,” instead of adhering to an official time frame, which advocates say is not in the interest of best practices and does not promote accountability.
Also, the City has asked that terms will also reportedly go from two to four years and a provision barring law enforcement or their family members from serving was taken out.
Tracy Rosenberg of Oakland Privacy says she is putting together a new proposal for the City Council, which is agendized to approve the board with these changes on Tuesday. Rosenberg says she is concerned that changes made to the original plan might leave members of the community distrustful of the surveillance board.
“A community advisory board is only valuable in as much as the community wants to participate on it and trusts its voice,” she said. “If the City Council is not dealing with them in good faith, it is not going to be effective.”
Rosenberg said that if the committee is approved as-is, they will go forward with it in good faith and “try to make it work,” but “big parts of the community are going to have trust issues.”
*The VPD said they were not aware of changes to the agreement and forwarded my message to the City. I changed the headline to reflect this.
